This photo was taken in NYC on a Boat Cruise that I took with my daughters who helped raise over $5,000 last year for the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk in Albany's Washington Park. Upon raising $2,500 or more you become part of an elite group of fundraisers for the American Cancer Society...A Pacesetter....I am also a daughter, a mother, a sister, an aunt, a business professional, a philathropist, a friend and someone who struggles every day to stay defined as such, and not just as a cancer patient.As an almost 3 year survivor of breast cancer, every morning I think about all that has been gained and lost since my diagnosis. I have a BC life and an AC life. While I wouldn't trade the life experiences for anything, I always wonder about what my perspective would have been like with no cancer diagnosis.
Would it be easier to wake up every day, or has the knowledge that life is fragile and short made me appreciate all that I have? It is clear that this realization has led me to change the things in my life that are not working (sometimes in unproductive ways). Yet it is unclear whether those changes would have happened without cancer. I am not sure and perhaps it doesn't even matter.
The greatest concern is that all that I have strived for over the course of my life will get lost and I will be redefined as that woman who had cancer...and nothing more. I am proud to be a survivor, but when all is said and done and I take my last breath, I hope my friends and family see me as so much more than that....
Cancer may have shaped my life, but it will never define my life.
Be Well.
