Actress Sheetal Sheth Talks Going Public With Her Breast Cancer Diagnosis & Writing a Children’s Book Inspired by MeToo

When the diagnosis did finally come on Christmas Eve, Sheth says the process of deciding on treatment and trying to get opinions from multiple doctors was daunting. Unfortunately for a lot of patients, things like trying to find the right treatment guidance can be as stressful as the prospect of fighting cancer itself.

“There's got to be a better way of communicating with patients,” Sheth says. “I was lucky in that I have a lot of people in my life that are doctors that helped me, but if I didn't have that, there was nobody really helping navigate the process at all. It's a lot and it's obviously very stressful.”

Going Public With a Cancer Diagnosis

It was about six months later that Sheth decided to speak publicly about her diagnosis. She had already undergone a double mastectomy and was in the middle of chemotherapy. Sheth stressed the importance of waiting until she was ready to speak out.

“I will tell you I didn't talk about it publicly until I was ready to — and I think that's important,” she says. “We all need to decide if we ever want to share things like this.”

Sheth explains that she and her husband were planning to have a third child before she was diagnosed. But afterward, her doctors made it clear that another baby was off the table. So, before she went public, she needed to take time to grieve.

“You decide what feels good to you … you certainly don't owe anybody anything,” she says.

Facing Cancer During Covid

Like so many survivors, Sheth also had to go through part of her treatment after COVID-19 shut down the world as we know it. What struck her the most, she says, was that initially, her doctors weren’t really offering guidance on what to do. That’s why she stresses how important it is to be your own advocate.

“My doctor basically told me, you can decide — we don’t know what’s worse,” she explains. “Either you can not get the treatment [or get it] and risk getting COVID being immunocompromised. They said it’s got to be your decision. And I could not believe I had to make that decision!”

“I ended up going because I know myself. If I hadn't gone and God forbid my cancer came back, it would be something that I would always wonder about.”

Bald & Beautiful

One of the takeaways Sheth gleaned from her experience with breast cancer is that beauty can come in many forms. She says that she would force herself to be bald in front of her kids at times. Even though she was struggling with her hair loss personally, she “didn't want them to think that beauty was defined by hair.”

She also decided to show that different side of beauty off to the world by appearing on the cover of Seema.

“While I was in treatment, I was approached to do a cover shoot story for a magazine and I hadn't talked about [cancer] yet so I was like, I don't think they know that I had cancer and I'm bald,” she explains.

“I had debated about whether I should do it or not. I decided I wanted to tell them and ask them to let me be bald for it and not put me in a wig or anything — and they agreed. It was really powerful, for myself and for the magazine. Showing different sides of femininity and of beauty is important and so I think more of that would great.”

 

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A Children’s Book Tackling Issues Raised by MeToo

When Sheth was writing her second children’s book Bravo Anjali, she found inspiration from the MeToo movement.

“The first book in the series, Always Anjali, dealt with racism and bullying. And this book, Bravo Anjali, I started writing it during my treatment, during the height of the MeToo movement,” she explains.

“When that was happening, I had so much trauma around stuff that I had forgotten and remembered — just from when I started out in the entertainment business, that I just stopped thinking about because it happened so long ago. A lot of it centered around the idea that I couldn't stand up for myself.”

So in this book, Sheth says, it’s not just about Anjali being a South Asian girl at the center of the story, it’s also about a young girl owning her excellence and not dimming her light because of gender stereotypes.

“When you read the book, you'll see there are so many little micro-aggressions that happen in the kids world, with kids around her, with her friends, and even adults, with how they talk to girls,” she says.

“Specifically, there's this boy that was one of her good friends that gave her the hardest time. I wanted us to have language for our young boys and young girls to talk about this stuff. I think we've seen what happens when we don't deal with this early.”

Bravo Anjali is out on September 14.

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