Despite coming from a family with a strong history of breast cancer, and thinking she had “a front row seat to it,” Shannon Barrett was not prepared to hear the diagnosis at 42 years old. Confronted with the reality of time-sensitive decisions and treatment curveballs, she relied on the American Cancer Society’s network of survivor mentors in navigating the uncertainty.

“There’s a stretch of time when your treatment has ended and you’re not going to doctors every week and you’re not getting ready for the next surgery or the next radiation or the next chemo infusion and that part is still really hard but nobody tells you that. Nobody tells you that the recovery part is still as emotionally hard as some of the early days,” she said

Now a bilateral breast cancer survivor, Barrett will give

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