News
Dialogues between Survivors and Caregivers: Looking at Myself Again
24/02/2026
This article is part of the “Healing in Two Voices” series developed within the e-QuoL project, which brings together survivor voices and professional reflections on life after childhood and adolescent cancer. In this series, professional contributions do not aim to add explanations or conclusions. They create spaces for reflection — ethical, psychological, and clinical — opened by the testimonies themselves.
1
What working on one’s image allows — and what it doesn’t promise.
After cancer, the challenge isn’t only medical. It’s also about identity.
Many women find themselves with a body that has changed.
Familiar landmarks disappear.
The link between before and after feels broken.
Working on one’s image doesn’t heal cancer.
But it can repair something essential — the link to oneself.
It can help to:
→ regain concrete reference points
→ reclaim a body that has changed
→ rebuild a sense of continuity in one’s identity
I’ve heard this reality several times.
Said differently each time, but always the same truth:
‘My body has changed.’
‘I don’t know how to dress anymore.’
‘Nothing fits me now.’
‘I’ve lost my reference points.’
And each time, I saw myself again —
a few years ago, standing in front of my closet,
avoiding my reflection in shop windows,
whispering, ‘I’m not the same anymore.’
The ‘after’ of cancer is often described as a new journey —
fewer treatments, more freedom, the hope of returning to a “normal” life.
But we talk much less about another kind of reconstruction:
→ that of identity
→ that of the relationship to the body
→ that of self-image
Because image is not superficial.
It shapes how we exist — in the eyes of others and in our own.
When we no longer recognize ourselves,
we slowly start to fade from our own life.
Research shows that a calmer relationship with body image after cancer
is associated with better quality of life and higher self-esteem
(Álvarez-Pardo et al., 2023).
Interventions that support this connection also strengthen confidence,
social engagement, and psychological well-being (Helgeson et al.).
Laura Bathilde – a patient Les Aguerris – France
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The body keeps the story — in scars, sensations, and silences.
After treatment, rediscovering one’s reflection can be both a reunion and a shock.
For many survivors, this moment — meeting one’s own image again — is the real beginning of the after.
Research and clinical experience converge: addressing body image is not a matter of vanity, but of reconstruction.
The body is not only an organism to repair; it is also the place where the traces of one’s history, sometimes left unsaid, are inscribed. Paying attention to one’s image means recognizing these traces, without forcing them to disappear, and opening a path toward gradual reconciliation with oneself.
Care after cancer should include support for self-image, self-confidence, and psychosocial reintegration.
Because the medical cure and the personal healing do not always follow the same timeline.
Working on image helps re-establish continuity — between the person one was and the person one is becoming.
It allows the survivor to move from enduring their body to inhabiting it again.
This process can take many forms: aesthetic care, adapted physical activity, photography, art, movement, or simply choosing again what feels like oneself.
There is no rule — only the gentle work of reconciliation.
Reclaiming one’s image doesn’t mean forgetting what happened.
It’s about welcoming who we have become, with all that we have been through, and gradually feeling at home in this body once again
It means being able to look at oneself again —
and to see not only the illness,
but also the life that continues beneath the scar.
Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft