'They tell you to "beat" cancer. They don't prepare you for what happens if you do.'

You don't have to survive cancer to understand this story — you just have to be a woman who's ever had to start over.

There's a hallway I've been living in. Not a literal one — though I've stood in plenty, staring down closed doors and dust motes — but a kind of liminal corridor between lives. Between the me who held it all together and the one who isn't sure who she's meant to be now.

Nobody really prepares you for the after.

The after of breast cancer. The after of losing your mother. The after of raising children who no longer need you in the same way. The after of a career that once defined you. The after of being let go, not just from a job, but from a version of yourself that once made sense.

Post bilateral mastectomy 2020.

They tell you to fight. And I did. I fought through a breast cancer diagnosis, a double mastectomy, radiation, chemotherapy, infections, reconstructive surgeries, and the kind of grief that doesn't come with flowers or casseroles. I fought while still showing up for my daughters. I fought through weight gain, weight loss, old clothes that didn't fit, new ones that didn't feel like me. I fought through a pandemic, redundancy, and the soft, echoing question: Who am I now?

I'm still learning how to look at my own body without flinching. I used to know the curve of my collarbone and the feel of my favourite dress. Now there are scars I never asked for, bras I can't stand and don't need, and skin that doesn't always feel like mine. Some days, I get dressed five times before I can leave the house. Other days, I stay in pyjamas and call it healing.

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Here's the part they don't warn you about: when the fight ends, the feelings begin.

You don't bounce back. You unravel — slowly, quietly, and then all at once.

I turned 50 in the middle of all this. Not with a loud party or a triumphant reinvention, but with a quiet ache. I kept waiting for the big life epiphany, the "new chapter" moment. Instead, I got silence. I got job rejection emails. I got well-meaning messages that began with "You're so strong" and ended with nothing.

And I'll be honest, it would've been easy to fall into the story society writes for women like me. The one where we've "aged out". Where we're expected to fade quietly into the background — invisible, unnecessary, done.

But I'm not done.

In that silence, I started to hear her. My mother. The one who didn't make it to 50. She died just as I was starting to become who I am now. She missed the bit where I learned to mother my own children. Where I built a career. Where I survived cancer. Sometimes I imagine she stayed with me anyway — hiding in the soft folds of my memory, or the way I braid my daughter's hair without thinking.

Early photo of me with mum, my brother Ben and sister Heidi 1978.

There's a grief that lingers when you make it and someone else didn't. A kind of survivor's guilt that doesn't come from a single moment, but from a lifetime of unspoken inheritances. I was always waiting to be diagnosed, like it was written into my DNA. And then, one day, I was.

But this isn't a cancer story. Not really. It's a story about what happens next. About the emptiness that follows the battle, and how it slowly fills with questions you didn't have time to ask before.

Who am I if I'm not the fighter anymore?

Who am I if I'm not the mother at the centre of it all?

Who am I in a world obsessed with reinvention, when what I really need is restoration?

We don't talk enough about this hallway — the in-between place. We glorify the comeback, the pivot, the "new you". But what about the days when you're just existing? When getting out of bed is the bravest thing you'll do? When your body aches not from illness, but from trying to hold a new identity you didn't choose?

Hester, myself and Eva, celebrating Hester's 18th in 2021.

I'm learning — slowly — that this hallway is sacred.

It's the pause between inhale and exhale. It's the place where you lay down the armour and realise you're still worthy of love without the performance. It's where you stop being a role and start being a person again.

Some days, I sit on the metaphorical floor of that hallway, knees to chest, tears quietly slipping down my face. Other days, I put on a brave face and walk toward the next door like I own the place. Most days are somewhere in between.

I've stopped trying to rebuild my old life. I'm stitching a new one from fragments — a yoga class, a song I forgot I loved, the way my daughters laugh at my worst jokes. I don't know where this hallway leads. But I'm learning to trust my feet.

This isn't a story with a neat bow. It's a story for every woman who's found herself in a place she didn't recognise. For the mothers who became daughters again. For the leaders who lost their titles. For the survivors who lived — and then had to learn how to live again.

If that's you, I see you. I'm walking this hallway too. And even if we haven't met, I'm holding the door open just a crack. Just enough for the light to get in.

Jet Swain is a writer, mother, breast cancer survivor and founder of The Affection Economy. She speaks on values-led leadership, matriarchal legacy, and finding your voice after the fight. Her memoir-in-progress, She Who Holds the Map, explores the quiet power of the women who came before her.

Feature Image: Supplied.

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