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Young Fighters And Survivors
Bright Pink does not provide medical advice. Please check out our disclaimer for more information

As breast and ovarian cancer fighters and survivors, you’re in a unique and powerful position to turn your friends and family into proactive warriors when it comes to their breast and ovarian health.

Even as you fight your own battle, you can arm loved ones with life-saving knowledge.

Your Cancer and Your Family
Knowledge is Power
Is My Cancer Hereditary?
Empower Your Favorite People
The Tough Talks
Support for Survivors

Your Cancer and Your Family
Whether you’ve just been diagnosed, are in remission or are somewhere in between, we know that receiving a cancer diagnosis can be a frightening, exhausting and life-changing experience. You’ve probably faced a confusing array of treatment options and have been asked to make many difficult decisions. These decisions have undoubtedly affected your entire family, which adds to the emotional challenge of fighting this disease.

You may have tried to put on a brave face to keep from worrying others. And you may have heard that having a family history increases one’s risk for cancer.

You may feel concern or guilt over this discovery. These feelings are completely normal, but developing cancer was not your fault. In fact, by taking steps to learn more about your family’s cancer risks, you have the opportunity to turn your diagnosis and struggle into an empowering gift for your loved ones.

Knowledge is Power
Let’s take a moment to review the facts: breast cancer is a leading cancer diagnosis in women, ovarian cancer is the deadliest of cancers in women and the two cancers can be linked together in families, sometimes in the form of mutated genes passed down through relatives. These genetic mutations are known to dramatically increase one’s risk of developing cancer. However, even if a mutated gene is not identified, just one breast or ovarian cancer diagnosis in a family can signal increased risk.

In essence, if you are a breast or ovarian cancer fighter or survivor, your daughter and other loved ones have a greater lifetime risk of developing breast/ovarian cancer. And, with statistics showing that one in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime, it is likely that you will know someone outside your family who is also diagnosed with breast cancer.

Is My Cancer Hereditary?
Tip-offs that your cancer may be hereditary and a BRCA mutation may be present in your family include:
  • You have been diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 50.
  • You have been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, fallopian tube cancer or primary peritoneal cancer at any age.
  • You have been diagnosed with breast cancer more than once.
  • You have been diagnosed with both breast and ovarian cancer.
  • You have been diagnosed with breast cancer or ovarian cancer at any age and you are of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry (Central or Eastern European).
  • You have been diagnosed with breast cancer and you have a family member with breast or ovarian cancer.
  • You have a family member who has a BRCA mutation.
  • You have a family member who has been diagnosed with male breast cancer.

A health care provider or genetic counselor can help you interpret your family history and decide if genetic testing is the right path for determining future cancer risks for you and your family.

Your test results will be instrumental in guiding the analysis of your family’s risk and helping them develop their proactive health plans. For example, if you do not carry a BRCA mutation, it is not possible for you to pass it along to your children. However, if you do carry a mutation, this means your relatives have a 50% chance of also carrying the mutation.

Additionally, if you decide not to complete a hereditary cancer risk assessment but want to do something for your relatives’ health, you can still contribute by banking your DNA through a simple blood draw. This will enable your relatives to test your DNA at a later date, empowering future generations to get an accurate risk assessment for years to come. A genetic counselor can help you understand this process and connect you with resources if you decide it’s right for you.

Empower Your Favorite People
You can use what you’ve been through as inspiration and motivation to make sure the people you love know how they can be proactive about their breast and ovarian health – and as a result, you could potentially be protecting them from their own cancer experience.

So how exactly to you do that? There are two things to talk with them about:

1. Encourage Them to Know Their Risk
Make sure that your relatives know that since there’s been an instance of breast or ovarian cancer in the family, their risk is increased. And your friends should look at their own families to understand if they have a greater likelihood of developing the diseases as well.

Direct them to Assessing Your Risk to learn more.

2. Tell Them About Prevention and Early Detection Habits
It’s so important that the people you love know what they can be doing now to impact their future.

Certain lifestyle habits can help reduce their risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer (like eating a low fat diet, exercising and taking oral contraceptives) – and keeping an eye out for breast and ovarian cancer symptoms as well as having regular well-woman exams can make sure if cancer does develop that its caught at an early, t reatable stage.

Direct them to Prevention and Early Detection for more on these great things they should start doing today.

The Tough Talks
Some of us are very open regarding our cancer and talk easily with friends and family members. But for others, it is not quite as easy. As a mother, sister, aunt, cousin or friend, you may feel you are protecting your loved ones from the scary truth that they may also develop the disease.

But the silver lining is that you have the ability to empower the women in your family by providing them with as much information as possible.

Support for Survivors
The transformation from a high-risk young woman to a cancer survivor is a life-changing event, which is why many women in your position have banded together to make a difference. Visit our Resource Page to learn more about the many great, inspiring organizations that work to inform and support breast and ovarian cancer survivors like you.