THREAD: I wanted to talk/tweet about the use of “fighting” imagery when we talk about cancer, and using the term “beat” to indicate success. It’s a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about because my upcoming book employs it, right in the title: “Beat Breast Cancer Like A Boss.”

Also, I heard an excellent @BBCRadio4 piece that explores this topic in such a nuanced, thoughtful way. If this is something you’re interested in, I highly recommend you listen. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001g8w

The interviewer spoke to several people who said they found such militaristic metaphors unhelpful, for various reasons, including that fighting suggests active participation, when in fact when it comes to cancer, you’re really a passive conduit.

And it’s really the treatment – the drugs, the radiation, the surgery – that’s doing the fighting. (This piece also delved into the historical origins of this bellicose language, and it’s really fascinating.)

There’s also the fact that it sets up a really terrible binary, suggesting that if you get through cancer and remain cancer-free for the rest of your life, you’ve “won,” and that if you don’t, you’ve “lost.” And that is unfair and ridiculous.

What it means is that the treatments in place have failed that person. It has nothing to do with how hard a person fought. (Personally – and I advocate for this in the intro of my book – I believe we should redefine what it means to “beat” cancer.

It doesn’t mean getting rid of it. It means continuing to defiantly live life, and pursue the things that make you happy, even if that looks different after a cancer diagnosis.

It means finding joy in the people you care about, even if relationships sometimes change following a cancer diagnosis. It means – as the amazing @tginceo put it – “making cancer my footnote, not my story.”)