The Gift of An Unwanted Legacy
By Anyika McMillan-Herod
I had no choice in losing my breast. My 20-year-old child, L, may have no choice in losing theirs. For me, it had to be done to rid cancer from my body. For L, it may be done to prevent cancer from invading theirs. A prophylactic mastectomy will allow L to not only save their life and body, but also to love their body. To finally feel whole and comfortable in their skin. To become closer to the version of themselves drawn as a third grader – the version envisioned in the mirror. Where L was happy and “flat.”
Breast cancer stretches across three, possibly four generations within my family tree. It is found on both sides – maternal and paternal. It took my grandmother’s life four years ago, at 100. It very likely took her mother’s life in 1921, just a few weeks after giving birth to her and her twin sister. It took an aunt’s life two years ago. It has reared its alarming head twice for another aunt. It surfaced at an early Stage 1 for my mother recently and was quickly dealt with through a lumpectomy and radiation. It interrupted my own life 18 years ago at the age of 36, when my children were two and five years old. In that stage of young parenting - vacillating between euphoria and exhaustion – I was unexpectedly thrust into Stage 3 breast cancer and a long, rewarding, frightening and beautifully transformative fight for my life and healing.
Despite my family history and present, I don’t carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 breast cancer gene, yet I do carry an unwanted legacy shaped by cancer. This legacy is one steeped in contradictions – living and dying; fear and acceptance; shame and pride; grief and gratitude; painful lessons and palatable blessings. Ours, has been a legacy of loss that somehow managed to build a bridge to love.
Cancer was a surprising gift to me. She taught me well and with a heavy, sure hand. I have healed in so many ways and the lens of which I now see the world is one centered on sincere, robust GRATITUDE. Cancer shifted my perspective on life. My relationship with the world around me widened and deepened. My capacity to create, to love, to see, to grow and learn has become an infinite well.
This disease has also heightened my sense of justice and humanity.
I come from freedom fighting women, from prayer warrior women, from community building women, from life affirming women. As I faced diagnosis and extensive treatment, I often thought about the thousands of women my age at the time whose cancer would not be revealed until it was too late because they were too young to have had the recommended first mammogram at the age of 40. I met women who were uninsured and lacked access to quality and regular treatments, therapies, wellness exams, and medicines. I thought about the women who looked like me and struggled with “trusting” their doctors and the methods to treat the cancer, given the well documented and historic abuse, neglect, and bigotry experienced by our ancestors throughout the development of the medical field in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
And then there is grief, the undeniable companion to breast cancer. We grieve the loss of a breast or breasts that help define our feminine selves. We rage; we fret over the maiming that must take place from lumpectomies and mastectomies -- the scars, disfigurement, unevenness, or absence left behind. We are forced to face our relationship with our breasts. These bodies, temporary vessels wrapped in flesh and bone. As fragile as they are fortified.
Anxiety and melancholia visit me on occasion. Sometimes it’s about me. Sometimes it’s about missing my granny whose life I wish extended another 100 years, or the shock of my mother facing cancer as she approaches 80. But more often than not, it’s the gnawing possibility that the beautiful human I birthed…my child, Layla Grace Elouise aka “L” will inherit this unwanted legacy of cancer that has chosen to reside in the bodies of so many of her matriarchs.
For L, breast cancer cannot be stopped or stifled with a binder, like the one they began wearing in high school, but a merciful knife (scapel).