Surviving by Fanny Barry

As a cancer survivor, I celebrate life with a desire and need to improve the lives of others. Care from others, help, love and a deeper understanding of impermanence, have heightened my empathy, tolerance, laughter and understanding. I have found myself again and I am in a place where I need to give more to others than ever before. To survive, I have accepted so much from others, some very close and some very new acquaintances brought me through the disease. No one makes the survivor journey alone.

At first, I kept my “survivorship” fairly secret. Probably the same way a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s might be kept secret. I don’t tell everyone. It frightens some and makes some people uneasy. It is about death, I know. A lot of people don’t want to hear it, don’t want to think about it. I understand that. Sometimes I don’t want to think about it either. So I try not to talk too much about it. But it is there. And, more and more, as I become comfortable with the fact, with the term “survivor”, I share.

Each time I share I tell myself “ok” first. There is this little voice inside me that whispers “Go ahead. They, he, she, might want to know. It is ok. Say it. It is not a bad thing.” So I say it. Selectively, more and more. And people do want to know. Often they share their stories. So many have been touched. “My mother died of the disease.” “My sister had it and is doing well.” “My friend was just diagnosed.” “I am a survivor too.” Somehow it gives people permission to share their stories. Somehow it takes away my embarrassment of the diagnosis and gives me pride in my survivorship. Too, it frees those with whom I share. By sharing my survivorship, I enable the little voice inside of them to whisper “go ahead, she wants to know. It is ok.” It enables them to be heard, to not be embarrassed. And so we share. Often, there is a bond. Always, there is comfort. Realistically, it is how I survived. I told others I had cancer and they helped me. Now as I tell people and we share our stories, there is the realization of a problem. We realize there is a need to solve it or at least to help each other try.

Communicating the existence of the disease is a first step to enabling people to help each other. It is how we stop denying that we could have the disease. It is how we start accepting that we need to do something. That is why I started my non-profit. That is why I wrote my books. That is why I tell people, “I am a survivor.” When we share the knowledge, we are able to help each other. When we share the knowledge, we diminish the shame, the doubt, the fear.

Those touched by breast cancer and I believe most who have faced death, either themselves or through a loved one are changed by the experience. “Of course” you say. Every experience changes us, adds to the fabric of our being. But my experience surviving breast cancer has changed me in ways I would never have imagined. It has changed my family and friends, probably in ways they could never imagine. It showed me, and them, my strengths and my weaknesses. It took me to the edge and back. I know it took people I love and who love me to the edge and back. We are all survivors. But it also developed in me and in them a greater sense of empathy, tolerance and a greater need to share our lives with others as fortunate as we are - fortunate to be alive and to live every day. Fortunate to breathe each breath in awareness of the gift of life and in the awareness that we need to help each other do the same.

Communication can be a key to survivorship. Communication can be a key to those who may not survive so that they may have a better quality of life during their illness. It enables those who love them to come back from the edge. There is a parallel in all life death situations. Alzheimer’s disease is no different. There is an embarrassment I am sure. But there also needs to be that little voice inside that can speak up to share, selectively. That little voice that says, “It is ok, go ahead, they, he, she might want to know. It is ok. Say it. It is not a bad thing.”

Sharing our situations, our experiences, our needs will engender a commonality of compassion, a desire to improve each person's experience with disease, with life and death situations and will allow survivors and support systems to give back in some way, because no one survives alone. And for those who leave, no one leaves any one behind. We all touch each other and we leave a void when we go where others cannot follow. That void can be filled with empathy, compassion, an ability to help and give to others and a community of care.