On a Friday afternoon, just days after being diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer at 38 years old, I sat across from my oncologist and learned that if I wanted to freeze my eggs, I needed to decide by Monday.
Monday.
Not next month.
Not next week.
Three days.
On Friday I was trying to comprehend that I had cancer. By Monday I was being asked to decide what to do about children I didn’t even have yet.
It felt impossible. I hadn’t processed the diagnosis. I hadn’t cried enough. I hadn’t figured out what treatment would look like. I was still trying to understand how my life had changed overnight.
I remember feeling stunned. Not because I hadn’t thought about motherhood. I had. I always assumed I would have children one day.
What stunned me was being asked to make one of the biggest decisions of my life while still trying to comprehend the fact that I had cancer.
Everything was happening at once.
Scans.
Appointments.
Phone calls.
Treatment plans.
Fear.
And suddenly, there was another question standing in front of me: Do you want to freeze your eggs?
For many women, the answer is obvious. For me, it wasn’t. My cancer was estrogen receptor-positive. ER+. Every instinct in me wanted to preserve every possible future.
The very hormones that would be injected into my body to stimulate egg production were the same hormones I understood could potentially feed my cancer.
I remember sitting with that reality and feeling terrified. I knew the risks were considered manageable. I understood there were protocols in place.
But emotionally, all I could think was: What if chasing the future I want is the thing that leads me off a cliff to my death?
Those thoughts may not have been rational. But cancer isn’t rational. Fear isn’t rational. And neither is being asked to make life-altering decisions in a matter of days.
The reality that the final weeks before chemotherapy would be spent largely focused on egg retrieval rather than preparing my body for the fight ahead. I wanted to enter chemotherapy as strong as possible. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. I wanted every ounce of energy focused on surviving.
I remember waiting for my MRI, sitting with my mom and talking through it all. She was and is my rock. She held me like I had never been held in this moment. Giving me space to think, and to talk it out with myself, not leading me or telling me what to do.
Motherhood mattered to me. It still does. But somewhere in those conversations, a deeper truth surfaced. I looked at my mom and said something I didn’t know I believed until I heard myself say it.
“I will be a mother no matter what that looks like.”
Maybe I would carry a child.
Maybe I wouldn’t.
Maybe I would adopt.
Maybe I would foster.
Maybe I would become a stepmother.
Maybe my Godchildren are my children in the ways that matter most.
Maybe motherhood would find me through a path I couldn’t yet imagine. What I realized was that motherhood and pregnancy were not the same thing. Until that moment, I had unconsciously treated them as interchangeable. But they weren’t. One was a path. The other was a calling.
I didn’t know whether I would experience pregnancy. But I knew my capacity to love, nurture, guide, and mother another human being could never be taken from me. And while I didn’t know what my future would hold, I knew I didn’t want fear to make this decision for me.
In the end, I chose not to freeze my eggs. It wasn’t an easy decision. And it wasn’t the right decision for everyone. It was simply the right decision for me.
Cancer takes so much from us. Control. Certainty. Time. The illusion that life unfolds according to plan.
What it gave me in that moment was an unexpected lesson. Sometimes life asks us to release the picture we had in our minds so that something else can emerge. Not better. Not worse. Just different.
Today, I still don’t know exactly what motherhood will look like in my life.
But I no longer believe there is only one path to becoming the person we are meant to be. And perhaps that was the real decision I made that weekend. Not choosing against motherhood. Choosing to remain open to however it may find me.
