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Survivorship and Beyond: Sally Wolf Reflects on 9 Years After Chemotherapy

Sally Wolf/LinkedIn

Jun 24, 2025, 11:46

Survivorship and Beyond: Sally Wolf Reflects on 9 Years After Chemotherapy

Sally Wolf, CEO and Founder of LightWorks, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Nine years ago today, I finished chemo.

I was bald, beaming, and believed I was done with chemo, cancer, and the countdown my sister created.

But I quickly learned there was so much I didn’t understand about the road ahead. For example:

Survivorship isn’t purely celebratory.

Patients can struggle with reentry, feeling blindsided when the emotional toll hits as we lose the structure of treatment . My nurse shared ~80% of us report greater psychological distress after treatment than during.

Healing isn’t linear or predictable.

It’s common to find oneself thriving one day, and struggling the next. From unexpected media stories (I still remember a notification from Olivia Newton John’s death on a Monday at 4pm!) to new body issues or side effects (too many to list here!) and it’s easy to feel unexpectedly derailed..

Our fears rarely anticipate best-case scenarios.

When my cancer was rediagnosed in my hip bone, my most dreaded scenario became real. That said, while Stage IV breast cancer is scary, it is not one-size-fits-all; incurable is not the same as terminal. While I’ve sadly seen some tragically taken too soon, others like me are thriving for years and even decades.

This is why I don’t google stats. They’re often based on past data from past patients, and research, science and trials are thankfully changing the landscape all the time.

Hope is real. As is personal resilience.

Looking back, I never could have imagined that I’d:

– Learn my “cured” wouldn’t last.

– Find peace and purpose on this path.

– Build a platform rooted in advocacy and inspiration.

Survivorship is complex, even without recurrence. A combination of gratitude and grief, courage and fear. Sometimes alternating, but often all at once.

Whether you helped me toward what I thought was a finish line, or continue to support me now, thank you.

And to those also dancing through Cancerland: we may be in the worst club, but it’s truly full of the best people.

Photo: Pulling the final square off my chemo buddy sister’s sleepaway camp-inspired toilet paper countdown that she created when we began the first treatment 100 days earlier.”

Survivorship