Robin Roberts Shared This Powerful Advice with Michael Strahan as His Daughter Faced Brain Cancer (Exclusive)

Over a year after Isabella Strahan, now 20, was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, her dad, Good Morning America co-anchor Michael Strahan, still remembers the words his colleague, Robin Roberts, also a cancer survivor, once told him.

“Robin told me something that really helped,” Michael tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview.

“She said, ‘You think when you have cancer you’re going to wake up every day and think, Oh, I have cancer.’ But she said, ‘At some point, you wake up and you just live. You don’t even think about it.’”

“I can’t wait for Isabella to get back to that point,” says Michael. “When she feels ‘I’m back to normal me.’ And I think that will be a moment of completion. She’s already back at school but back to where she feels normal again and this doesn’t even cross her mind.”

Michael, Isabella and her twin sister Sophia, share their remarkable story in this week’s PEOPLE — from Isabella’s diagnosis of medulloblastoma in Sept. 2023 just as she was starting college, through months of radiation and grueling chemotherapy, to ringing the bell to mark she was cancer-free in June 2024.

Her story of survival — and the power of her family's love will also be featured in an upcoming ABC special Life Interrupted: Isabella Strahan’s Fight Against Cancer, airing Feb. 5 at 10 p.m,. and on Disney and Hulu + on Feb 6. 

"As a parent, you’re used to being able to protect your kid through anything and here is a situation where you can’t,” says Michael. ”You have to be a cheerleader and that was tough — because it’s eating you up inside too. Many sleepless nights and tears but you just have to be positive, especially in front of her. You do what’s necessary.”

For now, Isabella will continue to have cancer scans every three months, and then eventually, every six months to a year. 

Now back at USC where she’s majoring in communications, Isabella hopes to use her experience to help others — something she’s already started with a series of  YouTube vlogs filmed in rea- time, and is now connecting with fellow cancer patients, survivors and their families as part of an independent study.

And the moment that Robin Roberts once described to her father is steadily getting closer.

Says Isabella, “My diagnosis, I think it’s important not to forget, it is part of me but it doesn't define me.

"This has definitely changed my mindset," she continues. "If there’s an opportunity, I want to take it. And this has shown me how important family is."

"I had a good attitude before," she continues, "but I feel like now you have to have a really positive outlook on life — because you never know what someone could be going through — the next day could change everything.”

Read the original article on People