I survived 2025 and all I got was this lousy cancer.

Hi. With a new year, I am finally ready to be back here—writing, posting, interacting. Before I dive back into answering Ask Erin questions, I need to acknowledge the chaos and pain and sometimes beauty of 2025. And I may ramble. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The beginning of 2025 was challenging. Our government set things on fire with utter cruelty. The reality of where we were headed sent me into one of the worst mental health periods of my life. I could not write. My work felt meaningless. I felt hopeless. And I know I am not alone in that feeling.

Things turned around for me when I began focusing on ways to continue advocacy on a local level. I ran for and won a seat on a community education council here in NYC. I began connecting with city council members, community boards, and various city government agencies to find ways I could be of service—advocating for policy changes and strengthening existing city and state policies to protect our rights. I found an organization that needs something my skill set is built for. Writing took a back seat. I learned of more things happening that set my brain on fire, that enrage me, that break my heart. But doing something felt like the only way out.

Taking action and focusing on where and how I could best help lifted me out of the dark place.

I felt productive again, purposeful. This is not a surprise—I have long known that one of the quickest ways out of depression or anxiety for me is to hop into service. I needed to not be locked in my brain. I needed to step outside of myself and focus on where I could make a difference, letting go of the many, many things I have no control over.

I stepped back from social media, posting infrequently and engaging only in a limited way. I was trying to remain present, despite my hungry anxiety tapping me on the shoulder every day. People I knew and cared about died. People I didn’t know but admired died. Democracy continued to swing in uncertainty.

Then, toward the end of summer, another thing happened.

I will try to make this as concise as possible…. During a routine mammogram that required a follow-up ultrasound (not alarming as this happens frequently; shout out to my fellow dense-tissue-breasted folks!), they found a lump in my left breast. Additionally, my axillary lymph nodes (located in the armpits) on both sides were enlarged and showed some “changes.”

They biopsied my left breast and left axillary lymph node. Thankfully, the lump was benign, and there was no carcinoma in the lymph node. The last thing they did was a flow cytometry test on the lymphatic tissue sample (to look for autoimmune issues, blood disorders, etc.). The radiologist who called with my biopsy results said, “I don’t expect they will find anything there. You’ll probably get those results in about a week. Have a great rest of your summer!”

A few weeks went by. Those looming test results lingered somewhere in the back of my mind, but as the summer was winding down, I looked ahead to a very busy fall. One evening around Labor Day, I was home alone—a RARITY. I was just about to get into the shower when my phone rang. I normally do not answer unknown numbers, but it was local, and I picked up.

It was my OB-GYN. My stomach dropped a little. A doctor calling me at 8:45 PM, out of the blue, didn’t bode well. After initial pleasantries, she said. “I’m calling because I had a call from the pathologist who performed the flow cytometry tests. The results were a bit unusual.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I wanted to speak with you before the results hit your patient portal tomorrow morning. The findings indicate that you have an indolent (slow-growing) non-Hodgkin B-cell lymphoma.”

I sat on the edge of the tub, my entire body tingling. My doctor said I needed to see an oncologist to confirm and verify the subtype. She gave me a couple of doctors’ names, and I can’t remember what else was said or how the conversation ended. As she spoke, one dumb thought circulated: Is non-Hodgkin the good one or the bad one?

Before I got in the shower, I googled it. While neither is necessarily worse, non-Hodgkin lymphoma is not the “good one.” I wanted to call my husband, but he was at a Mets game with both of my kids. I didn’t want to ruin his night. So, I called my mom and ruined her night (sorry, Mom!).

The next morning, I had an email alerting me to new test results in my patient portal. I opened them up, and the pathologist’s notes said the tests indicated the subtype was most likely CLL/SLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma—the same subtype of lymphoma, but the distinction is that CLL is primarily in bone marrow and SLL in lymph nodes).

Back to the internet I went—where good news and bad news co-exist on any given subject. The good news is that this subtype is very treatable, with a pretty good survival rate for folks under 55 (the average age of diagnosis is over 70). The bad news is that this is incurable and terminal. But more good news—because it is treatable and new targeted therapies are coming out all the time, I am more likely to die of something else first. 💃🏻

When I finally had my appointment with an oncologist (recommended by the friend of a friend who has an indolent B-cell NHL), she confirmed that it was SLL. They ran a slew of genetic tests, looking for markers that can indicate prognosis or how I might respond to certain immunotherapies. I had a PET-CT scan and other tests. I learned that I have likely had this for more than a decade (that is how slow it is), and that for now, I will be monitored with testing as they evaluate how quickly those cells are replicating.

