How taking control of your identity can change your life

Me on my 40th birthday

When I turned 40, I remember feeling so light and free. The anxieties that plague your 20s, and the delirious exhaustion of having babies in your 30s, were all behind me. Of course, I had joyful times in those years too but, at 40, I felt I could finally relax into life, and enjoy the career and relationships I had spent the past 20 years constructing. Yep, I was feeling preeeetty smug about things.

Five months later, to the day, I was silently crying in a doctor’s office as he explained that I had breast cancer. I’ve spent the 17 months since then (not that I’m counting) desperate to get back to the old me.

Cancer decimated my identity, from losing my hair and eyebrows during chemo, to feeling too weak to run alongside my son’s bike, to a post-mastectomy body that is a daily reminder of what I’ve been through. It’s perhaps unsurprising that I gaze longingly at pre-2021 pictur…