Rocking the Pink

How many times in your life have you considered seriously shaking things up? Laura Roppé was already making some moves in that direction when diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer in 2008. So the timing was right to put the legal career aside in favor of pursuing her music career full time. After beating back that cancer, of course.

Evidence of how that all went can be found in her music and in her book, Rocking the Pink: Finding Myself on the Other Side of Cancer.

A triple-negative breast cancer survivor myself, reading the book brought back a lot of memories. It’s only been six months since I completed my cancer treatment. It’s not that I’d forgotten the details, but reading about it through someone else’s eyes awakened dormant feelings — like how it felt to be recognizable as a cancer patient and how others, particularly strangers, react to that.

Some of her thoughts mirrored my own experiences, like when her husband said, “You need to go to the doctor about this right away. Tomorrow,” while she “wasn’t the least bit worried.” Exactly how it went in my home.

As Laura writes about what I’ll call “platitude fatigue,” I knew exactly how she felt as a stranger approached her in a parking lot and she thought, “Please get to the part where you encourage me to be positive. I need to go to bed.”

Laura is more than a cancer patient or a cancer survivor. She’s a wife, mother, and friend. She’s a former attorney and current award-winning rocker. Rocking the Pink is more about the rocking part of life — the living — than it is about the pink part. That’s because no one who gets cancer is all about cancer. We’re still us inside and, if we’re fortunate enough to come out on the other side, we can savor the sweetness of life as never before.

There are two pieces of very good news here. The first is that Laura is here — able to tell her story — and rocking the music world. The second is that this is neither a drawn out depressing tale, nor is it a “I’m a hero because I beat cancer” story. It’s a book about life. It’s about the choices we make. It’s about the tough challenges of life and how we handle them. It’s about finding new friends in the least likely places. It’s about following one’s passion, appreciating those who love us, and fining inner strength just when it is needed.

You don’t have to have personal experience with cancer to find this an enlightening read. For more information about the book or about Laura Roppé, visit www.lauraroppe.com

Disclosure: A representative for the author provided me with a copy of the book for the purpose of writing this article. No agreement was made about the content of the article nor do I have any financial connection to the book.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Nils Anders L.

1:47AM PST on Feb 2, 2013

Thanks

February 2
send a green star

1:46AM PST on Feb 2, 2013

Winn A.

4:28PM PDT on May 6, 2012

May 6
send a green star

Danuta W.

12:16AM PDT on Apr 17, 2012

Thank you for the article

April 17
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Ra S.

3:03PM PDT on Apr 2, 2012

As someone who is disabled and likely will be for the rest of her life, I would like the message that I really don't need people telling me to be positive, telling me how brave I am, or trying to convince me to not give up hope for medical help rather than actually accepting my health as it is and getting on with my life. Lots of people do get that, but if you see a stranger with some medical problem, they probably just want to get on with their day and to be treated like anyone else.

April 2
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Cindy W.

3:28AM PDT on Mar 28, 2012

Will definitely add this to my "must read" list. I'm also a triple negative breast cancer survivor (5 1/2 years) and can relate to savouring the sweetness of life like never before :-) Life is just different now, in a good way.