11/06/2026
On Purpose, For Purpose: Why I Advocate
By Amanda Brunson
When I think about advocacy, I don’t simply think about speaking on a stage, sitting on a panel, walking the halls of Capitol Hill, or sharing my cancer story. Advocacy, to me, is deeply personal. It is what I have chosen to do with the life I fought so hard to keep.
I was first diagnosed with leukemia at 21-years-old and faced cancer again at 25. Eventually, my journey included a bone marrow transplant. Cancer changed the direction of my life in ways I could never have anticipated. It interrupted my education, affected my fertility, challenged my relationships, changed the way I saw my body and my future, and forced me to confront questions most young adults never expect to face.
There is the fight to survive cancer, but then there is another journey that begins afterward: learning how to live after everything has changed.
For young adults especially, cancer can place what feels like a delay or a pause on life. Temporary is the key word, temporarily. While our peers may be building careers, finishing school, developing relationships, gaining independence, and learning the everyday skills that naturally come with growing older, we may be learning treatment schedules, medications, medical terminology, insurance, and how to make incredibly grown-up decisions at a very young age. In some ways, cancer forces you to grow up faster than you ever should have to, while simultaneously delaying some of the ordinary experiences that help you grow into adulthood. And when treatment ends, there can be an unspoken expectation that you simply pick up where you left off. But acclimating to life again, developing some of the skills you may not have had the opportunity to develop, and finding your place among peers whose lives continued moving forward can have an impact too. I believe that part of the young adult cancer experience deserves to be talked about.
That part of survivorship is one of the reasons advocacy means so much to me.
I know what it feels like to be grateful to be alive while simultaneously trying to figure out what life looks like now. I know what it means to survive physically and still have emotional, financial, medical, and personal pieces that need healing.
I also know what it means to discover that a life changed by cancer can still be a beautiful life. Not an easy life, and certainly not an easy path to walk as you learn to acclimate to your new normal, but it can still be a beautiful life.
I wear a bracelet on my arm that says, “Dreams become reality one choice at a time.” I carry those words with me because rebuilding your life after cancer really does happen one choice at a time. You may not get to choose what happened to you, but you can choose what you do next. You can choose to keep dreaming. You can choose to keep showing up. You can choose to build something meaningful with the life in front of you.
For me, that means choosing purpose. It can be a life full of purpose.
That realization has shaped the way I advocate. I often say that I do things on purpose, for purpose, to bring purpose and ignite purpose in other people.
Those words are more than a saying to me. They are how I try to live.
My advocacy has allowed me to serve as an Adolescent Young Adult (AYA) Ambassador and Patient Peer Advisor at Moffitt, where I mentor and connect with other people affected by cancer, participate in AYA conferences and panels, support bone marrow donor awareness through NMDP, work alongside organizations such as Stupid Cancer, and advocate with Blood Cancer United. It has also taken me to Capitol Hill, where I have had the opportunity to help bring the needs and experiences of cancer patients and survivors directly to people involved in shaping policy.
But the titles and opportunities are not the most important part.
The person is.
It is the young adult sitting in a hospital room wondering whether anyone understands what they are losing while everyone else is focused on keeping them alive.
It is the survivor who rings the bell or finishes treatment and discovers that everyone expects life to simply return to normal.
It is the patient worried about fertility, mental health, finances, chronic side effects, relationships, employment, or what their body may experience years after treatment.
It is the person who needs to hear, “I understand. I have been there too.”
Those are the people I carry with me when I advocate.
Research is also deeply personal to me because I understand that I am alive today because people before me advocated, participated in research, donated bone marrow, developed treatments, funded programs, and believed patients like me deserved a future.
Medical research gave me more than survival. It gave me birthdays I might not have had. It gave me time with the people I love. It gave me the opportunity to rebuild a life.
Because others helped create a path for me, I feel a responsibility to help create a path for someone else.
My faith has also taught me that purpose does not always come from the circumstances we would have chosen. Sometimes purpose grows from the very places that once caused us pain. I would never have chosen cancer. I would never have chosen the losses that came with it. But I can choose what I do with what happened to me.
And I choose to use it. I choose to speak. I choose to show up.
I choose to tell the truth about survivorship, not to diminish the incredible gift of being alive, but because being alive should include having the resources and support necessary to truly live.
Amanda Brunson Blog Contributor
Even after treatment ends, the fight does not end for everyone. Some patients and survivors continue fighting for their lives because of the long-term and late effects of the very treatments that helped save them. Treatment can leave lasting effects on the body and mind, and unfortunately, some survivors lose their lives to complications that develop after cancer treatment is over. That reality is another reason we are asking people to listen, to support research, and to continue helping us even in survivorship.
Every stage of the cancer experience matters, from diagnosis, to active treatment, to everything that comes afterward. But survivorship deserves particular attention because it does not have a clear ending. For many of us, survivorship follows us for the rest of our lives. Our medical needs may change, our bodies may change, and new late effects can appear years later. We need continued research, resources, monitoring, education, and support so that surviving cancer does not simply mean being alive but having the opportunity to live as healthy and full a life as possible.
That is why I advocate for long-term survivorship care, mental health support, fertility preservation, research, financial protection, quality of life, and making sure AYA patients have a voice in decisions being made about their care.
Advocacy has also taught me that purpose does not have to look enormous. Sometimes advocacy happens on Capitol Hill. Sometimes it happens on a stage. And sometimes it happens quietly between two survivors when one person realizes, for the first time, that they are not alone.
All of it matters.
Today, I understand that my story is not only about what I survived. It is about what I am doing because I survived.
Cancer absolutely changed my life. A bone marrow transplant changed my life. There are parts of my story I would never have written for myself. Yet somehow, through all of it, I have been able to build a life that is meaningful, intentional, and full of purpose.
And now I want other people to know they can build one too.
That is what advocacy means to me.
I survived, but I don’t want survival to be where my story ends.
I want to use the life I have been given to make someone else’s journey a little less lonely, to push for changes that make survivorship better, and to remind people that even after life changes completely, there can still be something beautiful ahead.
I want my life to say: Do it on purpose. Do it for purpose. Bring purpose with you and ignite it in someone else.
