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living with breast cancer is about ‘self-compassion, grace and learning to accept support'
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near the end of 2023, nooreen alli was in a serious car accident when she was rear-ended on the highway. she experienced whiplash and a concussion, and spent the next few months trying to recover.
“i thought, a couple of weeks, i’d be back to my usual life- work, this, that, the other,” she said.
but it wasn’t getting better. at the six-month mark following her accident, and with the pain worsening instead of getting better, she went for a ct scan and found a fracture in her neck. at the time, her doctors assumed that was what was keeping her in recovery for so long, so she kept up with her various therapies.
the pain was excruciating, though, and it kept spreading.
“i honestly thought i overdid it at the gym, you know?” she said. “but it didn’t feel muscular. it felt deeper, but i didn’t know.”
eventually, she was sent for more tests, and they found something, expediting her to the hospital for biopsy tests to check what it was. it turned out that it wasn’t pain from her accident at all. it was breast cancer.
“i got the diagnosis, and so it’s just a whirlwind after that, right?”
alli waited about a year and a half for her breast cancer diagnosis, and by the time she got the right tests, it had spread. she had stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.
“there’s a good chance that it had been sitting there for a year or two,” she said. “when i got diagnosed, it was very overwhelming, very unexpected.”
dealing with an unexpected breast cancer diagnosis
alli had no thought that she could be dealing with breast cancer because she’s young, generally healthy, did gene testing which came back negative, and no one in her family had breast cancer before her.
so, when she was faced with the diagnosis, she was shocked. she was required to take in so much information about the type of breast cancer, where it had spread and what that meant for her treatment path.
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she also had a friend pass from breast cancer, which made the ordeal even more real.
“there was a lot going on during that time, and so i think it was just overwhelming,” she said. “i think we think about ourselves in our 20s, and we think nothing can ever happen to us, right? we’re invincible… and even at my age, even though i may not be in my 20s, you just never think … these things are going to happen to you.”
finding a new normal
before alli was diagnosed with breast cancer, she lived a fast-paced life. between work, travel, a thriving social life and her hobbies of hiking and dancing, she believed in living life to the fullest.
“you got one life to live, and i love to find a balance between work, which we all need to do, but also time for family and friends.”
afterwards, her life changed dramatically. she was no longer doing what she wanted to do. she was in and out of treatments and dealing with the pain and effects of her cancer and its treatments. her doctors explained to her that it would get worse before it go better, and “it really has been worse for quite some time before i’ve started to feel better,” she said.
she spent her summer doing targeted therapy treatment in an effort to slow the growth and spread of the cancer and rid her body of it. but a few months after she started, they found another malignant tumour, which shook up her routine yet again.
“you’re kind of getting into the routine of maintenance of scans and then treatment and trying to figure it out. so, life kind of became cancer.”
before her diagnosis, when she was dealing with the excruciating pain because she thought it was the effects of her car accident, she tried to maintain a sense of normalcy throughout. but afterwards, her cancer “took over” her life, becoming her main priority.
“up until the end of 2025, things were not really stable,” she said. “it was just worsening, and it’s scary. the doctors can tell you, but you’re the one. it’s isolating, right?”
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leaning on community
alli considers herself lucky to have a strong circle of family and friends rallying around her, even though it’s hard for her to lean on others because of her level of independence prior to being diagnosed.
“i’ve always considered myself to be this independent, strong [person], you know?” she said. “i hope that i still am, but you can’t do it alone.”
alongside her friends and family, she’s always taken advantage of all different types of support from outside resources, from those that offer financial support to those that play a role in the physical, social and emotional aspects of living with cancer.
she’s always had a bit of an issue accepting help, whether from her closest loved ones or outside resources, but she’s learned that it’s her circle and those resources will make the path easier to walk.
