Blog for Hope - Jill Eikenberry

Jill Eikenberry starred in Broadway productions of Moonchildren, Watch on the Rhine, Summer Brave, Onward Victoria, and All Over Town. A graduate of Yale Drama School, she appeared Off-Broadway in Uncommon Women and Others, Eccentricities of a Nightingale, and won an Obie award for her performances in Lemon Sky, and Life Under Water. She earned a Golden Globe Award and five Emmy nominations as Ann Kelsey on NBC-TV's L.A. Law. Films: Between the Lines, Arthur, Hide in Plain Sight. She received the Humanitas Award for Destined to Live, a breast cancer documentary she co-produced and hosted on NBC.

My Secret

I got my breast cancer diagnosis in 1986. Almost 20 years ago. No one was talking about it then. The only person I knew with breast cancer was the lady upstairs in my apartment building who had died the year before leaving three children. When the breast specialist told me I had cancer I was sure I was going to die. I was afraid but I was also ashamed. I felt like I was a failure - like I had let my guard down.

And in those days it was very important to me to appear successful - to be on top of things. So I kept my terrible secret to myself. Only my family and my very closest friends knew.

“L.A. Law” was just starting and as soon as my six weeks of radiation treatments were over I put my cancer as far away from me as I could. It was much more fun to think about becoming famous than it was to think about that black cloud looming over me. But two years after the show had gone on the air I was approached by a television producer named Linda Otto.

She had had breast cancer and somehow she knew that I had too. She wanted to make a documentary, interviewing hundreds of women who had survived the disease. She said she didn’t think people knew there could be life after breast cancer and that it was important to open up and start talking about it so women would be less afraid and feel less alone. I agreed to be part of it. It was time for me to come out of the closet.

When the film was broadcast on TV, I realized was that I had been wrong to think people would judge me, or think of me as a failure if I admitted that I had cancer. Instead I suddenly had friends all over the world who were going through the same thing or who had mothers or sisters or wives that were going through it. I began to understand that opening up and sharing your fears is as important as chemotherapy or radiation for the healing process.

In many ways my experience with breast cancer has been a gift. The last 20 years have been remarkable for me and my husband Mike. We’ve learned to value each other in a new way and our love has gotten deeper every year. Mike says it’s because we now realize that we are going to die. Maybe not from breast cancer but from something. And so the question becomes, “How do we want to live?”