Why I Continue to Advocate

People ask me sometimes why I stay so connected to the Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) Community; why I continue to do the work of advocacy amidst my own struggles. I never really know how to answer that question clearly because the answer feels stitched into me so tightly that it no longer feels separate from who I am. It would be like asking why rivers move toward the ocean or why sunflowers turn themselves toward light, something obvious and instinctive. Some things stop being decisions after enough years. They become reflex. Orientation. Gravity.

I think a lot of it began long before cancer, advocacy being literally in my sinews.

Long before infusion rooms and scan results and medications I struggle to pronounce. Long before my life became divided into treatment lines and side effects and survival statistics. Long before learning about hospice, talking about the end of life, and attending funerals became commonplace on my calendar.

It started in the Midwest; in the quiet architecture of my upbringing. In the invisible curriculum so many of us were handed without ever naming it aloud: you work hard, you don’t complain more than necessary, you help when help is needed, you protect your people, you visit your relatives in nursing homes, and you leave things better than you found them. Clearly not an exhaustive list but you get the gist.

You contribute.

You show up.

You figure out what is your part and then you carry your part of the weight.

President John F. Kennedy once stood before the country and offered a challenge that still echoes through generations: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” Those words, spoken during his inaugural address in January of 1961 before I was born, settled somewhere deep inside me long before I had the language to explain why. They became less of a quote and more of a compass.

Maybe that’s why advocacy and service have always felt instinctive to me rather than performative. Interestingly, research suggests Generation X often gives differently than the generations surrounding us — less through checkbooks and more through hours, labor, presence, and showing up. Boomers and Millennials are statistically more likely to donate money; Gen X tends to donate itself. Its time. Its energy, its worn-out evenings and weekends.

And honestly, that feels familiar to me. I come by this tendency naturally.

There was this underlying belief woven into the fabric of life where and how I grew up — that usefulness mattered. Not usefulness in the cold capitalist sense. Not productivity as moral worth. But usefulness as stewardship. As responsibility to other human beings. You checked on neighbors. You babysit. You brought casseroles. You volunteered. You shoveled someone else’s driveway. You stayed late to stack chairs after the fundraiser even if nobody noticed.

Especially if nobody noticed.

And maybe that shaped me more than I realized.

Because when cancer arrived, when my life became something unrecognizable and terrifying and unbearably fragile, I still carried that instinct with me: if you are here, you help where you can, especially if you have some sort of extra knowledge or expertise.

Even now, especially now. I speak a different language while living with terminal cancer and I can translate my experience and training very differently for my community, a community I never dreamed I’d join.

I also grew up in a home where Christianity was not a once or twice a year obligation but the rhythm underneath life itself. Faith sat at the dinner table with us. It shaped conversations, expectations, and the way we understood responsibility to other people. My father was a pastor for much of my childhood before eventually returning to school to become a therapist while I was in law school — a transition that, in its own way, still felt rooted in the same calling: helping carry the burdens of others.

One verse surfaced repeatedly throughout my formative years, almost like a refrain: “To whom much is given, much is required.” Luke 12:48. Even paraphrased, it carries weight. Jesus spoke about accountability — about the idea that those entrusted with more are held to a higher standard in how they move through the world.

People often interpret that verse through the lens of blessing, talent, privilege, or opportunity, and certainly I can recognize all of those things. But as I’ve grown older, especially through illness and advocacy and witnessing suffering up close, I’ve started to hear something else inside those words. Less about status. More about what we are able to give to one another simply because we are unique and capable.

Not obligation in the cold sense, but responsibility born from awareness. The understanding that once you truly see pain, injustice, loneliness, or need, you cannot completely unknow it. And maybe being “given much” is not only about what you possess, but also about what you are capable of carrying for someone else.

Because being given time is also a gift. Being given perspective is a gift. Being in survivorship mode for things that should have broken you completely somehow creates responsibility too — not obligation born from guilt, but opportunity born from awareness and genuine concern for others.

