Sonali Bendre was diagnosed with cancer in 2018.
Sonali Bendre, known to be open about her battle with cancer, talked about her journey in a podcast recently.
Sonali Bendre returned to acting with the newsroom-drama series The Broken News in 2022. The sequel to the show is set to premiere on ZEE5 in May 2024. The actress, known for her openness about her battle with cancer, talked about her journey in a Humans of Bombay podcast. Reflecting on her initial reaction to her cancer diagnosis, Sonali said that when she received the news of her cancer diagnosis, her first question was, ‘Why me?’”
She said, “I’d wake up thinking it was all a nightmare; I couldn’t believe that this could happen to me. That’s when I started to change the way I thought. Instead of ‘why me?’ I started asking, ‘Why not me?’ I started to feel grateful this wasn’t happening to my sister or my son. I realised I had the strength to deal with this, I had the resources to go to the best hospitals, and the support system to help me through this. Starting to ask ‘why not me?’ helped me start the healing process.”
In 2018, Sonali was diagnosed with stage four cancer. She underwent treatment in New York and became cancer-free in 2021. Since then, she’s been supporting cancer survivors and raising awareness. She also posted on Cancer Survivors Day in 2021. She had written, “How time flies… today when I look back, I see strength, I see weakness but most importantly I see the will to not let the C word define how my life will be after it…You create the life you choose. The journey is what you make of it… so remember to take #OneDayAtATime and to #SwitchOnTheSunshine (rainbow, sunshine and heart emojis) #CancerSurvivorsDay.”
During a conversation with News18 Showsha earlier, Sonali Bendre had talked about how she realised her love for acting after she was diagnosed with cancer. “Going through an illness gives you a lot of clarity, when you say, ‘I want to survive this’ or ‘When I come out what am I going to do?’ The only thing you can think is going in front of the camera and that’s when I realised that I would really not want to do nothing else but this (acting),” she had told us.
