“Family, Ayurveda and prāṇāyāma shaped my path to post-traumatic joy”
Aarti Pathak
In a moving and deeply personal address at the 7th edition of She Matters-the flagship women’s health event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry – Indian Women Network (CII IWN), Maharashtra-author and cancer survivor Aarti Pathak spoke candidly about the hidden emotional and physical costs of battling cancer, and shared the transformative idea of “post-traumatic joy.” Finding not only survival but happiness again, after difficult times.
Pathak was part of the panel discussion “Women Survivors & Supporters of Cancer – Hidden Cost,” alongside co-panellists Ms Priya Dutt, Chairperson & Trustee, Nargis Dutt Foundation; Dr Manzer Shaikh, Obstetrician & Gynaecologist; and Dr Sangeeta Pandit, HOD–Finance at Sydenham Institute of Management Studies. In response to a question from the moderator, Gauri Pathak, she shared her story and took the attendees through her journey.
Aarti lost her mother to COVID-19 in 2021 and discovered hours later that she had breast cancer. The type of cancer turned out to be particularly dangerous, requiring months of aggressive treatment, which she described as feeling like “a relentless assault on the body, mind and spirit,” leading her to question the point of living on if in such pain. During that time, she found anchor in family love and support, in Ayurveda (which helped reduce the side effects of chemotherapy), and in prāṇāyāma, which gave her “an experience of God, of oneness with the universe, and of the journey of the ātman.” It became a turning point that shifted her approach to her situation entirely. “I lost the fear of death,” she shared.
Her journal entries from that period evolved into her memoir Triple Negative ~ a tale of love, faith and surrender; a raw and unvarnished chronicle that tells her story in real time. The book takes the reader on a physical and emotional journey through her cancer treatment and life after.
At She Matters, Pathak shared that during the lows of her treatment, prāṇāyāma gave her calmness and clarity. She found herself resisting the template of “trauma leading to excessive distress.” “Just because we have gone through something doesn’t mean we have to live with post-traumatic stress,” she said. “We could also lead a life of post-traumatic joy-which is what I am doing.” “With the right support structures in place,” she added, “it is possible.”
Addressing gaps in cancer treatment, Pathak shared the fears and myths surrounding chemotherapy that often discourage people from seeking medical care, even in fully sponsored government programmes. She emphasised the need for greater awareness, saying, “Lack of information or misinformation should not be an additional barrier to cancer care.”
Conversations around cancer are often understandably accompanied by fear. In that landscape, Aarti Pathak offers a vocabulary of hope. It embraces the grim realities without collapsing under their weight and offers a vision beyond survival, one of thriving with joy. Pathak elaborated that today, more and more people are seeking “healing beyond cure,” which is a must for a joyous life after any crisis.
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