Demi Moore Says Her ‘Fearless’ Aunt, an 18-Year Breast Cancer Survivor, Has Been a ‘Light’ in Her Life Through Hard Times

“I look at the incredible courage that she held and faced and also the attitude that she had as she faced this, and it was a fearless attitude with faith.”

Moore added that her aunt provided a “light” for her when she lost her mother Virginia Guynes in 1998 from a brain tumor. The Inside Out author has also publicly discussed her traumatic childhood and early alcohol and substance abuse issues that she has worked hard to overcome.

On receiving her Courage Award that night, Moore told ET she felt “very moved and quite touched.”

“And also, I feel really grateful for the opportunity to be of service,” the mom of three girls added, noting how important it is to “expand the message” and how important research is “because research means solution.”

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Moore shares daughters Rumer, 35, Scout, 32, and Tallulah, 30 with her ex-husband, actor Bruce Willis, whose health has been declining due to frontotemporal dementia.

According to Mayo Clinic, frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is an umbrella term for a group of brain diseases that affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, which are associated with personality, behavior and language.

Facing the devastating diagnosis in 2020, the Die Hard action star has been losing his ability to speak and comprehend speech due to aphasia.

Healing Through Hard Times

For Moore and for many in the SurvivorNet community, especially when you are a mother or caring for a loved one, putting yourself first is not easy, but an important step in achieving better mental health.

Whether you are going through your own cancer journey, taking care of a loved one, or facing other challenges in your life, taking time to focus on yourself can be a process. There are a number of different paths people might take to help them cope, such as traditional therapy, support groups, meditation, and sometimes medical intervention such as antidepressants. And when going down these different paths it’s important to make sure the mechanism you have to care for your mental health continue to work throughout the process.

“I think flexibility is really a core of how to manage it,” Dr. Samantha Boardman, a New York-based psychiatrist and author, tells SurvivorNet. “Are your coping strategies that you’re using now, are they helpful in the way that they were in the past?”

How to Be Realistically Optimistic: Coping With Mental Health Long-Term

Dr. Boardman encourages people who may be struggling with their mental wellbeing to “take stock of their belief system” and ask themselves the following questions:

• Could these beliefs be harming me (like feelings of self-doubt or negativity)?
• Is my mindset holding me back from positive steps forward?
• Dr. Boardman suggests working to recognize any negative thoughts that may be making the process of cancer treatment more difficult, and trying to dismantle those to be more “realistically optimistic.”

Don’t Be Afraid To Reach Out For Help

We all want to think we can do things by ourselves, without the help of others. But acknowledging when you do need help and asking for it can prove to be an even harder task.

For Moore, she leans on family and has shared how much her female friends mean to her.

“Some people don’t need to go outside of their family and friends circle. They feel like they have enough support there,” New York-based board certified psychiatrist Dr. Lori Plutchik tells SurvivorNet. “But for people who feel like they need a little bit more, it is important to reach out to a mental health professional.”

Family History and Other Risks for Breast Cancer

Given Moore’s family history with breast cancer, and the fact that 1 in 8 women statistically are diagnosed with breast cancer over the course of their lifetime, it’s important to know risk factors that make you more likely to get breast cancer.

Being aware of your risk factors can help you stay on top of screenings, to find breast cancer early if it does develop.

According to SurvivorNet’s medical experts, you’re more likely to develop breast cancer if you have one or more of these risk factors:

• You’re older: Your risk for this cancer rises, the older you get. That doesn’t mean that you’re destined to get breast cancer as you age, or that young people are immune to it. You just need to be more vigilant about screenings as you get older.
• You have a gene mutation: Some women inherit changes to genes like BRCA1 or BRCA2, that increase their risk for breast cancer. Genetic tests can find these changes early, acting as an early warning for women to take preventive steps.
• You were exposed to estrogen for longer: Estrogen is a hormone that helps some breast cancers grow. Getting your period early (before age 12) or starting menopause late (after age 55), increases your exposure to this hormone.
• You waited to have children: Your risk may be higher if you waited to have children until after age 30, or you never gave birth. The risk is only slightly higher, meaning that you’re not definitely going to get breast cancer, just because you waited to have children.
• You were exposed to radiation: Being exposed to radiation early in life; for example, during treatment for a cancer like Hodgkin’s lymphoma, can increase your risk of breast cancer later in life.
• You have a family or personal history of breast cancer: Having cancer in your family, or going through treatment yourself, can make you more likely to be diagnosed.

If you have a family history of cancer, it’s important to share those details with your doctor so that they can be more aware of what to look out for, and suggest the appropriate timeframes for screening methods and genetic testing.

Grieving After Losing a Loved One

When Camila Legaspi was in high school, she lost her mother to breast cancer. Naturally, the experience of watching her mom face the disease took a huge toll on her emotionally. Having a parent go through cancer, especially at such a young age, is incredibly challenging for the whole family.

So after her mom, Gabriela, passed away — Camila decided to start seeing a therapist. In a recent sit-down with SurvivorNet, she told us that having someone there to simply talk things through with made a huge difference — and really helped her to appreciate all the great things she still had in her life.

“Embrace the situation as best as you can, because the reality is … that it sucks,” Camila said.

‘Therapy Saved My Life’: After Losing A Loved One, Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help

Camila recommends that anyone going through a similar situation and dealing with loss reach out for help if they need it — it’s OK to not be OK for awhile.

“Therapy saved my life,” she said. “I was dealing with some really intense anxiety and depression at that point. It just changed my life because I was so drained by all the negativity that was going on. Going to a therapist helped me realize that there was still so much out there for me … that I still had my family, that I still had my siblings.”

“The reality is when you lose someone, it’s really, really, really hard. And it’s totally OK to talk to someone, and I’m so happy that I talked to my therapist,” she added.

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