Sitting with my husband on the sofa last night and deciding to watch Julia Bradbury’s ‘Breast cancer and me’ documentary felt like a calculated risk. It’s almost four years to the day since I was diagnosed and honestly, sometimes I just don’t want to go back there. I know that’s my defence mechanism at play. Protect. Protect. Protect.

But sometimes, there’s a little chink in my armour and with Andy’s nod of the head we started watching. 

It was emotional. I admire Julia’s honesty in opening up to the camera at such a vulnerable time in her life. There were beautiful, poignant moments like the conversations with her parents and children. I admired the way she approached telling her young children, balancing her natural instinct to protect them with honest conversations that didn’t hide what was happening. It’s a balancing act I aimed for with my own children, but I’m not sure I succeeded.

She was so open about her surgery, the markings on her body ahead of her mastectomy, the conversations with her medical team and her sister’s tears while waiting for her outside the consulting room. Seeing her children after surgery. Brave in so many ways.

I have a habit of brushing off my cancer. It’s in the past and I’m ok now, aren’t I? Survivor’s guilt I guess. But watching the documentary reminded me how dark those nine months of treatment really were and how complex and long the recovery period can be.

Recovery. I’m not sure I know what that actually means. All I know is that it’s every bit as hard as the nine months of chemo, surgery and radiotherapy. My body is pretty good at healing, the head and heart less so.

We paused the documentary a couple of times, once because I was struck at how open Julia was about being frightened. That wasn’t a word or emotion I could ever admit to at the time, even though my words and actions were showing that I was indeed, frightened. That was a moment for me and one that I finally felt able to admit out loud, something I wouldn’t have done had I not been watching the documentary. 

I think watching with Andy also gave us a route into talking about a period we are comfortable acknowledging but often don’t take the time to talk about in any great depth. Day to day life tends to get in the way. So it gave us the chance to reflect and think yes, that resonates. Or no, that wasn’t our experience at all.

On any other Thursday I might have switched over, not feeling safe or strong enough to go there, to confront those emotions, but I’m glad I did.