The biggest thing I’ve learnt about overcoming breast cancer is that survivorship is a thing. A hot, twisty, messy, uncomfortable situation that bites and snarls at the throat, and the hair. It grips at the layer just under your skin, that place you can feel but not see. It crawls and creeps, whispers and snakes at you—just there, and when you least expect it.

That has been my own experience as I exited the most critical stages of my own breast cancer journey. It began with a diagnosis in November 2022, when a routine mammogram uncovered a spear-shaped, inelegantly formed, soft and imperceptible tumour rising from my left breast, just above my heart.

The unwelcome diagnosis led to an, at first, just-as-unwelcome mastectomy in late January 2023. In the aftermath, I surprised myself by feeling empowered, transformed in my skin and spirit having traversed this path. I felt bathed in a new light as some cancer patients do. This, I welcomed. And I found myself moved to share my story in words and pictures online. That led to women seeking me out, often as they began to navigate their own journeys.

Many are relatively young, like myself. I was diagnosed at 43, and celebrated my 44th birthday as I began preparing to return to work after surgery. I had taken just over a month off work to recover, and was well enough to go on a short trip to an island near Singapore before slipping back into my office shoes and pencil skirts.

What, I wondered as I dipped my bare feet into the sand, would I experience as a cancer survivor back in the “real world”? You see, I had experienced what I call a “cancer awakening”. I felt as though my diagnosis and experience had been a strong call to change my life. And it was all happening quickly.

There had been, I reflected, the first crucial, cruel steps; the month after diagnosis had been a race to understand the condition. As things unfolded, I realised that I was going to integrate as many natural therapies into my treatment plan as possible. I went vegan overnight, and visited a healing centre where I learnt everything from the efficacy of saunas and cold exposure, to essential steps of maintaining a healthy body and mind after a serious illness.

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LIFE RESET

The month right before surgery, too, had been busy. As the date neared, I spent time tending to my emotional and spiritual well-being by going for counselling, and learning techniques to calm my body and mind in the lead-up to the actual surgery itself. I was also cleaning up much in my life—identifying any stressors or toxins, both external and emotional.

In short, I was learning how to live a new life in discovering how to put myself and my needs first. Surprisingly, some science points to the fact that breast cancer patients are often the sort of people who will take care of everyone’s needs before their own. They tend to put themselves last in a long list of priorities. Their happiness will come at the end of that list.

Any breast cancer patient will tell you that the critical nature of a diagnosis will cause them to reassess how they have been living. That is what I did. The result was a new me. I had a renewed energy and verve, and a sense of peace that I had never felt before.

I was feeling healthier than I ever had. I was adjusting to my new body, slowly regaining full mobility after surgery thanks to yoga and physiotherapy. I was also finding my voice as a breast cancer and wellness advocate, spreading messages of body positivity online and sharing what I was learning about natural healing, and how mindset and stress play a part in cancer growth.

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BODY POSITIVITY

As I slipped back into my corporate life, many people assumed, given how well I looked and how energetic I was, that all was well. They had no idea that I was in what I call my period of “Becoming”. In my personal life, I was laying down new boundaries and breaking away from old, habitual ways of being in my close relationships. “I don’t take no sh*t no more,” I would warn people. It was, I now realise, an attempt to live for myself first, and not others.

“Well that’s new,” my best friend said once, as I released an unfiltered comment (one that I would have filtered heavily before). Part of my new mantra was “be unapologetically true”. Looking back, I now recognise that those I love, in particular my husband and mother, had to endure a new person in their lives—one who was no longer so reserved and acquiescent. She was bolder, and sometimes explosive, and many times a pain in the a**.

I was attempting to address my tendency to suppress my emotions to maintain harmony with others. I recognised that, as physician and author Gabor Maté has written, there is a connection between stress, emotional repression and physical illness, including breast cancer. Those who suppress their emotions often experience stress without fully recognising or expressing it. This emotional bottling can weaken the immune system over time. I was refusing to do this any longer.

My loved ones were patient. They adjusted as I evolved. Some friends did not and I let them go, or did not hold them quite as close. I did my best to let people know what I was attempting to do, and most supported me in this evolution, this “Becoming”. This process is that discomfort I mentioned at the start of this story. This, and negotiating other things that come with survivorship—the fear of recurrence that plagues every survivor. The thoughts of “what did I do to make cancer grow, and am I now doing all the right things to keep it at bay?” Every screening is a trigger; each beep of the ultrasound machine, the jangle of an alarm bell to the nervous system.

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WORK IN PROGRESS

But the hottest, messiest thing is the learning—the unravelling, untangling and unwinding and parting with many of one’s old ways. I am still in that period. I am still a work in progress. I feel truer to myself, and this less-filtered self is freer and happier than before. She cares much less about what others think of her. She cares to make herself happy first, before others. That’s new. And not always comfortable. I envision a moth emerging from a cocoon, stretching its wings and arching its new spine, testing the air; or a moulting crab cracking open its old shell, stretching a leg out tentatively into the wide ocean. They both find joyful release.

In supporting young women with breast cancer, I have noticed that many of them are leaving their old lives, stretching wings and legs out into newness. They want to expand, to take up more space and air in this world. They want to, as I have expressed, take no sh*t, where they might have previously. They advocate for their feelings, their desires, and lives. Some, like me, scream it. Others do it in more graceful ways. What is important is the recognition that repression leads to stress, which suppresses the immune system, and can encourage cancer to grow.

Many older cancer patients feel less of this need to do this for themselves, I notice. Yes, they are older, wiser, and have lived much life. In some senses, they “care” less about the outcome of their actions. What they care about is to live a new day, until the end of their days.

But a young woman must tend to herself. She must learn the uncomfortable, hot lessons of “Becoming”, for the sake of herself and her health, and the long life she has ahead of her. She must learn to be true. She has, you see, that much life left in her, and she must live it in the most liberated, beautiful way she knows how.

Jill Alphonso is an author, public speaker, yoga teacher, and wellness advocate. Along with sound therapists, The Sirius Sound, she will be conducting the “Healing In Crisis And Beyond” event on 13 October for Breast Cancer Awareness month. The event is free for patients and survivors and will kick off a “12 Months of Healing” programme of yoga and sound therapy. Find information on her Instagram @jillhealsnaturally.