Patty Griffin Says Her Breast Cancer Was a Struggle, But a Passing Phase Like Anything Else

"I think life comes in different packages, and I had the cancer package for a little while that I had to get myself through."

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Two years after being diagnosed with breast cancer, singer Patty Griffin says she’s feeling ready to return to her calling as a musicianbut getting there wasn’t an easy task.

The toughest part? “It was having to reset the way I thought about everything and even my identity about myself," she told People.com. "I always thought of myself as somebody who could sing really well, and to lose all of that is quite something. When you're a singer, you're an athlete and that just stays true for as long as you decide to be a singer. Your body is your instrument, so there was a lot of work to do there."

Griffin spoke with the outlet in advance of her upcoming album release (the eponymous album is set to come out on March 8th) and to reveal her first single from it, a track called River. She explained to the website that she took some time off to deal with the disease, but was never afraid of losing her life, thanks to great medical care and the gift of perspective.

“You go through the big panic, which is not a bad thing to experience if you're lucky enough to get out on the other side and get another shot at life. Around the same time, I had a friend who had been diagnosed with very serious stage 4 [cancer] in several different places so [my diagnosis] just never seemed extremely serious.”

The star has tried to accept cancer as a part of her life, but not the single defining moment. “I think life comes in different packages, and I had the cancer package for a little while that I had to get myself through," she told the site. "I had some physical disabilities that really impaired my ability to do my work for a while, and I had a lot to get myself through in order to, with some great difficulty, do what I used to do very easily and naturally.”

She also explained that her cancer allowed her to get in touch with emotions and places that she normally would not have, which translated into her work.

Now, Griffin is in total remission and “cancer-free,” but staying free of stress, as her doctors prescribed, does take some effort. “I'm trying to have more fun in my life and really enjoy,” she told People. “I think the colors are brighter for me right now, and I don't get as worked up about the same stuff I used to.”

This lesson of learning to accept what you can’t necessarily control, but in health crises and otherwise, is an important part of the recovery process during or after cancer, Dr. William Breitbart of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center told SurvivorNet in a previous interview. “What the task becomes is having the courage to live in the face of uncertainty, realizing that you cannot necessarily control the uncertainty in life,” he advises.

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