The Part of Breast Cancer Recovery Nobody Prepares You For
- 5 hours ago
- 8 min read
Veronika Bubenickova is the founder of Lotus Journey, a breast cancer survivor, author, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner, and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis at 39, she now helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by supporting the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of healing.
Finishing breast cancer treatment is supposed to be one of the happiest moments of the journey. For months, sometimes years, so much of life has revolved around cancer, hospital appointments, blood tests, scans, chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy, medication and the anticipation of the next stage. Reaching the end can therefore feel like a finish line you have been desperately trying to cross.
From the outside, there is an understandable expectation that this is when life begins returning to normal. Friends and family are relieved. The appointments become less frequent. The congratulations arrive. You may even hear the words you have been longing for, "It's over now."
But what if, internally, it doesn't feel over at all?
This is one of the aspects of breast cancer recovery I believe we need to talk about much more openly. Completing active treatment is an enormous milestone and something worth celebrating, but the end of treatment is not necessarily the end of healing. For some women, it is only once the intensity of treatment begins to subside that there is finally enough emotional space to process what has actually happened.
When survival mode switches off
During treatment, there is often something concrete to focus on. You know the next appointment, the next procedure or the next cycle. There is a structure around you and a medical team actively working towards a shared goal. You may be frightened and exhausted, but there is also a task in front of you, get through treatment.
Then that structure begins to disappear.
Appointments become less frequent, and the people around you understandably start looking towards the future. Yet your nervous system may not immediately receive the message that the danger has passed. An ache, an unusual sensation or an upcoming scan can suddenly bring the fear back. The body may be recovering while the mind is still learning how to feel safe again.
This is why I believe we need to stop thinking about recovery as a switch that is turned on the day treatment finishes. Recovery is a process, and different parts of us recover at different speeds.
The medical treatment may be complete while physical side effects remain. Hair may be growing back while confidence has not. A scar may have healed while the emotions connected to it are still raw. Life may look increasingly "normal" from the outside while internally you are still trying to understand what normal even means anymore.
The pressure to get back to normal
"Getting back to normal" is a phrase we hear frequently after cancer, and I have come to question whether it is always a helpful goal.
What exactly are we supposed to return to?
Breast cancer can fundamentally alter how we see our bodies, relationships, priorities, careers and futures. Going through a life-threatening illness can expose things that we previously tolerated, ignored or simply did not have time to question. For some women, trying to recreate their old life can therefore feel strangely uncomfortable because the person attempting to return to it has changed.
My own journey ultimately transformed the direction of my life. I had spent years in a successful corporate career, but breast cancer became part of a much deeper reassessment of what mattered to me and how I wanted to live. I eventually moved towards the work I do today, supporting other women navigating breast cancer and recovery.
That does not mean I believe everyone needs to change career, leave a relationship, move country or reinvent herself after cancer. Transformation does not need to be dramatic. Sometimes it is quieter, saying no without guilt, resting when your body asks you to, changing how you nourish yourself, making time for people you love, or finally acknowledging that the life you were living before cancer no longer feels quite right.
Perhaps the question after treatment is therefore not, "How do I get my old life back?" but, "What do I want my life to look like now?"
Your body has survived, but your relationship with it may have changed
Breast cancer treatment can also fundamentally change the relationship a woman has with her body. Surgery may alter her breasts. Chemotherapy can affect hair, weight, energy and physical strength. Hormonal treatments may bring additional changes, and treatment can affect sexuality, confidence and how comfortable a woman feels being seen.
The language of survivorship sometimes makes it difficult to acknowledge this grief. We may feel that because treatment worked, we should simply be grateful. Of course, gratitude can coexist with enormous relief. But gratitude and grief are not opposites.
You can be profoundly grateful to be alive and still grieve the body you had before.
You can appreciate everything your body survived and still struggle to recognise it.
You can celebrate the end of treatment and simultaneously feel frightened about what comes next.
Allowing both truths to exist is part of healing.
For me, recovery has increasingly become less about trying to return to an earlier version of myself and more about developing a different relationship with my body, one based on care, respect and partnership rather than judgement.
When everyone else moves on
There can also be an unexpected loneliness in survivorship.
During treatment, people check in. They ask how chemotherapy went, offer practical help and remember important appointments. Cancer is visible, and there is a clear reason to rally around you.
As time passes, the world understandably moves forward. People want to see you well, and sometimes their desire for everything to be okay can unintentionally make it harder to say that you are still struggling.
