Journal entry #5: What It Means to Be a Survivor

Read Journal Entry #4: Becoming My Own Advocate

Living with metastatic breast cancer can feel like a horror movie.

There are moments when patience thins and endurance feels stretched to its limit. Sometimes I wonder whether I’ve truly kept the worst parts of cancer at bay.

I won’t lie, there were times I wanted to give up. I had breakdowns. I fell.

But I always got back up the next day.

Highs and lows are part of life. Some days simply aren’t on your side. Accept them. Don’t criticize yourself for struggling. Remember: you’ve done hard things before, and you can do them again.

My red lipstick became my signature — no longer just color, but a statement of resilience. Every day, I wrote affirmations on my mirror:

I am beautiful. I am strong. I am a healer.

Repetition became ritual. Ritual became grounding.

Being a survivor means embracing resilience and hope, even in uncertainty. It means recognizing your inner strength and the power of love and community.

Survivorship isn’t about never faltering. It’s about staying true to yourself when life challenges you the most.

Every survivor’s journey is unique. But resilience, that shared thread, connects us all.

A New Understanding of Joy

Cancer changed my life in ways I could never have anticipated. It unraveled everything I thought I knew about myself, my priorities, and my existence.

But in the unraveling, something new was stitched together.

Before my diagnosis, happiness often felt like a mirage, always slightly out of reach. I believed I was living a good life, maybe even a great one. But it wasn’t until cancer slowed me down, forcing me to confront mortality and fragility, that I truly began to understand joy.

Not the loud kind. The quiet kind. The kind that lives in breath, in presence, in simply being alive.

And that understanding, though born from hardship, is something no illness can take away.

Thank you so much for tuning in to my cancer journal.

If you enjoyed my humble blog posts, you might like reading my book, Rising Through Ashes A Journey of Hope and Healing.