“accepting that help is hard, and even the friends around me, they want to be there and they’re like, ‘we’ve learned we have to tell you. you’re not telling us what you need,’” she said.
it wasn’t as easy in the beginning, though, and alli notices the drastic difference in her ability to share with others and reach out when she needs help.
“i’m not a person who gets usually emotional, but i would just, in the beginning, i would just in sit in my car and listen to music and the tears would be there and usually music makes me so happy,” she said. “it still does. there were different ways of grieving, and now i’ve gotten a little more used to it, you know, by utilizing the outlets of people, but it’s still hard, right? it’s a learning curve.”
taking the good with the bad
alli will never be the person who says that “cancer is a blessing” because of the positive things she’s gained from her experience, but she does acknowledge that those things exist. from learning to slow down to being more open to letting others help her, she doesn’t take the positive changes forced on her for granted.
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“you’re only as strong as those around you,” she said. “we all struggle with trying to take that time for self-care and that stuff for ourselves. i say to people, ‘i’m in my soft girl era’ … i’ve always loved self-care, but in a different way now. self-care doesn’t just mean my hair, my nails, or a massage.”
self-care these days is more about learning to say no to honour her health and body, or setting boundaries so she can take better care of herself throughout her treatment. but the bad side of cancer never leaves because “cancer is cancer.”
“it’s tough. it’s life-changing, and it will, whether you get to be in remission or have no evidence of disease, it’s something that will impact you and change you forever,” she said. “the parts that continue to be the worst part and the hard part is the losses that surround cancer. so, i’m grieving a life that i once imagined for myself.”
because she spent a lot of her youth priming herself for independence through getting a master’s degree, working hard and getting to a point where she could stand on her own two feet, losing what felt like she worked to gain her entire life can feel devastating at times. she admits that she’s “still human,” and seeing others continue on their journeys while hers was sidetracked by a cancer diagnosis makes her feel “a little bit stuck.”
“by no means am i jealous or envious, but those are also things that i want, and i may not get to have them,” she said. “i know things can always get worse, so again, gratitude for sure. but it’s living losses, and i’m trying to allow myself self-compassion and grace.”
when she’s deep in grief, alli calls on her faith to help her get through and hopes that she can get back to the life she saw for herself. but she also acknowledges that maybe she’s not meant to, but that doesn’t mean her path has to be any less fulfilling.
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“i may not get to have those dreams that i pictured for myself. maybe that’s okay. and maybe in time, i’ll come to that,” she said. “right now, being here, those losses, they felt huge. they felt like mountains in the beginning. with time, just like even death, it does heal with time. but even this year, there have been different losses that have showed up for me and i continue to grieve. so, yeah, i’m just figuring out how to do that.”
alli continues to look toward god’s plan for her as a way to come to terms with those losses and a different future—one in which she has stage 4 breast cancer but is still able to look toward the future with hope.
she wants people who are newly diagnosed to know that while grief is a part of the package, acknowledging it, accepting it and doing what you can for yourself by being open to support is the best way to go through it.
“try to take that time for yourself. take it all in, in the space that you can accept all the supports that you have capacity for,” she said. “whatever that looks like for you. but finding that balance between the time you need for yourself to take everything but also accepting that help … you may not see the change right away, but i think you’ll see the benefits as time goes on.”
she continued, “this is our life, right? this is like life on this earth. we want to see change right away. i still want to see change right away, but it takes time, and so allow yourself some self-compassion and grace in the process. it takes time.”
because of her own experiences, alli also wants people to be aware of how important early detection is—especially because she did everything right and advocated for herself and was still not diagnosed until it had spread. she went to the doctors, expressed her symptoms and “was still in this situation.”
“i think we doubt ourselves, right?” she said. “trust your body, trust yourself … hopefully my words can help you, but just trust yourself and just do what you can for yourself, because we have one life to live and we want to live it the best way. and you know what? and you know, we’re all going to continue to live our best lives, but let’s do it health and happy. that’s truly, at the end of the day, that’s what matters.”
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