Breast cancer unclothes you in your humanity.

Overnight, it makes you shed the multitude of masks that you wear. It makes you strip down to a level of “realness” that you wouldn’t reveal when you are well and competing for survival in the world.

You can’t hide your deformed body that is permanently changed to help you conquer cancer. You can’t hide your physical and emotional pain and discomfort. You can’t hide your restlessness in living with this life-threatening disease.

Cancer makes you look into the mirror of mortality.

You don’t need to perform or ask for permission from others on how to behave when you have cancer. Unfettered permission is given to you to be who you are in coping with cancer.

Letting Go, Surrendering, and Casting Off

Perfection has no home in living with cancer. Control cannot reside in one who lives with cancer. This is a hard lesson for me to master. Letting go and surrendering to live day to day isn’t easy.

A wise dear friend, and cancer survivor, reminded me of this lesson three days before my mastectomy. “With cancer you have no control, you have to learn to let go,” he said with heartfelt words from one who has made this journey before me.

Slowly and stubbornly, I am learning this new lesson after a lifetime of being in control of my life. Cancer continues to be my teacher. It is instructing me in life’s lessons of letting go, surrendering, and casting off.

You cast off power suits and trade them in for yoga suits. You cast off wearing make-up for skin care. You cast off a coiffure for a short haircut, baldness, and eventually a wig. You cast off deadlines for rest time.

You cast off doing optional things, transferring your energy to healing and becoming well again. You cast off pretty much anything that takes you away from focusing on getting better and spending time with loved ones.

A New Kind of Love is Spoken

Cancer places you in a season of your life when you are most vulnerable in front of others. Somewhat ironically, they love you even more.

The eyes that see you living with this disease see your vulnerability and brokenness daily. This same vulnerability exposes you to experiencing a new kind of love from others. This new profound love is more sincere, more genuine, more deeply rooted, and is expressed more often.

Others’ thoughts that once waited to be verbalized no longer sit in the confines of their minds. Others’ thoughts now are expressed as words, gestures, and actions of love and caring. Those who love and surround you no longer withhold saying how they feel about you, and the place that you hold in their hearts.

My love for each and every other person on this journey with me—be it family or friends, has also changed with this cancer diagnosis. This disease presents many moments each day to tell others how special they are in my life.

My sister said it best on Sunday: “In a weird kind of way, this cancer diagnosis has actually become an unwanted gift in your life. It’s giving you a second chance to live.” I couldn’t say it any better.

Tender talks replace idle chatter. Every encounter with a loved one is a present from the soul of another person waiting to be received, unwrapped, and accepted by me. All who journey with me fill my daily life with blessings and hidden treasures. I have been given a rich life through cancer. I am grateful for this “unwanted” gift.

I live on with profound love surrounding me. I fight on with Strength, Courage, and Determination.