Jill Martin is entering a new phase of her breast cancer journey, where she feels clearer than ever about her purpose in life. "I'm more confident than I've ever been. I think I could do anything.
I've sharpened my tools, meaning I am staying in my lane, both professionally and personally," the TODAY contributor, 48, tells TODAY.com. "I know exactly who I am, what I want, how I want to live, and it's just very sharp, it's very clean, it's very simple.
" "I think there is beauty in coming out of trauma and being able to survive it," she adds. But adjusting to life as a cancer survivor has come with challenges. Martin is currently considered cancer-free.
Within the past year or so, she's gone through months of , and had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed, as well as a and . She's currently taking two medications to reduce her risk of cancer recurrence, which lead to side effects such as joint pain and fatigue. And after starting the medications in late June, Jill had to navigate another setback she wasn't expecting.
While Jill knows her experience with cancer may be different from other survivors', she wants to be open about what she's been through to empower others to advocate for themselves. "While they were figuring out the doses (of my new medications), I started feeling hopeless. I started feeling like it's not worth living anymore.
'I'm in so much pain. How am I ever going to get out of this?' Thoughts I had never had before," she recalls, adding that she went as far .
