What Breast Cancer Taught Me About Paying Attention

We’re wrapping up October; where has the time gone?!

It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I don’t usually pay much attention to all the different “awareness months,” but this one feels personal.

So today, I want to share a few things I’ve learned from my own experience.

I was getting regular mammograms, but I wasn’t checking my breasts between appointments.

For more than a year, I had a deep itch in my left breast and an overwhelming, unexplainable fatigue.

I mentioned it to my doctor and was told it was probably nothing to worry about.

Then one evening, while lying on the couch watching television with my husband, I pressed my hand against my breast to relieve the itch.

That’s when I felt a small, hard, round lump that felt like a BB.

It stopped me in my tracks.

I called my doctor the next morning, and she saw me that afternoon.

She felt the lump too and scheduled a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound.

After taking several images, the radiologist came in and told me they couldn’t find it.

“What do you mean you can’t find it?” I asked. “You can feel it, can’t you?”

He could. But because my breast tissue was so dense, neither the mammogram nor the ultrasound could clearly see it.

The next step was a biopsy.

My message is not to distrust mammograms.

They are an important screening tool.

But don’t depend on a mammogram alone to tell you when something has changed in your body.

Know what is normal for you. Pay attention to changes.

If you feel something unusual, even if an image doesn’t show it, keep asking questions.

You can learn more about breast self-exams and what changes to watch for here.

There is something else I’ve been thinking about this month.

A friend who has also had breast cancer recently told me about an oncologist who emphasizes emotional well-being as one part of supporting overall health.

I want to be very clear: stress, worry, overworking, or people-pleasing do not mean that someone caused her own cancer.

Cancer is complicated, and so much of it is outside our control.

No one should carry blame for becoming ill.

But I do believe our emotional well-being matters.

Many of the smart but stressed women I work with are carrying enormous loads.

They work demanding jobs, care for children or aging parents, manage households, support everyone around them, and often place their own needs last.

Over time, stress can become so familiar that we don’t even recognize it as stress. It simply feels like normal life.

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That was true for me for many years.

Even though I was in the best mental, physical, and emotional shape of my life when I received my diagnosis, I still found myself wondering about all the years I had pushed too hard, ignored my needs, and believed I had no choice but to keep going.

I will probably never know exactly why I got cancer.

What I do know is that I get to decide how I want to live from here on out.

There is much I cannot control. But there is also much that remains within my power:

How I nourish my body.

How I move and rest.

How I care for my mind and nervous system.

How I tend to my relationships.

What I say yes to and what I no longer have to carry.

How intentionally I choose to spend my one precious life.

Perhaps that’s one of the greatest lessons cancer has given me: taking care of ourselves is not selfish, weak, or something we earn after everything else is finished.

It’s part of how we live.

For years, I didn’t realize there was another way. I thought stress and overwhelm were simply the price of being a responsible, caring, successful woman.

Now I know differently.

And I want you to know it too.

You don’t have to wait for a diagnosis, a crisis, or complete burnout to begin paying attention to yourself.

You can start now, gently, intentionally, one choice at a time.

There is another way to live this one precious, oh-so-short life.

With more peace.

More joy.

More presence.

And far less abandoning yourself along the way.

With love,

Marcy