Sarah, melanoma, also a mother, writer, actor, digital creator
Sarah is not her cancer. Cancer is not the warp and weft of her being. Cancer is woven into only part of her life. She wrote about this last week (9/8) in an insightful post on her Substack account Pause for Cancer.
Cancer is something that happens to you. It’s not something you are, and it’s not the work you choose to do to explore your passions in life, like being a writer, an engineer, a teacher, or a nurse. Her recent rumination started when she ran into a friend of a friend who said, “you’re the one with the cancer, right?” So her identity with this other person began with her being cancer. I imagine, and hope, that as they talked, probably about everything but cancer, that Sarah the Person replaced the initial label.
It’s sobering to be identified by cancer, and it makes us wonder if the trauma we’ve gone through has changed our personality. Certainly the initial shock of being told we had cancer shook everything we thought we understood and turned our life in a different direction. One of Sarah’s horrors was developing a bad reaction to immunotherapy for her Stage 3b melanoma that sent her body spiraling out of control and her doctors rushing to save her organs and life. The impact of something like this does not fade. It remains etched into our bones.
Here’s the thing. We are still who we were before cancer pulled up to our door, with all of our desires, dreams, likes, and quirks. But we have found clarity about what is most important. Sarah noted that some of the things she once wanted so badly no longer seemed important.
She wrote, “When I started Pause for Cancer, I had no intention of becoming a cancer person.” Yet she wanted to document ‘this strange experience that stormed in and rearranged the furniture of her life without asking permission.’ (I love this description.) She wanted to write about it, but also to write about everything else going on in her life — her friendships, getting older, her kids, her ambitions, and her boredom.
Like Sarah, cancer is often on my mind. I think that most of us who write about cancer do so for a number of reasons. First, we want to understand the trauma of cancer and the suffering we go through with our treatments. Second, we invariably start searching for meaning. Something this big has got to mean something. Right? Third, we want to find ways to prevent cancer from returning, so we continue to do cancer research. Fourth, we find that our experiences with cancer teach us a language that enables us to talk to other cancer patients. Fifth, we find that sharing our trauma with others lessens our isolation, and fellowships develop with people who aren’t afraid to share their fears and doubts. It opens the door to talking about the resilience of hope, the nature of suffering, and the harsher aspects of living.
I laughed and nodded my head when Sarah wrote that she expected a “magical post-cancer personality upgrade” from cancer, and was bummed when it didn’t happen. I expected this, too, or at least to find a new pool of wisdom that I could share with others. But I’m no brighter than I was before. I do feel an enormous amount of empathy for anyone who is suffering with a serious medical problem. What I’ve discovered, besides direct knowledge of how it feels to be at the mercy of this foreign entity, and fear that I will never be completely healthy again, is the river of compassion that flows among cancer patients, our doctors, and nurses.
When someone says, “I hear you have cancer,” I have a quick decision to make. The topic of cancer has been introduced, which may have taken them courage to bring up, rather than the generic “How are you?” I don’t immediately know if they actually want to talk about cancer and hear how I’m doing, or if they are just being polite. Yet some will ask for more information, and then I can share. There is a difference between polite sympathy and warm empathy. Sympathy says, “I’m thankful that I don’t have what you have.” Empathy asks, “How can I help you?”
If one in three of us is going to get cancer sometime in our life, it would help if we talked about cancer in our society, if only to learn how to prepare for when cancer comes into our family. I think that what all of us want is for society to not run away from cancer but embrace it with compassion and understanding.
The traumatic moments in our life remain imbedded in our bodies in the physical dislocation and emotional isolation, whether it’s because of cancer, divorce, losing a job we loved, or the death of a beloved pet. The difference with cancer is that it can kill us. Even after doctors say our cancer is gone, it leaves a sticky residue of fear that it will come back. We never forget that we had cancer but, as Sarah says, “it’s easy to start forgetting the texture of [those] events.”
The next time someone notices that you have cancer, say “Would you like to know more?” and see where the discussion goes.
May Sarah celebrate another year of life this week, and every year after.
© 2026 Mark Liebenow
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