How Miranda McKeon Is Prioritizing Her Well-Being After Cancer Treatment

We tend to think of cancer treatment as the hardest part of the diagnosis. But even when treatment is successful (even when you’re told you’re cancer-free), that doesn’t mean everything simply goes back to how it was before.

“I do think the mental component just doesn’t totally go away, and that can be really heavy at times,” says McKeon. “You can feel like you're stuck back there or even like there's extra weight because you're like, why am I still dealing with this?” 

Early on, that showed up as intense worry. “I had so much anxiety about recurrence—it was all-consuming. I wasn’t sleeping,” she says. 

That mental load is often intertwined with ongoing physical realities. “I’m very much still on a bunch of medications, and there are ways that my body will just never, ever be the same,” she says. McKeon still does monthly injections (which she documents as a series on social media), she still gets cramping in her right arm that she regularly has to work on, and she’s still uncertain of what her fertility situation is. 

“It’s kind of like any life trauma, it’s just going to stick with you a little bit,” she says. “You can either choose to have it come out in ways that you don't want or take a little bit of control back of the narrative. So that's what I live alongside now.”

Because during treatment, the focus was about survival—about getting through it. But once that phase ended, McKeon realized recovery would require a more intentional approach.

“Afterwards, when I had more of a say in the matter, I committed a lot of time to active healing and active recovery,” she says.

This approach included therapy. “I was surprised how long it took to find a therapist that I actually vibed with,” she says. “Everyone’s like, ‘Just go to therapy,’ and yes, but you also need to find the person you really connect with, and that can be difficult,” she says.

McKeon met with multiple therapists who weren’t a good fit before finding one who was. Therapy played a key part, as she was intent on not avoiding what she’d been through. “I didn’t want it to be a case where I had that experience and was tucking it away in a box and putting it on a shelf,” she explains. “I didn’t want it to come back up later in ways I wasn’t in control of.”

“When I dumbed down the idea of fitness and just made it a goal to like move my body a little bit, whether it was like going on a walk, doing hills, or doing like a 10-minute sculpt, it really changed how I think about movement today,” she says. “

While she’s more intense with her workouts these days, she’s learned (and embodied) how easy it can be to integrate little forms of movement.

Walking, in particular, became something she now actively protects in her routine. “I was studying abroad in Rome, and my school was like a 45-minute walk. A few of us would walk instead of taking the bus, and that became my favorite part of the day,” she says. “Now my gym is a 30-minute walk away, and I actually look forward to it. It clears my head.”

Food, too, has become more intentional. “We’re very much an ingredients household,” she says. “It’s a lot of cooking, pairing different ingredients in different ways to make yummy, healthy food.”

McKeon is also on the protein and fiber train. She’s also started experimenting more in the kitchen through a farm box delivery service. “I’m getting so many more veggies than I would normally pick up at the grocery store,” she says. “It always has like all the colors of the rainbow, which is a great rule of thumb that I like to live by.”

Going through a serious illness at a young age has also reshaped how McKeon thinks about prevention and long-term health.

“I wish that young women treated themselves and their bodies in the way that you do when something has shaken… how life is more fragile than we think,” she says.