This experience, luckily, has made you realize the some important things about yourself and how you want to live your life. Now comes the part that in some ways is more difficult than staring down death: figuring out how to live.

If you were strong enough to survive cancer, I'm confident that you're strong enough to pursue your dreams and withstand the disapproval of your family and friends. Try to look beyond their attempts to control you--are they saying these things because they have their own needs that they're afraid to admit?

About your husband: he has the right to expect things from you. He doesn't get to dictate your career or decide whether you go skydiving, but he is allowed to expect a degree of love and support from you (and you from him). This has been difficult for him, too, I'd imagine, and he may feel, in some ways, like he's at risk of losing you all over again. A little bit of support and reassurance would go a long way.

Good luck out there pursuing your new-found ambitions...I think you have every right to them, just be sure to balance it with the responsibility to the people you want to keep in your life.

Write out your bucket list. Keep the right-hand margin blank and pencil in the cost of each item. Keep the left-hand margin blank and pencil in the time required to complete each item.

Take some colored highlighters and assign a level of priority and desire to each color. Green, for example, might be used to identify your most important urgent wishes, while orange might be reserved for those items you can wait just a little bit longer for.

Put a "checkmark" next to those items you can get done easily, cheaply, with the least amount of interference from your loved ones.

Put a "minus sign" next to those items which are beyond your financial means or for which you are receiving the most amount of static from your community.

Put a "plus sign" on the one item you just can't forego no matter what the cost, the time involved, or the outside resistence.

Do the plus sign item first. Once you have done it, you can offer whatever apologies are required to make amends with the people who told you not to do it.

Do the checkmark items in the normal course of your life, fitting them in here and there.

Pull out your 2009 calendar and 2010 and start blocking out the times for the rest of your "minus sign" items and open a bank account to set aside cash to pay for those items that are expenive. While you save, you can give your family some time to get used to the "new you."

And get lots of rest and eat right to keep your health up.

No one else has to understand you. They will get to know you as you continue to evolve.

Shortly after I was married, I was diagnosed with a rare congenital blood condition which, when flared, causes fatigue, extreme fatigue, and, in a weakend immune state, the potential for death. While the specialists (at an internationally reknown teaching institution) debated on and on, the concensus seemed to be that my functional chances for living past three to five years were minimal.

So, my wife and I created an "A", "B" and "C" list. The "A" list included basics - will, advanced directive and power of attorney.

The "B" list involved more adventurous challenges....Travel to Russia to spend time at the Hermatige, to the Veneto surrounding Venice to study the works of Palladio, to Vienna to look at the work of Otto Wagner, a brilliant proto-modernist architect.....

The "C" list was more inchohate, more intuitive and fashioned out over time... and it represented a committment to fill my life with richer relationships, to deeply participate in the relationships that I cared about, and - to take care of myself. To tend to diet, sleep, comfort and self-care. Coming from a dysfunctional childhood, the concept of self-care was new, and learned.....

So, 18 years later, I note the A list has been done and updated, the B list has been acted on, with rich memories as a memento, and - that elusive "C" list - my specialists now talk about the issues inherent in aging, I manage Type I diabetes that reared its head about seven years ago with dietary self-care, and I do, indeed, weed out dysfunctional and superficial relationships.

Having a life-threatening condition (and various drug crashes and major opportunistic infections have challenged my health and pushed me close to the edge of dying several times...) has created, not a dynamic change in living, but a fulcrum for leveraging a more intense and focused life.

And, I do, indeed, have tatoos... One is a phoenix bird, rising from the ashes, the other is a floor plan of Palladio's great masterpiece, the Villa Rotunda...(unusual, but my body, my tat, and an interesting challenge for the tat artist....). They are the sometimes-talk of the gym where my wife and I work out, regularly. For my upcoming 60th birthday, a friend of ours has arranged for skydiving.

So, perhaps the concept of self-care and adventure are not mutually exclusive, but mutually reinforcing. In the process of creating mutually reinforcing adventure and self-care, I was able to create an alliance with my wife, and thus a companion in a more intensified life and a colleague in adventure.

why are they trying to waste your flava?

I wonder if the LW has considered participating in a cancer support group. They can be found in most cities. American Cancer Society, Gilda's Club, etc. There she can easily find people who will understand her new attitude and issues with family not wanting her to change.

I'm going through chemo right now for a rare cancer. I feel pretty good that I will be disease free for a while, but I know that likely won't last forever. My attitude has changed too, but not in the way the LW's has. I tend to take more pleasure from the once boring day-to-day events. But to each her own.