I froze my eggs before my breast cancer diagnosis. For now, being an aunt helps me cope with not having my own kids.

• Sally Joy Wolf decided to freeze her eggs. Then she received her first breast cancer diagnosis.
• The diagnosis upended her vision of motherhood. For now, being an aunt fulfills her. 
• This is her story, as told to writer Kate Watson.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sally Wolf. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I've always wanted to be a mom. If you asked me eight years ago what that would entail, I would have been certain it would look like having my own biological children. That was before I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. 

Living with this diagnosis has made the question of motherhood more complicated. And as I've watched my sister give birth to my nephew and nieces, the sadness of not having babies of my own has become bittersweet, mixed up with the incredible joy it is to love these beautiful children who know me as "Auntie." 

Before I had breast cancer, my sister Heidi was pregnant; this did nothing to quiet my longing to hold a baby of my own — quite the opposite, actually. We were living in New York City, just two blocks apart, and I loved seeing her growing baby bump up close. It made me realize that even though I was perpetually single, I was ready to take steps to preserve my fertility.

In December 2013, I completed my first round of egg freezing, and I became Auntie three weeks later. I was at the hospital when Ryan arrived. When I held him less than two hours after he was born, he had my whole heart. However much I expected to love this baby, it paled to what I felt in that moment.

For the first several years of Ryan's life, my sister and her family continued to live in Manhattan. When my nephew was a newborn, I'd often stop by for impromptu visits in the morning before work. As he grew older, I would occasionally pick him up from preschool and take him on special "Auntie adventures." We would buy crafting supplies or visit the firehouse to climb into the big red trucks.

Two years later, in the lead-up to the birth of Ryan's little sister Alex, I worried that I wouldn't have any love left to give her. After all, Ryan had my whole heart. But my dad, a father of three, explained my heart would grow. He was right — Alex captured my heart all over again. I began to wonder whether it was time, at 40, to put my frozen eggs to use.

Then came the first of three cancer diagnoses. 

I was diagnosed with cancer

The first diagnosis, in December 2015, wasn't a shock. My mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer while I was in high school, so I had been getting screened regularly since I was 32. I had reasoned that while I couldn't prevent cancer, I could at least get ahead of it with early detection.

In 2016, I had a double mastectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy. The doctors told me that my cancer was gone. But in 2018, my oncologist found another lump in my breast. After a full body PET scan and biopsy, we learned my cancer had spread to my hip. Just like that, the vocabulary changed: incurable, metastatic, stage 4.

That same year, my sister and her husband decided to move their family out of the city to a suburb in Connecticut. The previous year, they'd had a third baby — another girl, whom they named Andi — and even a big apartment by New York City standards can feel small for a family of five. 

It was a difficult time, and I dug deep within myself, relying on positive-psychology methods I had studied while I was on medical leave. These coping mechanisms, combined with support from my family — my parents, my siblings, and those kids who called me Auntie — as well as regular dance classes, helped me build a deep resilience. While medication worked to keep my cancer from spreading, I was coming to terms with the fact that I'd probably be treating my cancer for the rest of my life.

I still had my frozen eggs

The thought of my eggs, safely tucked away in a freezer at New York University, began to feel increasingly complicated. Years earlier, during my first go-around with cancer, both my sister and one of my college roommates offered to act as a surrogate if cancer treatment meant I couldn't safely carry a baby. While I'm forever grateful for those offers, my anxiety centered less on who would carry the pregnancy and more on what might happen after a baby arrived.

Cancer has shown me that life isn't guaranteed. I struggled with whether it would be selfish to invite a child into my world of doctor appointments, surgeries, pills, and injections. The physical realities of indefinite cancer treatment seemed incompatible with the demands of being a single mom. I didn't make a final decision, but I knew that I wasn't ready to become a mom.

Then came the pandemic. As the world shut down, I worried that because I was immunocompromised, I would feel unsafe and lonely in my apartment in the NYC Flatiron neighborhood. In mid-March 2020, my brother drove me to our sister's house. When I arrived, my favorite little people were excited to learn I was going to stay a week or two. I ended up staying for six months.  

Being an aunt helped me know a mother's love

The rhythm of those days took on a sweetness I'll never forget. A year earlier, while we were on vacation, Ryan had been my roommate. When he saw me writing in my gratitude journal at night, I explained I wrote down things I loved about the day that I wanted to remember — things that were "special moments." He joined me and would often choose something as simple as extra sprinkles on his ice cream. 

We continued a similar practice in the evenings when we were together amid the worst pandemic days. Once he told me, "Doing special moments is a special moment." Ryan's ability to stay present and feel grateful for the very moment he was in regularly reminds me to do the same.

That time in Connecticut involved countless special moments with all the kids. Alex attended her first "sleepover" at 4 ½ in the guest room where I slept. I created a special to-do list for the evening, which included a dance party, blowing up balloons, and having a spa treatment. It would be the first of many sleepovers during that time. 

Andi was only 9 months old when her family moved to Connecticut, so I never had as much time with her in the city as I had with her siblings. During my extended stay in her home, she was too little to have remote school like her siblings did, which meant she was free to visit with me anytime she liked. Andi would occasionally join me for the virtual workshops I was leading. For weeks after I left her house and returned to the city, she would keep entering the room I had stayed in to see whether I had come back. 

My love for my nephew and nieces is full of tenderness. But it's a love that reminds me that one of my biggest dreams may never come true in the way I imagined. At the same time, they bring what I see as the magic of motherhood into my life in a very real way.

While I may not be a mom, I believe I know a mother's love. I can't imagine not having this relationship with all three of these amazing, little humans. That fact raises a lot of hard questions. Part of me wishes I never had cancer at all, but if I hadn't, would I have gotten to be an aunt in this way? 

Most cancer stories we hear seem to have one of two endings. Someone either survives and is cured, or they die. I now know there's a third possibility: thriving. This is what I'm doing right now. Even with stage 4 incurable breast cancer, I have reasonable hope that I can live for decades. It's been five years since my cancer metastasized, and I'm still on my first-line treatment, which shows that even within this tough diagnosis, I've caught some incredibly lucky breaks.

My motherhood journey hasn't looked like I ever would have guessed. Yes, it's been complicated, but it's been incredible, too. These kids have brought me joy, love, and, I believe, a kind of healing.

Sally Joy Wolf is an entrepreneur, speaker, and writer who combines expertise in positive psychology with her cancer journey to deliver messages of resilience, post-traumatic growth, and comprehensive wellbeing.