When trauma occurs, a person loses their sense of self and their ability to tell their own story. Recovery only begins when you are able to fully understand what happened to you. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago, I had to undergo a double mastectomy, which was a truly devastating time in my life. It took a long time for me to reclaim my story and to become myself again.
When we talk about recovery from cancer, we often hear about the clinical side of things. Emotional recovery from cancer is not as prevalent a subject, even though it is equally important. Not all experiences with cancer are equally traumatic and my experience is definitely not among the worst cases. But it was traumatic nonetheless.
This was my second cancer diagnosis. Years earlier, I had been diagnosed with lung cancer and ten percent of my lung had to be removed. But breast cancer was a different story for me. Although diagnosed early, I learned that I would have to undergo a double mastectomy and this felt very personal. I wasn’t as emotionally impacted when I had part of my right lung removed, because I don’t look down every day and see my lungs. My breasts, on the other hand, were a part of my identity. They were part of what made me a woman. They were one (or rather, two) of the reasons I felt attractive to my husband. And they were being taken away from me—to ultimately save my life—but it was still devastating.
The First Step: Social Anxiety
When time came to reenter the world after my operation, I couldn’t help but feel changed, a different person than I was before. I no longer knew who I was. As humans, we tend to think about things and about ourselves in terms of narrative. When trauma occurs, that narrative gets taken away from us. Our sense of identity becomes splintered.
Before my operation, being in a room full of people came naturally to me. But that changed. I no longer wanted to be the focus. I shied away from the spotlight. People would come up to me and instead of saying, “How are you?” they would directly say, “Oh I heard…” To cope with this unexpected social anxiety, I had to rehearse telling people about what happened to me, repeat it to myself before facing them, and mentally prep myself. I was completely lost.
In social settings, I felt like people were looking down at my chest. When I told my close ones about this, they told me it was all in my head. But when I had ten percent of my lungs removed, no one looked there. So I had to work hard to become social again and to feel comfortable around people.
The Second Step: Learning to Stay Present
I quickly realized that I was driving myself crazy making up scenarios in my head. I realized that I spent months trying to learn how to be “me” again. And then I discovered mindfulness meditation.
Meditation helped me learn to stay present in the moment without being so anxious about what the future would bring. I learned to take in whatever was around me, using all five senses—feeling my feet hit the ground, hearing the birds chirping, seeing—really seeing—a sunset, smelling the pine trees, and tasting my strawberry lip balm.
I had to learn to get out of my own head because at that point, my head wasn’t a good place to be. And it helped. I was no longer wrapped up in the anxiety of not knowing who I was. Meditation allowed for a distancing with the chaos that my mind had become and finally I was able to talk to my closest friends about the trauma of my double mastectomy.
The Third Step: Support Systems
I was lucky to have an excellent support system that stayed with me the whole way through. The biggest shift happened for me when a friend asked me to talk to a friend of hers who had breast cancer. Her friend couldn’t stop crying. So I agreed to talk to her.
Talking to someone who is going through the same thing has a special kind of power. Even your doctor will never truly know what it’s like, but a fellow survivor will. For example, before my double mastectomy, I didn’t realize how many muscles were connected to my breasts. After the operation, you can’t move your arms in the same way. You start realizing you take some mobility for granted. The woman that I spoke with feared that she would have permanent restrictions with her arms.
I knew exactly what that felt like and by that point in time, I had regained some of that mobility myself. I was able to tell her, “You will get through this and heal.” And as I told her this, I started to believe it myself.
The Fourth Step: My New Story
I had reconstructive surgery on my breasts with a wonderful surgeon and I started feeling like myself again. When you come out of an experience like this, you gain a new respect for life, as cliché as that might sound. I started realizing I wanted to live in the present with gratefulness for what I had, without thinking about the next thing.
I was grateful for all the little things that I used to take for granted—the birds fluttering in my backyard, the majestic beauty of the trees, the love of my family, the warmth of the sun… I no longer cared about superficial things. I craved meaning. Before cancer, I took these things for granted and didn’t stop to take them in or embrace them.
Now when I go to a concert, I don’t try to record it and take pictures to show how great my life is on social media. I just stay there, I rock out to the music, and I appreciate the experience that is unfolding before me. The gift of the present moment is so powerful! This would have never happened had I not been a cancer survivor. This is how I reclaimed my story and became myself again.