Is Cancer a Hero’s Journey?

I love stories that tell a hero’s journey — Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Hunger Games, Don Quixote. Here is the underdog facing insurmountable odds. If they don’t do something, who will? That is the essential question that starts many of my favorite books and movies.

This theme is so important to our understanding of the world that recounting your own life within the context of a hero’s journey has actually been shown, through nothing less than a randomized interventional study, to improve mental health and make you feel empowered.

The Pressure to Stay Positive

The idea that what we tell ourselves affects cancer survival is something I have heard from others, mostly those without cancer, through 11 years of living with metastatic breast cancer. First, it was how believing my treatment would work would increase the likelihood of it actually working. I heard that over the phone while I cried, just hours after hearing the diagnosis that featured the word “terminal.” But that specific admonition from a close friend quickly morphed into the ever-present pressure to “be positive.” The phrase people use when they really, really don’t know what they’re talking about.

As I listened to a radio show about the hero’s journey research, I thought about what it actually means to be a hero. After all, “hero” is implied in so much of the talk about cancer. We use words like fighting, battling, overcoming. On top of that, a lot of people call having cancer a “journey,” a term that I rarely and only reluctantly use.

No wonder this idea got under my skin.

Do the characters in my favorite hero stories always survive? Succeed? Live happily ever after? Think of themselves as a hero? No, no, no, no.

Do they think of themselves as on a journey? No.

Moving Forward, Even When It’s Difficult

Like me, the characters have an objective and they simply keep moving, sometimes forward, sometimes backward, sometimes sideways. They make mistakes, they aren’t positive, they struggle and have regrets. My purpose was clear: To stay alive long enough to see my kids reach adulthood. That was not a given, as my youngest at the time was only 12 years old. The first steps were also clear: Do everything my doctor said and anything else that science said might help.

Within a day of my diagnosis, I suppose you could say I was already living my own Hero’s Journey.

Of course, I didn’t think about it like that. I still don’t.

Finding Meaning in My Own Story

But it is true that the stories we tell about ourselves — and to ourselves — have meaning and effect. Being resilient and having hope is just what my story looks like to the outside world. When I look back over the years, I see the obstacles along the way and understand that while I know I pivoted, or caved, or argued in each moment, even those closest to me think of it as overcoming. As being, in a sense, heroic.

Maybe there is something to thinking this way about our lives. To see that even if we don’t reach that ultimate objective, we show ourselves to be living with purpose. For me, that’s love. What is it for you?

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