In the late afternoon today, I met up with a friend who was diagnosed with stage zero breast cancer. She ended up having to have two surgeries to remove malignant tumors in one of her breasts. The first surgery was always anticipated, but the second surgery came as a surprise to her because the MRI results came after the first surgery happened; this indicated that there were more cancer cells detected that required removal. In a few weeks time, she will begin three weeks of daily radiation, followed by five years of taking a daily cancer pill, which has many side effects, including potentially spurring early onsite menopause.

Over tea, she talked about her recovery (which was thankfully quick!), her medical appointments, and her general feelings about the whole cancer scare. On the one hand, she is thankful that this was all caught so early; you really can’t get better than stage zero! On the other hand, she feels miserable, realizing after the second surgery how much more this will be than she originally imagined. She’s the kind of person who always wants to busy herself with as many things as possible to stifle her feelings. But in times like this, I think it’s much better to just give yourself time to feel everything: sad, angry, distressed, like the world kind of wronged you in some undeserved, unfair way. American society always stresses productivity over everything. But we rarely give ourselves the time and permission to just sit in a feeling and just be. The second surgery helped give her a mental reset; she’s trying to rethink her life and daily motions and how she wants to be better and kinder… to herself. To me, this feels like a blessing in disguise to mentally and emotionally start again.