During an appearance on the Making Space With Hoda Kotb podcast on October 16, Jill Martin opened up about how she is "thriving" amidst her divorce and ongoing breast cancer journey.
Jill first went public about her breast cancer diagnosis in July 2023, and while reflecting on her journey she said,
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"Look what I'm doing. Operating with generosity and kindness and trying my best. I mean, people are like, 'How are you?' I'm like, 'Not great. I had cancer and I got divorced in a year.' How would you be doing? But I'm thriving under the circumstances."
While talking about how she chose to show up amidst dealing with her struggles, Jill said,
"I had two choices in the fork of the road...one was to crawl under the covers, and nobody would have blamed me. Or I could move on dot com."
Jill Martin and Erik Brooks decided to separate after two years of marriage. The couple tied the knot on September 20, 2022. While talking about the divorce, Jill said that the former couple is in the middle of it and she wants to be respectful while calling the marriage a "beautiful love affair."
More about Jill Martin's breast cancer diagnosis
In an essay Jill Martin wrote for TODAY.com in July 2023, she shared that she has a higher risk for breast cancer since both her mother and grandmother had it. Given her family genetic background, Jill was advised to take a genetic test which revealed she had a mutation to her BRCA gene. Martin then underwent a sonogram and an MRI which revealed that she had breast cancer.
The TODAY.com contributor has been receiving treatment since August 2023, and told PEOPLE in October 2023, that her journey has been difficult while balancing chemo treatments with work. Jill also went through a double mastectomy in 2023 and told Kotb during the podcast that the radiation treatment she had undergone led her to lose 70% of her hair.
Martin described that the last year had been "beyond earth-shattering" for her and there was a point when she called her oncologist and had "really bad thoughts" since she was suffering so much. However, now that Jill Martin looks at the version of herself in the mirror, she calls herself "pretty" and said that she loves her body more than she liked it before.
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