Cancer has stripped and continues to strip so much from me, but it also forces me to see the world with startling clarity. Once you sit across from oncologists enough times, once you hear the word terminal attached to your own body, once you spend enough nights awake at 3 a.m. bargaining with fear, you start recognizing suffering everywhere. You notice people differently. The terrified newly diagnosed patient scrolling Facebook groups at midnight. The person trying desperately to understand insurance denials while their entire life is collapsing. The people straining under the weight of grief.

You begin to understand how many people are drowning quietly (or maybe not so quietly). And once you see it, truly see it, it becomes very difficult to pretend someone else will handle it. That may be the real underlying reason I advocate — Because I have never been particularly good at assuming someone else will show up.

Some of that is personality. I have always been someone who moves toward problems instead of away from them. I have long felt internally restless until a problem was handled and have never been able to keep my mouth shut when there is injustice, when people are treated differently.

Some people are naturally able to detach, to trust systems, to believe institutions will eventually sort themselves out. I have never really been built that way. My brain works like this instead: if nobody says anything, the problem remains; if nobody helps, the person stays alone; if everybody waits, nothing happens.

And honestly? History proves this over and over again. The world does not improve because anonymous magical people emerge from the clouds to fix it. It improves because ordinary exhausted humans decide they are unwilling to look away anymore.

That’s all advocacy really is. Not sainthood. Not heroism. Just refusal.

Refusal to see people as “other.” Refusal to demonize what we don’t know. Refusal to accept unnecessary suffering as normal. Refusal to stay silent because silence is more comfortable. Refusal to believe your voice doesn’t matter simply because it is small. Refusal to accept being treated badly.

I think people sometimes imagine advocacy requires extraordinary charisma or massive platforms or perfect health or endless energy. But the most meaningful advocacy I’ve witnessed has come from deeply ordinary people doing what they can from exactly where they are.

A more experienced patient answering messages from the newly diagnosed. A doctor staying late to call a patient about scan results. A researcher staying late in the lab. Someone writing letters. Someone fundraising quietly. Someone sitting beside another human being saying, “You are not crazy. This is hard. I believe you.”

Small things accumulate, they always have.

And I wish more people understood that the absence of perfection does not eliminate responsibility. You do not have to save the entire world. You just have to stop assuming your piece belongs to someone else. Especially now, in a culture that often rewards performance more than substance, I think there is something sacred about simply being useful. Quietly useful. Consistently useful. Not for applause. Not for recognition. Not for personal branding. Not “insta-worthy” or pithy enough to post on TikTok.

Just useful.

There are so many moments in advocacy that nobody ever sees: the private messages, the resource sharing, the emails, the phone calls, the emotional labor, the research, the comforting, the mentoring, the connecting of people behind the scenes and so much more.

The invisible work matters too. Maybe more than the visible work. It lasts longer too.

Cancer has taught me many painful things, but one of the most important is this: human beings survive because other human beings decide they should not suffer alone.

That is the entire machinery of hope. Not perfection. Not inspirational slogans. Just people carrying pieces of one another when they can. And I know there are people who feel hesitant to step forward because they think they are too small to matter, too ordinary, too tired, too late, too inexperienced; but every movement worth anything was built by ordinary people who decided to participate before they felt ready.

If we all wait for someone smarter, stronger, healthier, wealthier, louder, or more qualified to show up and solve things, we will wait forever.

Forever.

At some point, humanity only moves forward because regular people decide to become part of the answer instead of lifelong observers of the problem.

I do advocacy because I am still here. I do advocacy because too many people are suffering in silence. I do advocacy because I know what it feels like to be terrified and overwhelmed and desperate for someone to throw you a rope. I do advocacy because I genuinely care about each messy human I encounter and want them to be more equipped, more able. And I do advocacy because somewhere deep in my bones — shaped by Midwestern winters and church pews and generations of practical people who believed service mattered — I still believe our lives are measured partly by what we give away.

Not money necessarily, but time, effort, attention, compassion, presence, courage, examples.

I don’t think everyone is called to do advocacy in the same way. But I do think everyone can do something. Something small. Something imperfect. Something human. And maybe that is enough.

Maybe enough ordinary people doing small brave things for each other is how the world survives at all.