One year ago, I was living in a bubble of my own design; Happy, healthy, a wife, mother and friend, busy with a career, lots of big plans and a whole life ahead of me. In an instant, that all changed. At 33, I was diagnosed with a rare and difficult to treat form of Breast Cancer. Overnight, my world was shattered and for the first time ever, I came face to face with my own mortality. To be honest, it still doesn’t feel real. I’ve built some walls around my experience, to keep me safe, to keep me sane and to just keep going. So, when I think back on the last year of my life and what I’ve endured, it doesn’t feel possible that any of it happened to me. But when I look in the mirror at the body scarred and healing, the face still gaunt from months of heavy drugs, the hair growing in patchy and wild, the eyes of someone who has seen too much…the reality hits. 365 days and 16 rounds of high toxicity chemo pumped weekly through an IV surgically placed in my chest, fertility preservation via IVF, lumpectomy surgery and 20 rounds of localized radiation have left me with a body I barely recognize and battle wounds I’m just beginning to unravel. A year is forever and a year is no time at all. There were many days of darkness, of feeling unwell and asking “why?, why?, why?”. There were terrifying glimmers where I imagined a world in which I never found my lump, never scheduled a doctors appointment, never got a mammogram and slowly faded away while this disease silently ruined me. There were times I looked at my husband and our son and imagined their lives without me around. There were moments I forgot about it all and felt sick to my stomach when it all came rushing back…
The truth is, 1 year ago, I wasn’t sure what things would look like today or if I would even be here to see it. This day will always have meaning and power, because it marks such a dramatic shift in my life. I can never go back to the person I was 1 year ago. She lived a wonderful life and I will always mourn that innocence. But, I can go forward, and I feel tremendously lucky that I am able to. I’m still not totally sure what happens next. I’m still in treatment, I still feel like things aren’t “back to normal” (hello, Pandemic), and I will continue to carry this weight with me every day for the rest of my life. Some days are great, some days are not. I have lived lifetimes in this past year, surprising myself with a strength I did not know I could summon, physically pushing past the pain and mentally riding the many, many emotional waves. I did not do it alone. I was supported and lifted up by a little village who showed up in incredible ways and allowed me to focus on myself, on processing the unthinkable and let things slide when I had bad days. I don’t feel worthy of that love and I can never repay it.
365 days later, I climbed a mountain I never even knew was waiting for me, and by some miracle, I made it to the top. The view is pretty spectacular.