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For years, Frances raced through life until three cancer battles and a global pandemic forced her to pause.

When Frances Chang looks back across the last two decades of her life, the story stretches far beyond three cancer diagnoses. It is a hard-earned lesson about pace, purpose, and learning to stop running. “COVID-19 was a blessing to me,” she said plainly. “It showed me that the world can stop. Business can take a back seat. And I realised I needed to do the same.”

OVERCOMING A BRUTAL TREATMENT REGIME

Back in 2006, she was in full stride in a fast-paced career in real estate development. Her children were only three and five. Work was relentless, and she had been brushing off “funny symptoms” for weeks until she managed to squeeze in a quick appointment between project meetings. What followed was a blur: referral to a breast surgeon, a biopsy, and a devastating diagnosis of Stage 2 breast cancer, aggressive and fast-moving.

“I was worried about everything,” she recalls. “My kids were so young. Work was at its peak. And suddenly everything had to stop.”

The treatment was brutal. After her lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiotherapy wore her down in unexpected ways. She developed severe infections and ulcers that stretched from her mouth to her throat. Eating became excruciating. “Every spoon of food was painful,” she says. “A bowl of soup could take two or three hours. I lost so much weight. I couldn’t even drink.”

As her body weakened, she hit the lowest point of her life. She remembered lying in her apartment, looking at her young children and wondering if she would survive long enough to watch them grow. She thought about writing letters for them to read when they turned 16 or 21 but could not bring herself to do it. “I felt like giving up,” she said. “And I decided, no. I will fight this instead.”

Frances eventually completed her treatment and swung hard in the other direction. She went all organic, cut red meat and sugar, and rebuilt her life around strict dietary discipline. For five years, it worked, until 2011, when she was diagnosed again with breast cancer.

A SECOND WAKE-UP CALL

The shock was overwhelming. “I did everything right,” she says. “I thought: why me again?” But even through the disappointment, a new awareness had been growing in her. As a Christian, she saw the recurrence as a stern reminder to slow down. “I realised I had been sucked back into work again. I wasn’t putting God first. My faith had to come before everything else.”

Still, old habits die hard. Even after promising herself that she would change her lifestyle, the momentum of her career kept dragging her forward. She finally left her high-flying job in 2016 for a supposedly smaller role, but that too quickly expanded into regional responsibilities. There were weeks she shuttled between Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong to negotiate deals, days of working hard and nights of barely seeing her children.

“It was like I was being pulled back again,” she says. “Almost like a chastisement. The two diagnoses were telling me to slow down, but I didn’t.”

While undergoing her second treatment, her father was diagnosed with lymphoma and Frances never got to say a proper goodbye. “That year was bad,” she recalled quietly. “Really bad.”

A THIRD DIAGNOSIS, AND A TURNING POINT

By the time the third diagnosis came in 2019, Frances was different. The fear was still there, but the panic was not. It was Stage 1, detected early, but a lumpectomy was no longer an option. She underwent a double mastectomy and a complicated reconstruction journey filled with setbacks. Yet she felt strangely steadier than before. “I was older, more mature in my faith,” she says. “I prayed more. I turned to God more.”

Then the world changed. COVID-19 hit. The world came to a stop: meetings, travel, deals, demands. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “Just like that, the whole world slowed down. And I knew it was my time to slow down too.”

In August 2020, she told her boss she intended to resign. “I actually said, ‘I’m going to sack you,’” she laughed. She served a six-month notice period and officially left in mid-2021.

REBUILDING LIFE AT A GENTLER PACE

The years since have been nothing short of transformative.

At first, she got bored quickly but something else began to shift. Her husband slowed down his work too. Suddenly, their family was eating together, spending long hours talking, reconnecting. She discovered the quiet pleasure of planning meals, Mediterranean today, Italian next week, Egyptian the week after. Her children loved her cooking so much that her daughter declared, “Mum, you will never get rid of me. I’ll always come home to eat even after I marry.”

With more flexibility, Frances and her husband travelled whenever good flight deals came up. They leaned into simpler pleasures: home-cooked dinners, church fellowship, Bible college classes, prayer meeting and serving more in church.

Frances eventually took up part-time work as a real estate agent for just a couple of hours a day, enough to stay active and meet people, but not to be consumed again. “I can’t sit at home all day,” she says. “But now I work on my terms.”

Looking back, the pattern is unmistakable. “Why three times?” she reflects. “Maybe it was to stop me in my tracks. To humble me. To make me focus on what truly matters.”

Today, she follows up regularly with her oncologist, never taking her health for granted. Moderation guides her life now, whether in work, food, or ambition. “I don’t rely on myself anymore,” she shared. “I commit everything to God and leave the outcome to Him. With that, the load is lighter.”

Twenty years have passed since her first diagnosis, but the lessons stay sharp. “I used to run so fast,” she says. “Now I finally know how to slow down and live.”