Having undergone five years of treatment for breast cancer, I am approaching the time when all intervention stops and I begin to contemplate how to return to normalcy (or begin a new normal). So, after five Pink-tobers, here are five lessons I have learned (and re-learn every fall) when our country is awash in pink.
#1 Pink Donations, Bagels, and Stand Mixers
Anyone can put a pink ribbon on a product’s packaging or wear pink socks at athletic games. While it feels good to support a cause that has touched so many lives, it’s possible your money doesn’t end up where you think. There are varying levels of administrative costs, caps on donation totals, and even worse, some ingredients or manufacturing practices may actually contribute to cancer. So just because it has a pink ribbon on it doesn’t mean good will come of it.
Lesson: Ask the hard questions.
#2 Pink Sisters…But Are We Really?
A supportive community is essential to making it through this disease and prolonged treatment period. This journey can be traumatic and send us into periods of loneliness as we recover from treatment, navigate medication side effects, rearrange schedules to accommodate frequent doctors’ appointments, share news of our illness, and figure out how to respond to all the maddening things people say and do once they know you have cancer.
None of us asked to join this club, so sure, we are instant comembers. There are pink sisters I consider BFFs and some I have known only through a comment on social media. Both have helped me navigate difficult decisions and respond to difficult situations because they understand like no one else can. Yet we are as different as our individual diagnoses and experiences.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to the roller-coaster ride of breast cancer, but we are all expected to come together each October and cheer for the boobs that tried to kill us. Lumping us together diminishes the experience of being seen and eliminates the unique nature of each person’s journey.
Lesson:
DO: listen, hold space, and stay curious;
DON’T: try to fix anything.
#3 Pink Fights…It’s Not a Battle
Early on I said to a friend how much this battle sucked. She suggested I stop using fighting references because “in a battle there is always a winner and a loser.” Wow, this completely shifted my perspective!
With this subtle shift in language, I have developed such a hot button for all the “be strong” slogans. We don’t have to develop that strength. We are already strong. From the moment we hear the words “You have cancer,” we summon an inner strength that we didn’t even know we had. We are told to be an active participant in our care, yet it is exhausting to advocate and recover at the same time. Working to keep your job, to hold the family together, to manage expectations, to get things in order before you can’t, all require heroic amounts of strength.
So no, this is not a battle. It is a wide-ranging spectrum of (shitty) experiences that we need to experience fully in order to work through this journey.
Lesson: Being strong all the time is exhausting. See lesson 5.
#4 Vulnerability Wears Pink
Being poked and prodded in an area of our body we grew up learning is “private” makes this whole experience about vulnerability from the very beginning. But being thrown into patient mode is a whole new kind of vulnerability. We are at the mercy of a well-oiled cancer treatment machine that, if we are lucky, remembers that we are individuals with pain, grief, anxiety, and lives outside of cancer.
Going through this journey also guarantees that we will need help. Yet asking for it can bring up an additional vulnerability because who wants to feel like a burden? Friends and family sincerely want to help. Whether it’s meals, rides, dog walks, wine, or hand-holding, these tangible ways that people can help give us an opportunity to show gratitude and grace in simply receiving.
But even deeper is the vulnerability of uncertainty, while still showing up each day. Being fully present to the life-threatening challenges, the roller coaster of emotions, and the small, kind gestures that restore faith in humanity is empowering. This vulnerability can provide the gift of even more meaningful connections with those who remain closest to you throughout this experience.
Lesson: Being vulnerable is courageous, strong, real, and life-affirming.
#5 Pink Feelings…the Emotional Recovery No One Talks About
A staggering one in eight people will be diagnosed with breast cancer each year…that’s over 365,000 people annually who will need care in the U.S. alone. Emotional support is typically offered in pamphlet form at a time when you’re also overwhelmed and learning about all the other things that you need to remember when newly diagnosed.
How does one learn to manage the grief, the sadness, the loss, the scan-xiety… even the loneliness that comes along the way and stays with you throughout your treatment? We are tethered to a medical community for five or more years and then, just like that, they cut the cord. You’re cancer free, but you don’t feel free from cancer.
Lesson: Healing the mind and the heart is as important as healing the body.
My son recently got a new car and learned that there is a particular wave that all drivers of this particular vehicle model do when they pass another person driving the same car. I don’t drive that particular car, but I do have a desire to offer some I-see-you type of gesture when I pass another person driving a car with a pink ribbon license plate. Maybe it’s time for us to make up our own pink ribbon wave? One that could be our own way of saying “fuck cancer” or “I know this is hard” or simply “the pink in me sees the pink in you.”
Vanessa is a mother of two grown kids who lives in Rhode Island with her husband and their rescue dog. She is an expressive arts facilitator on a mission to help women heal the emotional wounds of breast cancer. Sign up for free weekly Mindfulness Minute practices posted each Monday here.
