I have breast cancer. I tell you this to better accept the blow that has struck me. I look at the horror and shock in your face of this news to assess if am I experiencing this moment in real time or is this just merely the nightmare I can’t wake up from. And Like the "Good Morning America" anchor Robin Roberts, who announced in August 2007, that she had breast cancer, I, too, never thought I would be writing this.

And quite honestly, in the hurried and harried life I live, like most of us, who has time for this interruption? But now I must stop, see, and assess my life differently, as African American lesbian poet and activist Audre Lorde told all women confronted with breast cancer in The Cancer Journal before she succumbed to the disease in 1992. While there are a plethora of support groups and organizations nationwide for women like us, there are, however, no instructional guides, road maps or formulas on how personally to handle this ongoing health crisis, because it is about the particular woman herself.

“Each woman responds to the crisis that breast cancer brings to her life out of a whole pattern, which is the design of who she is and how her life has been lived. The weave of her every day existence is the training ground for how she handles crisis,” Lorde wrote.

The weave of my everyday existence for the past twenty years has been about social injustice concerning race, class, gender identities and expressions as it relates to religious intolerance. But now I take up another gauntlet: the politics of breast cancer, because this, too, is personal:

And our silence and invisibility on this issue will not protect me or other women.

In October 2004, two-time Grammy winner, rock singer-songwriter and lesbian activist, Melissa Etheridge, was diagnosed with breast cancer. "Our society doesn't say the word cancer much," said Etheridge. When her grandmother was dying from breast cancer, no one even told Etheridge what was wrong. But Etheridge refused to remain silent or invisible with the disease. At the 2005 Grammy Awards, Etheridge made a return to the stage, bald from chemotherapy, to performed a tribute to Janis Joplin. Etheridge was praised not only for her performance but also for her courage.

With any illness, you look for spiritual sustenance. But be leery of some of the self-help books and New Age Religions on the market, because they too can make you go into hiding with their “blame the victim” philosophies that will flog you as painfully as self-flagellation and the expected fire the brimstone theologies.

Case in point: Louise Hay, renowned metaphysical lecturer and author of the bestseller Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them. Hay espouses a “blame-the-victim” philosophy concerning breast cancer. She writes that breast problems are a refusal to nourish the self because it is about putting everyone else first and being over mothering. While it is true that there is a correlation between "dis-ease" in the mind and disease in the body, the bigger question should be why, with all the advances made in breast cancer research, are there so many women across race, class, education and sexual orientations being diagnosed with breast cancer today? And at younger ages? Is there an environmental link?

But, as Lorde stated it best, “The idea that the cancer patient should be made to feel guilty about having had cancer, as if in some way it were all her fault for not having been in the right psychological frame of mind at all times to prevent cancer, is a monstrous distortion of the idea that we can use our psychic strengths to help heal ourselves. This guilt trip into which many cancer patients have been led (you see, it is a shameful thing because you could have prevented it if only you had been more...) is an extension of the blame-the-victim syndrome. It does nothing to encourage the mobilization of our psychic defenses against the very real forms of death that surround us. It is easier to demand happiness than clean up the environment."

For example, there is a correlation between environmental pollutants and breast cancer. These pollutants interact in the environment and in our bodies, contributing to an epidemic of chronic illnesses. “We call this Toxic Trespass. We did not consent for chemicals known to cause cancer and other illnesses to enter our bodies,” said Deborah Forter, of the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition. These pollutants are in our air, foods, water, schools, workplaces and homes, such as the lifetime exposure to pesticides from home use, and personal care products containing endocrine disruptors and other controversial compounds that have been marketed to both black and white women in popular women’s magazines since the 1950’s.

According to the American Cancer Society, every three minutes, a woman in the U.S is diagnosed with breast cancer. It is the most common cancer among women, and about 178,480 women will have been found to have invasive breast cancer in 2007. Because of the disparity in health care, African American women are more likely to die from the disease, although more white women are diagnosed with it. Being a lesbian or bisexual woman does not increase one's risk for breast cancer, but risk factors such as fear of coming out to health care providers, less access to health insurance, and having fewer doctor visits for mammograms and professional breast exams will increase your chances. To address the homophobia life-threatening illnesses lesbian, bisexual and transwomen are likely to face in our health care system, the Mautner Project was founded in 1990, following the 1989 death of Mary-Helen Mautner, from breast cancer.

As each day goes by, I get a tad stronger in facing this daunting health crisis. On Dec. 12th, I was scheduled for a lumpectomy to be performed on my left breast, but it was canceled. Late in the afternoon of Dec. 11th, I got a call from the surgical oncologist informing me that the results from my breast MRI showed two more suspicious lumps that might be cancerous and would make a difference between my having a lumpectomy, the removal of one cancerous lump in the breast, or a mastectomy, the removal of the entire breast. On Dec. 12th, instead of the planned operation of a lumpectomy, a biopsy was performed on each lump that had me on the table for two hours. But on Friday, Dec. 14th, the results came in and those two lumps were benign. Hallelujah!!! I was then scheduled to have my lumpectomy operation to remove the cancerous tumor on Dec. 24th, Christmas Eve.

And the good news now is, I'm up! I didn't wake up dead, but I did wake up still suspicious as to why so many women are confronted with this disease. I got the report from my surgical oncologist that my nodes are negative. Yippee! So this is what I know so far on this journey: My cancer is Stage 1, my nodes are negative, my tumor is the size of a blueberry, and there is no sign of metastasis. Whew! This is perhaps as good as it gets for a person diagnosed with breast cancer.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, the Rev. Irene Monroe is a religion columnist, theologian, and public speaker. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her doctorate as a Ford Fellow. Reverend Monroe’s “Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow 365 Days a Year - Meditations on Bible Prayers" will be out in June, 2008. As an African American feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Her website is irenemonroe.com. Click here to contact the Rev. Monroe.