‘Take it as it Comes’: Two-Time Cancer Survivor Melanie Griffith on Settling the Body & Mind After a Diagnosis

Melanie was first diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma about 10 years ago. The second diagnosis came more recently, when a tumor was found in her small intestine. She’s quite familiar with the panicky feeling that can come after a diagnosis — especially when it comes completely out of the blue.

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“Your brain is not in an optimal state,” Melanie says about that stressful time right after the diagnosis. “So what I say is, this is not something you asked for. This is not something that you did anything wrong to get. You can’t think clearly until you settle — ultimately coming back to a childlike sense of wonder and presence.”

Melanie learned the hard way, as many survivors do, to not get lost in the hole that is searching for information about your disease online. “I have learned not to swirl into the abyss of scary, clinical online information that was written for somebody who has much different schooling than I have,” she says.

She also points out that despite what many people think, cancer is no longer a death sentence. And there are a handful of steps you can take to help alleviate some of the stresses that often come along the way when you’re facing cancer. For Melanie, one of those steps, after her initial diagnosis, involved getting into the shower so that her children couldn’t hear, and simply wailing until all those bad feelings were released.

“Don’t let your mind get too ahead of yourself,” Melanie advises. “You have time to breathe and to listen … crying and moaning and screaming is a great release, and then, ultimately, it becomes your job to become your biggest advocate.”

Melanie’s initial treatment was a watch and wait approach — though she did eventually have to undergo chemo to treat the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was eight years cancer-free when something unusual showed up during one of her routine screenings, which ended up being the cancerous tumor. Treatment the second time around was surgery and another round of chemotherapy.

Through it all, Melanie’s advice to other survivors is simple: “take it as it comes.”

“Look at yourself in the mirror every single day and say, ‘Whatever it takes, that’s what I’m going to give,'” she says. “This, I believe, I have lived, I preach it, I’ve seen it, none of it is too much to handle if you break it down into bite-sized pieces. If you take one moment and then the next … don’t prepare for the whole journey if you can just prepare for the day.”

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