It’s always difficult talking or writing about someone in the past tense. Is becomes was and never changes. At just 52 years old, seven years after she announced that she had stage 3 breast cancer, Ananda Lewis passed away from the disease.
Lewis was the big sister many of us never had —a warm voice on Teen Summit. She became the “It Girl” for many a millennial trying to find her way and for many a Gen Xer who already thought she had. Before becoming a star, Lewis worked with teens, and it was the youth she worked with who encouraged her to try out for Teen Summit’s auditions, giving her an even larger platform to spread awareness and help other young people. Lewis was stunning in a way that made jealous easy, but with a personality that made it hard. She was easy to be around, even if just through the television. Lewis was a sharp staple on BET before it became Uncut. She then moved to MTV, becoming one of Veejay’s during the ushering in of the new millennium, which led to her co-hosting position on MTV’s Total Request Live.
In 2020, Lewis revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had been living with it for two years. She decided to trust her body, as she said, opting to forgo more traditional treatments, like a mastectomy, and instead changed her diet and did a less invasive form of chemotherapy. Lewis’s mother had breast cancer, and she figured it was caused by the radiation from the mammograms, so she also decided to forgo them, making it harder for the cancer to be detected earlier.
When her cancer was detected, she decided—against her doctor’s suggestion—to not get a double mastectomy.
Here’s the thing: even if she had opted to get a mastectomy or lumpectomy, that isn’t a guarantee. Mastectomies and lumpectomies have high success rates but are not 100% guaranteed to work. Cancer can metastasize and move to other organs. After initial success with her diet and changing her lifestyle, Lewis’s cancer metastasized to stage IV.
Cancer doesn’t care. Cancer’s sole purpose is to destroy.
Even though Black women are less likely to get breast cancer than white women, they are more likely to die from it, and more likely to get a more aggressive form of the disease. According to the American Cancer Society, it is the leading cause of cancer death among Black women, and Black women have the lowest survival rate for all subtypes of breast cancer. Limiting alcohol, maintaining a healthy body weight and staying physically active can help decrease cancer risk by 30%.
Breast cancer feels like a giant betrayal; the things that sustain and nurture others are killing you. Losing someone to breast cancer feels like a betrayal, too. Knowing someone you loved was dying on the inside and fighting to live at the same time—and you both lost them—is a heartbreak that no one should experience, but so many do.
Please self-exam, get your mammograms, and take the best care of yourself that you can.
Rest well, Ananda. Thank you for being a light, even in the present tense.
