Each October, we devote an entire issue to those diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer (MBC). This year, we are exploring the theme of “paradox.” Paradox refers to a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.

Living with metastatic breast cancer often means living a contradiction; the unexpectedly joyful suprises and the heartbreaking lessons. It’s balancing the weight, grief, and logistics of a terminal diagnosis while keeping up with the daily routines of living: picking up the kids from school, going to work, traveling. And sometimes the mundane, day-to-day activities required of life and managing illness can feel so distant from what truly nurtures your spirit and helps you thrive.

We want to hear your stories of navigating the MBC paradoxes in your life. How do you make sense of living while navigating the uncertainty of your future? How has your diagnosis sharpened your perspective on what it means to live well today, despite, or perhaps because of, the challenges you face? How to hold hope and fear at the same time?

Meet Guest Editor Alyssa Tsagong

Artist, mom, co-founder of Temple of Kinship, and serendipity cultivator, Alyssa was diagnosed at age 38 with Stage III IDC, and then Stage IV, ER+, HER2 low metastatic breast cancer at and 41. She recently retired from a career in public media and education to channel her creativity for her health, her family, and artistic mischief. Recognizing the potency and magic of friendship in her own life, she co-founded a non-profit with her best friend, Megan. Temple of Kinship offers retreats for MBC Thrivers and their chosen friend to strengthen and sustain supportive healing relationships, build community, and tend to kinship with their bodies, spirit, and nature. Alyssa is also a METAvivor Peer to Peer support group leader in southeast Wisconsin. You'll often find her with pockets full of stones and cedar twigs, dreaming new ideas into being with ink stained fingers and exploring with her husband, Dhondup, and their two amazing kids.

“The Annual MBC issue of Wildfire is so important to me. To have a space dedicated to the beauty and the terror of navigating Stage 4 Metastatic Breast Cancer, in our own words, is so meaningful. Learning to live with a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis has brought the “both/and” — the many paradoxes of living — to the forefront for me. I have discovered that a broken heart can let so much more light in and out of it. I will find a truth within myself, and yet, if I turn it slightly, I find that its seeming opposite is also true. For instance, I can feel tremendous gratitude AND searing resentment at the same time. In exploring these places of perplexing contradictions, we can find fertile ground for new understandings. Perhaps, even fertile ground to discover a new well of aliveness in the shadows.”

~ Alyssa