How This Mom of 3 Prioritizes Self-Care While Treating Breast Cancer: 'I'm Trying to Be Here As Long As I Can'

Jamil Rivers realized that she had to find ways to look out for herself while working through metastatic breast cancer treatment, in order to help her sons

Jamil Rivers remembers her exhaustion when she first began treatment for metastatic breast cancer six years ago. At the time, she was raising three boys and working full-time as she underwent chemotherapy.

“I just kept pushing through,” she says. One day, she came home from treatment with fatigue written on her face. “I was so beaten down that blinking and breathing was difficult,” says Rivers, 46. “I could see the concern in the kids’ eyes.”

Rivers, a vice president of finance who lives with her boys (now 23, 13, and 11) in Philadelphia, knew she had to find a better way to take care of herself and her family. “I didn’t want them to have that memory,” she says.

So she began prioritizing her care by getting acupuncture and massage. She connected to nonprofits that could provide support, like giving her rides to and from chemo and providing resources to help explain cancer to her children. 

That self-advocacy eventually led Rivers to start The Chrysalis Initiative, a nonprofit offering guidance to women living with breast cancer.

“You can live with metastatic breast cancer, and your life doesn’t have to be over,” she says. When she was first diagnosed with Stage IV cancer in 2018 after experiencing a lingering cough and unrelenting cold symptoms, she read the dire survival rates but refused to let them define her, deciding, “The onus is on me. I have to step it up and make sure I have the best quality of life.”

Related: This Mom with Stage 4 Breast Cancer Mentors Young Women with the Same Disease: 'It's Easy to Crumble. I Want to Be a Reinforcement'

Now a single parent (she and her husband, who survived colon and kidney cancers, recently separated), Rivers says she's focused on her health and children.

She stays on top of the latest cancer research, “trying constantly to beat the odds,” and cherishes time with her boys. “Even when we’re just being goofy, doing movie night, game night, giving each other hugs and kisses – all those moments put air in my tires. They keep me going.”

For her children, a normal life is having parents with cancer who at times, may need their help, she says: “I’ve noticed that they’re very observant. If I’m tired, or their Dad is tired, they’re kind of tapping in and saying ‘Hey, do you need anything?’” 

Rivers describes her boys as compassionate and hopes that as they continue to make memories together, they’ll think of her less as their mom with cancer.

"I’m trying to be here as long as I can and take care of myself the best way I can for my boys," she says. "You can still live a good life with this.”

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.