“And Then What Happened?‪”‬

The purpose of this research was to understand the lived experience of breast cancer survivors. The aims were to find out how survivors changed as a result of their illness and what meaning they made of their experience. The questions “so what?” and “then what happened?” were the underlying foci of understanding how it was for the participants to live their daily lives, if changes were positive or negative, and what that meant to the survivors. The research methodology was qualitative in nature. Philosophically phenomenological in approach, eight breast cancer survivors participated in two separate interviews to provide the case studies for narrative analysis. Two meta narratives emerged from the interview data: change and meaning. As part of the change meta narrative, there were three major themes. These major themes were negative change, chronic illness, and posttraumatic growth. The negative change theme further divided into four subthemes of invisible illness, invisible God, lost voices, and lost expectations. There were additionally five subthemes under posttraumatic growth: new self perception, new possibilities, new relations with others, new priorities, and new faith. The second meta narrative of meaning had the major theme of mortality. Survivors reported stories of positive and negative change complete with doubts and fears, as well as renewed relationships and altered priorities. There were reports of anger directed towards God and other people, and there were stories of deeper faith and altruistic giving to others. As they grappled with understanding their breastcancer, they had to face fears of recurrence and the very real possibility of their own death. When the active treatment for breast cancer ended, survivors reported struggles with resuming a new life, with a new identity, and new challenges. With the increasing numbers of breast cancer survivors, it is imperative that there is research directed towards the needs of the survivors. The stories shared in the current research can inform counseling practice for provision of the support, advocacy, and mental health care that survivors need to negotiate their survivorship trajectory.