If you don’t know this about me already, you’ll get to know it – I learn a lot from my children and their youthful fearlessness and innocence has been a welcome beacon of hope during my survival journey.  They’ve not been jaded by major life disappointments and, consequently, share their vigor with me.   They were very young; my daughter was 19 months old and my son 4 years old when I was diagnosed.  My thin frame and bald head are very distant and almost non-existent memories for them.  But, unknowingly, the support they provided to me during my diagnosis and treatment is irreplaceable, incomparable and invaluable.

A while ago, my children and I were at an event for my now 6 year old daughter.  As a reward for her and all of the other participants completing the event, she was given the choice of any flavor lollipop in the bucket.  My 9 year old son, who had not participated in the event, asked if he could get a lollipop as well.  As an immediate knee jerk reaction, I told him that the rules indicated that the lollipops were only for those who had participated.  Nonplussed by this, my son – ever the tenacious young man – decided it didn’t hurt to ask the person responsible for the lollipops.  I guess the teachings of my husband and I do sink in as we have guided our children, not to break rules, but to ask for what they want.  My son asked and was immediately allowed to pick the flavor he wanted.  He and my daughter left the event smiling and excited about the oncoming sugar rush.

I’m never a proponent of breaking rules that will hurt or harm another, but in the new normal, the rules are different and often have to be defined by you as the survivor, and as the fighter.  Old rules, paradigms and frameworks often have no place in the new normal and when causing no harm to others, should easily be broken.  As you design the most beautiful new normal you can have, you have to ask for what you want, work for it and there may often be a sweet surprise involved.

Melanie A. Nix – Triple negative breast cancer survivor.  Always striving to color outside of the lines when defining my new normal.