Cancer forced me to see my job more clearly: Bridge building isn’t the pursuit of agreement. It is choosing to see one another as neighbors before opponents, people before positions.
North Jersey teenager skates 11 miles for cancer research
Ryan Amendola of Lincoln Park started Blades Against Cancer after losing his grandmother to lung cancer in 2021.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2024, my first thoughts were not about treatment plans or prognosis. They were about my children.
As a single mother, I had long grown accustomed to carrying responsibility and placing myself last. Like so many parents raising children on their own, I managed the schedules, solved the crises, celebrated the milestones, and handled the countless invisible tasks that keep a family moving forward. Independence felt less like a choice than a necessity.
Breast cancer disrupted that illusion.
Suddenly, I faced questions no amount of preparation could answer alone. Who would help with school pickups when I was exhausted? Who would sit with my children when fear felt too big for words? How would we navigate the uncertainty that arrived with every new doctor’s appointment?
What carried me through was not self-sufficiency. It was my tribe. My family. My community.
‘The wound is the place where the Light enters you’
Friends filled my freezer with meals and left post-surgery necessities on my doorstep. Neighbors cleared snow from my porch. Family members traveled to be with us. Colleagues offered grace, encouragement and love. People from different backgrounds, beliefs and life experiences stepped forward to help shoulder a burden that was never mine alone to carry.
It took me a long time to learn that lesson.
The 13th century poet Rumi wrote, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Looking back, I understand what he meant. Breast cancer revealed not only my vulnerability but also my dependence on others. Through that dependence, I saw more clearly a truth I had always known: We belong to one another.
For nearly two decades, my professional life has centered on bridge building and pluralism. I have trained thousands of civic leaders, educators and students in the skills of being a bridge builder. I have spent countless hours thinking about polarization, civic trust and the divisions shaping our communities. We often treat these as political problems, but I have come to believe they are also profoundly relational ones.
Bridge building is not the pursuit of agreement.
It is the conviction that our shared humanity matters more than our differences. It is the practice of remaining connected when consensus is impossible. It is choosing to see one another as neighbors before opponents, people before positions.
My doctors did not ask who I voted for before treating me
Illness strips away the identities that often dominate our lives. In waiting rooms and treatment centers, distinctions that seem so important recede into the background. My doctors did not ask who I voted for before treating me. No one checked ideological affiliations before delivering a meal.
I have witnessed what people are capable of when they choose connection over suspicion. I have experienced generosity from people who owed me nothing and received support that transcended every category we often use to separate ourselves.
In our most vulnerable moments, what connects us becomes far more visible than what divides us.
As my children watched me navigate cancer, I hope they learned something deeper than perseverance. I hope they learned that accepting help is not weakness, that community is not incidental to our well-being but essential to it, and that the measure of a life is not how much we carry ourselves, but how willing we are to carry one another.
Today, when I think about bridge building, I think less about grand national debates and more about the people who showed up when my family needed them most: the friend who called, the neighbor who checked in, the colleague who extended grace, and the community that built a bridge to us when we could not cross the distance ourselves.
Those acts did not solve every problem. They did something more important. They reminded us that we were not alone.
In a moment when division can feel inevitable, that lesson is worth remembering.
The strongest bridges are not built from agreement. They are built from the recognition that our lives are interconnected, our futures intertwined, our humanity shared.
I learned that lesson as a cancer survivor. And it continues to guide me as a bridge builder.
Jenan Mohajir is vice president of external affairs at Interfaith America, a Chicago-based nonprofit dedicated to equipping leaders to build institutions dedicated to the ideals of pluralism.