Aperture - letting the light in

"There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in," Leonard Cohen

19 April 2026 is a significant date for me. It marks 5 years from my cancer diagnosis.

Reaching 5 years is a major milestone in oncology, it signals a significant decrease in the risk of reoccurrence and the transition from active treatment to long-term survivorship. My specific type of breast cancer is a little bit tricky though. I had triple positive breast cancer (about 10% of all breast cancers are triple positive). It is an aggressive but highly treatable form, using a combination of hormone therapy, HER2 targeted therapy and chemotherapy. HER2 disease is most likely to reoccur within the first 3 years, but hormone positive cancer can lie dormant and return many years later. That is why it is likely I will continue to be treated for another 5 years.

It is fair to say that my cancer diagnosis changed my life forever. My light dimmed. It was not extinguished, but it dulled. I slowly moved through my days, my treatment, my surgeries, my recovery. I worked hard to regain my strength and vigour. The things that used to drive me and spur me to achieve just do not hold the same power over me. I think the career ambitious part of my life closed with cancer - I am now more interested in balance, in my friends and family, and living my life well.

5 years is significant, but not simple. It is not a neat finish line. It feels like a cautious celebration. A point where I pause, look around and realise I am somewhere I once wasn’t sure I would reach.

5 years ago everything narrowed. Life became small and sharply focused. I was shocked, scared and thrown into an intense period of information overload and rapid decision making. I had a plan, a schedule, a sequence of steps that needed to be followed. The future - once expansive and assumed - contracted into something small and narrow. The aperture closed.

The narrowing was necessary. You cannot take in too much light when things are heavy. You must protect yourself. You focus on what is immediately in front of you. You learn to live in increments - appointment to appointment, blood test to blood test, infusion to infusion, milestone to milestone. And then one day things start to end. The structure begins to fall away. Things are no longer urgent. But the aperture does not automatically open again.

The fear is still there, but now I live with it, like an angry, slightly alarming flatmate, who stays in their room most of the time but sometimes storms out and throws some kitchen knives at me. This has been the most unexpected part of survivorship for me. There is an unspoken assumption that survival brings relief in a clean, uncomplicated way. That you reach a certain point and your life goes back to how it was before. It isn’t like that.

Five years on, there are traces of that narrowed way of living. A tendency to hold something back. A reluctance to lean too fully into good moments. A quiet awareness, always somewhere in the background, of how quickly things can change. I’m scared to be away from home for too long in case something goes wrong and I need to see my oncologist.

The light, when it first returns, can feel too bright.

Five years is supposed to mean something. Clinically, it does. It marks distance from diagnosis, from treatment, from the most acute phase of risk. It is a milestone people understand. It is a point at which others might say, “You must feel amazing,” or “You’re through it now.”

And in some ways, I do and I am.

But in other ways, five years is simply where I find myself now—still carrying what happened, still shaped by it, still learning how to live alongside the angry flatmate.

Which brings me back to the idea of aperture.

Because what has shifted, slowly, is my willingness to be open to the future and to letting the light in.

Not all at once. But in small unremarkable decisions. Saying yes to things that extend further into the future than feels entirely comfortable. Allowing myself to enjoy something without immediately bracing for its loss. Letting a good day be a good day, without qualification. Entertaining the thought of an overseas trip.

These are not changes that announce themselves. They do not feel like milestones. But they are me letting the light in.

Five years ago, the task was to get through. Now the task is different. It is to live in a way that is not entirely organised around what happened and the fear of it returning. To allow space for things that have nothing to do with illness or recovery. To recognise that the future, while still uncertain, is no longer something I need to keep at arm’s length.

The aperture is wider than it was.

Not fully open. Not fixed. But adjustable, responsive, mine to control in a way that once felt impossible.

Five years does not mark an ending. It does not draw a line under what has been. But it does offer permission to let more light in.

And that is what I intend to do.

• This blog was inspired by this song - my thanks to Harry Styles.