Jill Martin On How Her Battle With Breast Cancer Battle Has Given Her Purpose

Jill Martin really did have it all. In 2023, the then 47-year-old was newly married to her “prince charming,” had a successful TV career as fashion correspondent for Today and was constantly surrounded by her loving family and a host of close friends. “I was the person that you look at and say, ‘Wow!,’” Martin tells PEOPLE. “I really had it down.”

Then came the stunning news. Despite a clean mammogram and sonogram three months earlier, results from a genetic test revealed that Martin had inherited the BRCA2 mutation – not from her mother, but from her father’s side of the family. With the gene mutation, she had a 60-90% chance of getting breast cancer. “You think it’s not you—until it’s you,” says Martin, whose brother and father also have the mutation.

Upon recommendation from her doctor, Martin agreed to a double mastectomy and during her pre-operative MRI, learned that she already had a one-to-two inch cancerous mass in her left breast. “If we hadn’t caught it within the year, it would have been incurable,” recalls Martin, now 48, who dreaded telling her beloved parents: “I could not make that call.”

Diagnosed with aggressive stage 2b breast cancer, she spent the next year undergoing a double mastectomy, four months of grueling chemotherapy, radiation, reconstructive surgery and a preventative procedure to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes. “I can’t describe chemotherapy other than physical and mental torture,” she says.   

Now cancer-free, Martin looks back with appreciation for how the harrowing ordeal has since helped her find purpose in life. “It totally changed my life in such powerful ways and in really beautiful ways too,” she tells PEOPLE. “I was given the superpower to help educate and advocate for other people going through this and other families.”

Martin has shared her journey with cancer with Today viewers every step of the way, hoping to inspire others to take their own health more seriously. “I’m literally shouting from the rooftops that if you have any kind of cancer in your family, you should get genetic testing,” says Martin, who has built a loyal following of viewers with her frequent “Ambush Makeover” and “Steals and Deals” segments.

“I was given this platform to be able to help people,” says Martin. “It gives me a tremendous amount of purpose. I am much more at ease, calm, who I am, since having cancer.”

“If someone’s watching and they see the girl on TV, the nice blonde girl who gives us good deals, who kept up on her tests and did everything right and still got cancer, it says, maybe I should get tested.”

By facing her health challenges head-on in a huge public platform, Martin has experienced a renewed sense of confidence. “There were only two choices for me,” she says. “I could either make right decisions and be proud of my decisions and be proud of myself and thrive,” she says, “or lay in bed and pull the covers up over my head.”

“I look at [her battle with cancer] as a badge of honor more than something that would be viewed as a negative.”

Read the original article on People