You are never alone

Welcome to The Thing About Breast Cancer. I’m Maggie Coughlin and I became a survivor on February 28, 2022. I was lucky to have lots of people rooting for me throughout this experience, but I quickly realized how important the survivor community can be.There’s just nothing like people who know the score and are willing to turn off the filter and be open about all the realities – good, bad, scary, gross, and funny. That’s what this blog is about.

Since this is our first post, let’s do some housekeeping. My goal is to post every Tuesday, and to post both audio and text. You’ll be getting my real voice and my real life with minimal editing. Since allergies are currently kicking my booty, today you get un-toned allergy voice. Since my partner and I have two dogs – my wild child boxer/bully/pittie mix and his elderly puggle – you may get barks or zoomies or pacing in the background. This is an intentional choice to keep the audio as real as the content.

Speaking of content, subscribing is free, and I’d love for you to join me whenever you can. If you enjoy what you read or hear, and have the ability to drop some coins in the tip jar, you can find my Ko-Fi link on the page (as well as the link to my Etsy shop, where I offer tees and more for survivors, supporters, and awareness). If not, no worries! You are welcome here regardless.

So, let’s get to it.

The thing about breast cancer is… you are not alone.

This is one of those statements that’s both comforting and horrifying. I mean nobody wants to feel utterly alone in the middle of something terrifying. There are whole entire books and movies and plays and shows about this very thing. Alone and scared is a sucky place to be. So it’s vitally important to know that, while you may feel alone sometimes, you really aren’t. You just have to reach out and find your people.

For me that was relatively easy: I’m the fifth woman in my family to experience breast cancer and I knew a host of other survivors before I became one. More importantly, most of my people talked pretty openly about it – or so I thought. After I announced my diagnosis on socials, folks came out of the woodwork: people who’d gone through it so long ago they never thought to mention it, people who preferred to fight in private, people I knew only casually. Friends immediately connected me with other survivors in various stages of survivorship and, shortly after my mastectomy, my breast surgeon’s office referred me to a local nonprofit for survivors. In short, I knew a lot of people – and a lot more than I knew I knew. Probably, you do too (and if you don’t, the good news is, there are online survivor groups galore).

One of the biggest surprises of my entire cancer journey came early: not everyone talks about their journey, even to their own families. Once I started talking to survivors outside my immediate circle, I was mind-blown by how many people didn’t find out about a family history until after they were diagnosed. In my family, everyone who hasn’t yet had breast cancer – and everyone who has – has a list of who had it, when they had it, what kind, what the numbers were, and what treatments they pursued. We’re a little nerdy. We like data. 

Turns out, most people don’t do that. In some families, it’s a taboo topic. In some circles, it carries huge stigma. Some people feel almost as though talking about it will call it into being. Other people literally believe that will happen. For some survivors, living through it was enough and the last thing they want to do is talk about it too – especially to people who haven’t been through it and can’t understand. There’s a lot of trauma and fear and uncertainty in breast cancer and not everyone wants to peel that back open and poke at it. 

I’m not here to chastise those people or tell anyone how to live, but I do worry about how much of this experience is lived in secret and in silence – and how much stigma still attaches to open conversations about feelings and physical realities. Unpleasant things grow best in the dark and I have to wonder how much less alone people would feel, how much less terrified they’d be, if we talked about it more.

I do realize that sounds counter-intuitive. Literally no one on the planer is unaware that breast cancer exists (and that it’s very pink). But I don’t think people quite grasp just how common it is. I didn’t, not even with all my advance knowledge. So let’s talk numbers a minute. In 2020, 2.3 million people classified by the Word Health Organization as women were diagnosed with breast cancer. That’s worldwide. By the end of the year, there were 7.8 million living women who had received their diagnoses in the preceding 5 years. Should have been 8.5 million, but we lost almost 700,000 fighters that year. And that doesn’t even count the males diagnosed. They are exponentially less likely to get breast cancer, but far more likely to die from it. Bottom line: breast cancer is now the most prevalent cancer in the world (and yet is somehow not a declared epidemic).

Okay now for some math. 3.95 billion people designated by the statistics-keepers as women. 7.8 million of them breast cancer survivors. That’s 20%. One in five worldwide. In the US, the number is currently one in eight. For context, I’m writing this in a semi-busy cafe in Kathleen, Georgia (shoutout to Woodlands Coffee Roasters - great people, great coffee, and a great place to write – and no they did not pay me to promote them; I just like them). Anyway, from where I’m sitting, I can see 16 adults who present as women, myself included. So, statistically, there are probably at least two of us in here. 

In this case, I know there are because the other one is wearing a hot pink headscarf, drawn-on eyebrows, and pink ribbon earrings. I happen to be wearing gray sweats emblazoned with “fighter” in hot pink and a matching ribbon. She saw me. I saw her. We saw each other. And smiled. And nodded. She’s here with friends and their babies. I’m here with my computer, talking to you. We are surrounded by people and connected to each other.

Maybe there are other survivors here, too. Maybe there’s a caregiver. Maybe someone will be diagnosed tomorrow or next month or next year. Maybe they saw the smile and nod. Maybe they’ll remember and the memory will remind them that others are fighting – and have fought – and will fight, just as they are about to do. Just, as perhaps you are doing – or have done.

Maybe you’ll go to your own cafe tomorrow and see another survivor. Maybe you’ll know and maybe you won’t. But chances are, the survivors will be there – at the grocery, at the salon, at your job, at your place of worship if you have one. They’ll be at the dentist and the gas station and the pediatrician and the park. The concert and the post office and the eye doctor and your favorite restaurant and that place you get your oil changed? All full of survivors. We don’t always wear pink or ribbons or obvious signs, but we are always there. And somewhere in our hearts we’re thinking of you without ever knowing you.

You are never alone.

We are never alone.

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