America invented reinvention.

I am the grandchild of immigrants, lucky enough to know my paternal grandparents, who passed on their story of passing through Ellis Island.

I' m a patriot; I love my country and I love democracy. I love the fact that we 300 million Americans have little in common but this: Most of us are all descended from those daring optimists. Or maybe from those who had nothing left to lose.

From family conversations like mine, news accounts for others, or history cl**** for the young, we see that our immigrant ancestors had a shared psyche. They were the gamblers, the restless ones, unsatisfied with what they had and were likely to get in the Old Country, and so willing to go looking for something better. Imagine the faith, desperation and hope it took for them to turn their collective back on everything they had ever known--language, land, family. All traded in for a shot at reinvention.

In America, if you have the will to start over, you almost always can. You can run away from an old life or run to a new one. This is both our blessing and our curse.

My parents told me that if I was willing to work hard, I could be anything I wanted to be, and I believed them. Independent and headstrong, I left my small town in search of a career in broadcasting and I found it. As a reporter I had a ringside seat to see far more of the world than I could have possibly imagined as a child.

So, I set off on the American road of reinvention. I criss-crossed the country for a while, searching for the right job in the right city. Along the way I chose to marry, become a mother, divorce, remarry. I created a family and chose friends who are as close as blood. I entered middle age optimistic with other paths of reinvention yet to explore. I still wanted to write that novel that was living in my head. Start that new exercise program. Mentor my children into their own reinvention.

Then life pulled an intervention on my reinvention.

“Cancer survivor” was never a path on my life’s map.

Accepting a breast cancer diagnosis has occupied much of my life this past year. It has been the hardest work of my life.

What do I want to be now? Most of all, I want to live to be old, elderly, ancient. Don't get me wrong, I'm in no hurry. I don't want to be old right now. I want the years to pass in their own time. But I want to be here to live them out. I want wrinkles, deep ones. I find myself praying, bargaining and grasping for that future. I want to see grandchildren and I want to see them graduating with advanced degrees and walking down the aisle. I want to be all those things they call the elderly--indomitable, formidable, spry. I want to be a dowager, a crone, a little old lady. I want to be my family's matriarch.

When thinking about my diagnosis, it sounds so petulant to whine that I Didn't Choose This. Rationally, I know that no one chooses cancer or any chronic illness. But on my more immature days, I sometimes struggle with the fact that I am on a road that is not of my choosing. Like our President, I want to be The Decider. Choosers are more mythic and heroic than Chosens.

Sometimes I push away from the pink ribbons and marches and support groups. I feel kidnapped and held hostage here in Cancerland. Who do I have to pay, and how much, to get myself ransomed out of this place?

Each day I seek serenity. I want to mark that as my new territory, as the land that I can still immigrate to and claim as my homeland. I remind myself that my attitude is still what I get to choose. I can still Decide on this road. A mindset that is bold, determined, upbeat.

My American reinvention, my personal Plymouth Rock, is finding and colonizing my own Land of Acceptance. I am striking out to a new place, just like my grandparents did. I will find a way to make it my own.