You may look well. You may have returned to work. Your hair may have grown back. You may be travelling, exercising and socialising again. None of this necessarily tells us what is happening internally.
This is why support after breast cancer needs to extend beyond medical surveillance. Women may need space to talk about identity, confidence, relationships, sexuality, purpose, body image, lifestyle changes, fear of recurrence and the complicated experience of rebuilding a life after something has fundamentally shaken their sense of safety.
These conversations should not be treated as an optional extra to recovery. They are part of what it means to support a whole person.
Recovery is not a competition
Another trap in survivorship is believing that there is a correct timeline for recovery. There isn't.
One woman may want to return to work quickly because it gives her purpose and normality. Another may discover that she needs more time. Someone may feel physically strong but emotionally vulnerable, while someone else may feel psychologically ready to move forward but frustrated by ongoing fatigue or treatment-related changes.
Comparing ourselves with other survivors can create another expectation to live up to when what we actually need is permission to recover in our own way.
There is also no requirement to turn cancer into something positive. I have personally found profound meaning and transformation through my experience, and it ultimately led me towards work and a life that feel deeply purposeful. But that is my experience. I would never tell another woman that she should be grateful for cancer or that illness happened in order to teach her something.
Meaning cannot be prescribed.
It can only be discovered, if and when it feels authentic to the person living the experience.
Healing can mean creating something new
Perhaps one of the most liberating things we can tell women after breast cancer is that recovery does not have to mean becoming who they were before.
There may be parts of that woman they desperately want back, her confidence, energy, spontaneity, sexuality or sense of safety. Those desires deserve compassion. But there may also be parts of the old life that no longer belong in the next chapter.
This is where recovery can gradually become something more than restoration. It can become reconnection.
Reconnecting with your body and learning what it needs now. Reconnecting with relationships that feel safe and nourishing. Reconnecting with pleasure, femininity, movement and intimacy at your own pace. Reconnecting with dreams that cancer temporarily placed on hold. Perhaps, most importantly, reconnecting with yourself outside the identity of "cancer patient" or "cancer survivor".
Cancer can occupy so much space that it becomes difficult to remember who you are without it.
Yet you are still a woman with desires, contradictions, talents, relationships, ambitions, humour, sexuality, dreams and a future. Cancer is something that happened within your life. It does not have to become the definition of your life.
The finish line is not where we think it is
I no longer see the final treatment as the finish line.
It is an important milestone, but healing continues afterwards in quieter and often less visible ways. It happens when you begin trusting your body again. When an upcoming appointment no longer consumes the entire week before it. When you make a decision based on what you want rather than what fear tells you to do. When you catch yourself planning months or years ahead. When you realise that cancer has not occupied your thoughts for an entire day.
Sometimes healing happens when you finally accept that you do not need to become the woman you were before cancer.
You are allowed to meet the woman you are now.
She may carry scars. She may understand uncertainty differently. She may have stronger boundaries and different priorities. She may still have moments of fear. But she may also know herself more deeply than she ever did before.
The end of treatment deserves celebration. But so does everything that comes afterwards, the rebuilding, the rediscovery, the small acts of courage and the gradual return to living rather than simply surviving.
Perhaps that is the part of recovery we need to talk about more.
Treatment can end on a date in a medical record.
Healing rarely does.
Your next chapter doesn't have to be navigated alone
If treatment has ended but you don't feel "finished", there is nothing unusual about needing support with what comes next. Rebuilding confidence, identity and a sense of direction after breast cancer can take time, and you don't have to rush yourself back into the person you were before.
If you are navigating life during or beyond breast cancer and would like practical and emotional support, I created the free Breast Cancer Support & Healing Series to help you explore different aspects of recovery and whole-person wellbeing.
Access the free series here or learn more about Veronika’s breast cancer coaching and support programmes here.
To learn more about Veronika, her story, speaking and media work, visit here.
Read more from Veronika Bubenickova
Veronika Bubenickova, Transformational Breast Cancer Coach and Therapist
Veronika Bubenickova is a breast cancer survivor, author, speaker, Lifestyle Oncology Practitioner, and Transformational Breast Cancer Coach. Following her own diagnosis in 2023, she embarked on a profound healing journey that transformed every aspect of her life. Today, she helps women navigate breast cancer and recovery by addressing the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of healing. She is the founder of Lotus Journey and author of Diary of a Soul Reborn, with a mission to help women thrive beyond breast cancer, not just survive it.
