Year One: Gayatri Aryan Reflects on Living with Stage IV, Leading with Grace

“Letting go, even temporarily, felt like losing a core part of myself — my independence, my momentum, my identity as a builder and leader. But my body was loud in its demands, and for the first time in my life, I had to listen.” When Gayatri received a Stage IV cancer diagnosis, her world shifted overnight. A thriving tech executive, mother, and an Executive MBA student, she suddenly found herself navigating a new normal. In this deeply personal reflection, she shares what Year One taught her about resilience, uncertainty, and support. This piece marks the first of an ongoing series following Gayatri’s journey, exploring what it means to live, lead, and find purpose while navigating life with breast cancer. We’re honored to partner with her to inspire and uplift other women.

Year One: Navigating the New Normal
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The diagnosis was a seismic shift. One moment, I was a tech executive, a mother, and an MBA student; the next, I was a cancer patient grappling with a Stage IV diagnosis. The initial whirlwind of appointments, tests, and consultations was overwhelming, but it was the emotional toll that truly upended my world.

Thanksgiving came, and I found myself weeping at the dinner table, the weight of uncertainty pressing down on me. The holidays, usually a time of joy, were shadowed by fear and grief. I looked at my children, wondering if I would see them grow up.

Professionally, I was at a peak, having just started a new role overseeing a comprehensive product suite. But the demands of treatment and the side effects, including the hormonal upheaval from induced menopause, made it clear that I couldn’t maintain the pace. By May, I took a medical leave, initially thinking it would be brief. It wasn’t.

Stepping away from work wasn’t an easy decision. I had built my career steadily since graduating in 1997 — other than two maternity leaves, I had never paused. At the time, I believed this would be temporary: a few weeks to recover, recalibrate, and return. I didn’t know then that this pause would stretch into something much longer. Letting go, even temporarily, felt like losing a core part of myself — my independence, my momentum, my identity as a builder and leader. But my body was loud in its demands, and for the first time in my life, I had to listen.

Deciding to continue with the MIT EMBA program was challenging. Traveling to Puerto Rico for our Global Labs module was no longer feasible, but I contributed remotely, finding purpose in supporting the power restoration efforts from afar.

That first year taught me about resilience, the importance of support systems, and the need to find new ways to define purpose and success. It was a year of loss, adaptation, and unexpected strength.

But beyond the logistical shifts, Year One was when I began to understand something deeper about change — especially the kind that arrives without warning, without mercy, and without offering you a say.

So much of life until that point had been built around plans: five-year goals, product roadmaps, quarterly strategies, family vacations booked months in advance. Success, progress, meaning — all of it felt measurable. It gave life a shape. And then, in an instant, that scaffolding collapsed. What do you do when the map no longer applies? When the goal is not a destination, but simply more time?

Uncertainty, I’ve learned, doesn’t just blur the future. It forces a reckoning with the present. And in that reckoning, a new kind of clarity emerges — not the kind that comes from control, but the kind that comes from presence. From noticing. From being forced to live in the space between “before” and “after.”

There is something profoundly disorienting about realizing that the life you’ve been building no longer follows the rules you were taught. Work hard, make good decisions, stay healthy, give back — these were the pillars I’d trusted. But cancer, especially Stage IV cancer, doesn’t care about those rules. It tears through them.

And yet, somewhere in that destruction, a different foundation begins to take shape. One built not on certainty, but on attention. On showing up — for your kids, for your own body, for the strange beauty in a good day. I started to see life not as a series of milestones to reach, but as a series of moments to live. Fully. Even when they were painful. Especially when they were painful.

Year One was the hardest year of my life. But it was also the year that taught me how to hold two truths at once: that life can be terrifying and beautiful, that endings can coexist with beginnings, that you can grieve deeply and still choose to keep going.

The shift from treating cancer to living with cancer is not just medical. It’s philosophical. It requires accepting that you are now living in a story that doesn’t resolve neatly. That you may not get to tie a bow around your experience and call it “over.” And in that acceptance, there is grief — but there is also grace.

It took time to understand that pausing my career wasn’t just a concession to illness — it was also an invitation to redefine success. To stop measuring my worth by output or efficiency or how many meetings I could cram into a day. And to begin asking harder, deeper questions: Who am I when I am not producing? What do I value when time feels uncertain? What kind of legacy am I shaping, right now, in this ordinary, interrupted life?

I still don’t have all the answers. But in Year One, I stopped pretending I did. And that, I think, was the beginning of healing — not in the clinical sense, but in the human one.

Thank you Gayatri for sharing this inspiring story with us. We are honored to share your story and have you in our global women’s community.

Bio: Gayatri Aryan is a seasoned leader with over two decades of experience in high-tech, finance, and consulting. Currently as Director of Product Development at Dell Technologies, she heads multiple products from inception to intervention. Gayatri values vision and execution while working through startups and Fortune 500 companies alike. Having graduated from MIT Sloan with an Executive MBA, Gayatri is advising multiple startups at the digital juxtaposition. A firm believer in giving back, Gayatri is an active member of various communities: as President-elect for MIT Club of Boston, on her town’s PTO Board, as Chair of Hindi Manch’s Baal-Yuva Vibhaag to name a few. She abodes with her family in Newton, MA.