In honor of International Women’s Day, today we are releasing a brand-new article and celebrating all that women do each and every day, and especially those women who are navigating a breast cancer journey, in addition to their life journey.

Before we go into our topic, I wanted to take a moment and express my gratitude for all of our readers that have reached out in the last several weeks, as I took a bit of a pause from our regular writing and publications on How to Breast Cancer at thebreastcancerguide.com.

In part, it is also what inspired the topic for this new article — the gift of grace.

There are tremendous healing benefits that come from not just extending grace to others, but importantly, in giving grace to ourselves. For those navigating a cancer journey, it is especially important to understand what this means and how you can incorporate this into your daily routines….without guilt.

As a verb, grace is often defined as, to honor or credit (someone or something) by one's presence. There are, of course, a number of other definitions of grace, but for our topic today, I am choosing the notion of honoring ourselves, by being present for ourselves and our needs.

When you are navigating a breast cancer journey, honoring yourself and allowing yourself moments to rest, recover, reflect, and revive are some of the most important emotions and actions you can do.  For many, it is not an automatic thought-process to give ourselves the gift of grace, but please know it can be learned…and actually must.

At the end of last year, I decided to take a pause and really think through how I needed to direct my time, my energy, and my work. In part, the forcing function behind my decision, was the fact that I was steering a few critical family matters, all the while continuing to manage my nearly four continuous years on chemotherapy treatments. And, after a very busy, and fulfilling 2022, I still found myself feeling quite overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted. I also started to experience panic attacks, seemingly out of nowhere. So much so, that my creativity, writing and thought processes were feeling very clouded.

Those of you who know me well, would have likely predicted that I would just plow through all of that and keep going, and I too would have predicted that for myself.

And yet…I did the opposite.

For the first time in my life, I decided to give myself permission to not do everything and instead to do that which I could truly handle, without losing myself.

There has been a lot written over the years about the notion of “doing nothing” and certainly “sabbaticals”, “gap-years”, and all of that has been around forever. But that is not what we’re talking about.

This is about truly acting on the notion of recognizing when to say, “I am not able to do that” or “I can only do these few things” or “I need to take a pause, for my own wellness and endurance”.

A significant component of a successful cancer journey is endurance. People talk a lot about being a warrior and courage, and all of that...and while that helps, for me, it’s far more about endurance. At nearly every turn of the journey, you are encountering a new challenge, be it psychological or physical, or both. And most people, have no idea what you are going through – even those closest to you. Being able to endure through it, is all on you. And that is a fact.

For many, especially women, the gift of grace for oneself seems like a luxury.

It is not.

It often starts with letting others around you know what you are going to do and not do and not having any guilt about the gift you have decided to give yourself.

And so as we take a moment today to celebrate all women, we also shout-out that the celebration is not just about cheering for the major accomplishments. While achievements are certainly important, equally important is celebrating yourself, for giving yourself the honor, credit, kindness, and presence to yourself…and forgiving yourself for any guilt in so doing.

I did just that, and through that gift of grace to myself, I am once again able do what I love the most, write…as always, with the intention to help as many people as possible.

So here’s what I would ask you…when was the last time:

1. You said “I am not able to do that”…and you stopped there.

2. You said to yourself “I am going to truly focus on myself” (even if just for an hour, a day, a month or more)…and you actually did it.

3. You allowed yourself to not feel guilty about focusing on yourself…and instead, you felt pride…grace.

Go do just that...start now...celebrate yourself, with the gift of grace.

With love,
Amelia O.