It is uncomfortable telling people you have cancer.

I did this via text message (because I could lay it all out in writing) and by phone. I blurted it out when I ran into people on the street or at events, and they asked how my summer was. I felt a pit in my stomach when I had to tell people close to me because I was going to drop news on them that could cause sadness or fear or both.

I have a tendency to minimize things for others’ benefit, and I certainly did this with my cancer declarations: It’s very treatable. I’m weirdly calm. The survival rate is pretty good. Sorry to drop this heavy news. I really am okay.

While those sentiments are all true, they don’t tell the whole story of what I have been grappling with these past few months. That I am processing what this diagnosis means for my life. That I am enraged that vital research that could find a cure for different blood cancers, maybe even mine, has abruptly lost funding. That I am so grateful that I have health insurance and access to excellent care. That I swell with anger thinking about the women who are denied ultrasounds with their mammogram or may not get mammograms at all. That there are cancer cells in multiple lymph nodes—in my neck, groin, abdomen, and armpits—causing them to swell. That I will live with cancer circulating through my bloodstream until the day I die. That some nights I am terrified of dying and leaving my children motherless. That despite my bouts of suicidal ideation, I want to live.

I have hesitated in writing this at all. I am not looking for sympathy or a public way to process things. I am writing this because when people online or IRL ask how I’m doing, it feels disingenuous to answer, “Good! How are you?”

As we limped toward what for so many of us was a challenging/ heartbreaking/ terrifying year, I realized that my blood cancer diagnosis was fairly low on the list of worries. During a time period of seeing the safeguards of democracy being eradicated in this country, cancer was not the worst part of 2025.

Weirdly, with the diagnosis came a sense of relief and clarity.

Some of the mysterious “symptoms” I’ve been experiencing the past few years—chronic anemia, extreme fatigue, getting sick every couple of weeks, taking ten days to get over a cold that kept my kid down for two, swollen lymph nodes, and elevated lymphocyte counts—are classic symptoms for this type of blood cancer. I’d thought maybe this is long Covid, maybe this is perimenopause, maybe it’s just aging, maybe it’s all in my head. Now, I had some answers.

Cancer put things into perspective in a liberating way. I have always been the type of person to push through my responsibilities even when I feel physically awful. Case in point: I have had terrible pain in my left hand/thumb for over a year, and I need to see a hand doctor and haven’t done it yet, so I just deal with the pain. Now, I feel a responsibility to take care of my health—to prioritize things like sleep, to recognize what I can handle on my plate, to say no to things, and, most importantly, to set firm boundaries around when and with whom I share my energy.

I feel little obligation to share my energy and time with people who make me unhappy.

I see ways in which I put up with interactions to protect others’ feelings, be “polite,” not cause waves, etc. After the diagnosis, I quickly realized that whether I have 40 days or 40 years of life left, I don’t intend to spend that time placating people who will never change, who fling their toxic energy on those around them, who are unempathetic or unkind. Because I didn’t make it through childhood trauma, sexual abuse, rape, divorce, mental health struggles, losing a baby, and having multiple miscarriages, and living in America in 2025 to waste that precious time with people who spread misery. And I am at peace with disappointing those people.

Right around the time of my diagnosis, Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest memoir came out. Per the publisher’s summary:

In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.

What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening?

All the Way to the River is a landmark memoir that will resonate with anyone who has ever been captive to love—or to any other passion, substance, or craving—and who yearns, at long last, for liberation.

I read an excerpt and had a magical realization. In the past, I’d thought that if I were facing the end of my life, I could relapse and float out of here on a heroin sea. But that has changed. Yes, in my final days, of course, I would take pain relief. But I don’t want to get on that hellish ride again. It sounds AWFUL. In March, I will have been in continuous recovery for 23 years. I was 23 the first time I went to rehab. There is an elegant symmetry there for me. I don’t want to die fucked up. I hope that on the last day of my life, I am my most evolved self. I don’t ever want to stop growing and learning and processing out behaviors or thought patterns that don’t serve me.

I never want to be someone incapable of growth, of change.

In 2026, I look forward to continuing to dole out advice through “Ask Erin,” allowing myself time to rest and recharge, writing again, and being intentional about time. I probably won’t be writing too much about the cancer. But I felt like I needed to set down where I have been and where I am today.

I hope with every cell in my body, even the shitty cancerous ones, that this year sees us emerging from darkness, that our rights aren’t continued to be stripped away, that we experience love rather than hate, and that somehow democracy survives.

xx Erin

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