Living with Stage IV MBC: Identity

As we begin yet another Breast Cancer Awareness Month (#10 since my de novo Stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) in 2017), I have been pondering the profound ways that living with MBC has changed me as a person. I’m often asked the question (in varying language): “Is cancer synonymous with your identity now?” And I’ve been pondering the answers I’ve given over time.

My conclusion? Actually, yes. In many ways, it is.

Not because I wanted it to be. Not because I spend every waking hour talking about cancer. But because the moment you hear the words Stage IV and terminal, your life cleaves itself into a before and an after. There is no untouched version of you left standing on the other side of those words.

The life I knew before cancer is gone. Some parts of it needed to disappear. Some parts I still ache for so deeply it feels physical, like grief tucked beneath the ribs. But every corner of my existence has been altered by this diagnosis. Every room in the house looks different now.

You do not move through the world the same way once you understand, truly understand, that time is not the endless resource you once believed it to be. Ordinary moments begin to glow at the edges. They become sacred. Fragile. Fleeting. Ephemeral.

Your calendar stops being filled with vacations and long-range plans. Instead, it becomes scans, bloodwork, infusion days, insurance battles, pharmacy calls, medication schedules, waiting rooms, needles, ports, side effects, and the vocabulary of survival, words you never wanted to learn but can now pronounce in your sleep.

You get used to being poked so many times you stop flinching. You get used to strangers discussing your body like a case study. You get used to foreign objects being stitched into your chest and somehow calling it normal. You get used to talking about tumors over lunch. You get used to carrying on conversations while silently calculating scan dates in your head. You get used to surviving while the rest of the world keeps moving as though nothing catastrophic has happened at all.

Cancer touches everything. The way you parent. The way you love. The way you spend money. The way you make plans. The way you look at your own reflection. The way you think about tomorrow. The way you measure joy. The way you carry fear.

So yes, cancer became an integral part of my identity. How could it not? But becoming part of my identity is not the same thing as erasing who I am.

Underneath all of this, I am still someone who feels deeply and thinks deeply. Still someone who cannot look away from injustice. Still someone who will show up at a moment’s notice for another person in pain, even while carrying my own. Still someone who longs to be useful. Still someone who wants to live a big, meaningful, expansive life, even with a terminal diagnosis trailing quietly behind me like a shadow.

Cancer became part of my story, but it does not get to become the entirety of it.

And it certainly does not get to write the ending.

As we start 2026 Breast Cancer Awareness Month, please be on the lookout for PinkWashing and mark your calendars for the #LightUpMBC live show on October 13th, the ONE day all October set aside for those of us living with MBC.