This week is grief awareness week, so in this blog I’d like to focus on the grief that a breast cancer diagnosis brings with it. For so much of my life I associated grief with the loss of life. However, as I have gotten older I have a deeper sense of understanding of how I have changed after big life events, I have realised that grief can also happen for the people that we were before those key moments. That grief can be for a life we thought we might have. The loss of a body part. The grief for the people we were before life shaped us into the people we now are.

I have grieved massively for the person I was before I heard those fateful words “you’ve got breast cancer” when I was 37 years old back in December 2019. Because those words changed me on the deepest level. For me to healthily heal and process all that has happened, grief has had to take centre stage.

Giving yourself permission to grieve after a breast cancer diagnosis

The first thing for me was realising I was grieving and working with a therapist to give myself permission to grieve. I had lived. I had caught my cancer early. I had a good prognosis. I had the chance of more life. It can feel like grief cannot be felt. And then it is suppressed. And suppressed emotions are never a healthy idea. When you suppress and depress emotions they can eat away at you. If you express and safely acknowledge them then that energy of the emotion can be in motion and move through you. Accepting that grief was OK. That I could be so grateful AND also experience heartbreaking grief for the person I lost on that day of diagnosis was a major breakthrough in my healing journey. That it was ok to miss the person who was not full of thoughts of cancer and learning the language of cancer. For the innocence of the me before this came into my life and turned it upside down.

I’d known about breast cancer my whole life, but as an outsider watching my Mum go through her treatment and surgeries. Now I was in it and wading through it all knowing I cannot go back to who I was before breast cancer. Only through.

Grief and gratitude after a breast cancer diagnosis

I mention AND in capital letters previously because a wonderful psychotherapist I know puts a lot of emphasis on this word that has really helped me with my grief.

“Gratitude is simply adding an ‘AND’ It’s overwhelming AND a privilege. It’s tiring AND incredible. It’s monotonous AND wild. Gratitude increases your peripheral vision. Instead of focussing on the hard, bad, sad, scary you ALSO see the good, privilege, wonder, joy.” -Anna Mathur

I could not write a blog about grief without talking about the AND of gratitude. For me, they form part of a whole. For instance, the grief of my body changes that breast cancer has thrust upon me, alongside the immense gratitude I hold for this vessel of mine that allows me to live. Thanks to the compassion focused therapy I had during treatment I am able to allow room for grief with compassion. And to know that they can mutually coexist.

“When gratitude and grief dance, we can be whole and unsuppressed humans, walking the full range of human experience.” -Rachel Mary Perry

Writing letters after a breast cancer diagnosis

I am SO grateful for my body every single day, but this does not mean I have not sat with deep grief and worked through it to process it. Writing letters is an incredible tool to work through grief and gain deep insights. I have written letters of loss to my boobs and to my ovaries before having them removed from my body and changing it forever. I have felt anger, sadness, and frustration at my body especially being a faulty BRCA1 carrier. I have cried many tears over sky high piles of clothes that have made their way to the charity shops because nothing fits. My reconstructed breasts are so different to my previous breasts, accompanied by surgical menopause, weight gain & aches and pains, I’ve felt a grief for the body I used to have. One that I didn’t need to take medication for every day due to a treatment side effect. One that didn’t feel sore every day from multiple surgeries and stiffness from lymph node removal. One that didn’t have a smiley face of scars. Grief for the body I had before cancer cells made a home in it.

Having compassion for grief

I have so much compassion for grief since my cancer diagnosis. I don’t put a time limit on grief. I don’t tell myself it could be worse. I know how lucky I am every day. But if I invalidate my grief by not giving it a voice it eats away inside of me negatively. Now, my compassionate voice is too loud to allow that ever again. I allow space for my feelings and give love to them. The full human experience. And I thank my body daily. Grief and gratitude for this body of mine. Coexisting side by side. The more grateful I feel, the grief subsides. I face the life I’ve been given, and I trust in the lessons.

Please know that your grief is valid. Your gratitude is understood. And being a messy human is complex. Make room for it all, allow grief to flow through you.

The tango of grief and gratitude after a breast cancer diagnosis

Breast Cancer takes a lot. You can take a lot back when you allow grief the space, acknowledge it and heal from it. It is all so complex and if you take anything from this blog I hope it is this… We never expect anyone to get over the loss of a loved one. Grief is processed and with time feels more manageable, but the person is always allowed to feel sad and miss their loved one for life. I see the grief after a diagnosis as no different. There can always be that space for sadness that cancer came into your life alongside the abundant gratitude that I have found came with my diagnosis. The two dance together and I am learning to tango with them both.

Written by Carly Moosah