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"See? This is why I live in this apartment!&amp;quot; says Robin Roberts as she strides through her living room, a warm mix of whites, beiges, and browns with lots of pretty throw pillows on comfy couches. She reaches her apartment&amp;#039;s wall of windows and...wow. There&amp;#039;s the Hudson River: almost all of it, it seems, so startlingly close you could practically dive in. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a water person,&amp;quot; she says, smiling so peacefully you&amp;#039;d never know that she got up at 3:45 this morning (as usual) and has been on the go-go-go ever since \u2014 while getting over a bad cold. She spent much of her childhood in Pass Christian, MS, right on the Gulf of Mexico, and of water she says, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s home.&amp;quot; Having a river to soothe her and remind her of childhood is just one of many ways the 51-year-old star of ABC&amp;#039;s Good Morning America keeps herself emotionally and spiritually nourished, upbeat, and calm despite a killer work schedule, a high-stress job, and, five years ago, a diagnosis with a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer. After soaking up the river view, Robin sinks into her white couch with her pooch, KJ, scampering underfoot. (&amp;quot;KJ&amp;quot; is short for &amp;quot;Killer Jack&amp;quot; \u2014 &amp;quot;Jack&amp;quot; because she&amp;#039;s a Jack Russell terrier and &amp;quot;Killer&amp;quot; because she was so docile as a puppy. Welcome to Robin&amp;#039;s world of irony.) It&amp;#039;s good to be Robin Roberts right now. First of all, GMA&amp;#039;s ratings have recently been the highest in five years, &amp;quot;and it&amp;#039;s just energized all of us,&amp;quot; she enthuses. And Robin has been shining especially brightly since her star turn at the Oscars a few months ago, when she earned kudos on the red carpet in a shimmery white sheath that fit her body \u2014 pretty killer itself \u2014 like a second skin. She shares the true backstory of that triumphant night: Her dress kept riding up; her stylists determined that the Spanx she had on were the culprit, so she had no choice but to remove them. Though none of the millions of viewers had any idea, she was bantering with A-listers with no underwear on. Because the Oscars commentators tend to leave no detail of celebrities&amp;#039; looks un \u2014 remarked upon, some insisted that Robin&amp;#039;s great figure was courtesy of derriere-enhancing briefs. She pretends to be insulted that she didn&amp;#039;t get credit: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m old school! I did squats at the gym for six weeks for that! I wasn&amp;#039;t wearing anything!&amp;quot; In fact, she&amp;#039;s not a woman who usually spends a lot of time thinking or talking about appearances. Much closer to her heart are her family and her faith \u2014 and she&amp;#039;s very happy about a slender book that sits on her coffee table, which combines both. The book is My Story, My Song (see excerpt, &amp;quot;Knowing That Home Is Wherever We Are,&amp;quot;), and Robin&amp;#039;s 88-year-old mother, Lucimarian Roberts, wrote it about her own inspiring life, with Robin popping in to offer reflections at the end of each chapter. Lucimarian grew up during the Depression and amid segregation; her hard-pressed family was dispossessed of much of their furniture when she was young. Yet as the wife of an Air Force colonel who was one of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, she was a fiercely proper lady &amp;quot;who was elegant even when serving us franks and beans \u2014 we always had dinner by candlelight,&amp;quot; Robin recalls. An angel-voiced hymn singer &amp;quot;who was never happier than when someone said they saw one of her children in church,&amp;quot; Lucimarian was also a perfectionist stay-at-home mom who painstakingly raised four college graduates (Robin&amp;#039;s the youngest) and then launched a robust life serving on several boards and commissions. Next:   Robin&amp;#039;s affection for her mother radiates from her core. She picks up a photo of the matriarch at President Obama&amp;#039;s inauguration, smiling through the freezing cold, snuggled in a mink coat. (Recalls Robin: &amp;quot;I said, &amp;#039;Mom, you can&amp;#039;t wear mink!&amp;#039; \u2014 worrying that some animal rights activist might throw paint at her. She said, &amp;#039;Honey, I got this for $25 in 1967! I&amp;#039;m wearing it!&amp;#039;&amp;quot;) But Lucimarian is also a woman with whom Robin has, to this day, &amp;quot;that complicated, runs-the-gamut&amp;quot; relationship that any strong adult daughter has with her strong mom. At the photo shoot for the book&amp;#039;s cover, featuring both, Lucimarian &amp;quot;suggested&amp;quot; that her TV-star daughter apply a different shade of lipstick: &amp;quot;My mother&amp;#039;s cure-all is a tube of red lipstick. She&amp;#039;s from that generation.&amp;quot; Robin recognizes that Lucimarian&amp;#039;s other cure-alls are faith, self-discipline, and grit. And Robin summoned those qualities often in recent years \u2014 the whole Roberts family did. First came the sudden death, from a heart attack, of Robin&amp;#039;s beloved father, Lawrence E. Roberts, in 2004 (&amp;quot;Sunday night he went to bed, and Monday morning he woke up in heaven&amp;quot;); then, 10 months later, Hurricane Katrina damaged Robin&amp;#039;s mother&amp;#039;s and sisters&amp;#039; houses so badly, the three women \u2014 one living in New Orleans, the other two along the Mississippi Coast \u2014 and their families were displaced for months. It was an emotionally wrenching season for Robin, who covered Katrina as a reporter while she worried deeply about her kin. As for Lucimarian, she was appreciative when she walked back into her home, which her adult children had reconstituted as best they could given that many of their mother&amp;#039;s precious mementos had been washed away in the flood. &amp;quot;It looks like...Pottery Barn!&amp;quot; she said brightly. Robin laughs at her mom&amp;#039;s appraisal. She has clearly inherited Lucimarian&amp;#039;s wry way of speaking. Robin reasons that while curveballs (like cancer) have been thrown her way, for the most part she is &amp;quot;so abundantly blessed! I am so freaking blessed!&amp;quot; She says with a laugh: &amp;quot;I love saying &amp;#039;freaking&amp;#039; before &amp;#039;blessed.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; That conversational style, reverence capped by saucy wit, is pure Robin: &amp;quot;I have a sign in my dressing room: &amp;#039;This, too, shall pass.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; She pauses, then with perfect timing adds the punch line: &amp;quot; &amp;#039;Now would be good.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; Kidding aside, though, Robin has found a way to live her life with gratitude and gusto \u2014 and genuine joy in the face of steep challenges. Here, her formula for doing just that. &amp;quot;MAKE YOUR MESS YOUR MESSAGE&amp;quot; This phrase is Lucimarian&amp;#039;s \u2014 meaning: turn your misfortune into a teachable moment \u2014 but the crisis through which Robin came to embrace it was completely her own. In July 2007, during a breast self-examination (something Robin urges all women to do), she found a lump that she just knew, she says, &amp;quot;felt different; it was hard. The texture was different from any other lumps I&amp;#039;d had. So I knew to get it checked out.&amp;quot; She had a mammogram, &amp;quot;and I was very thankful that my doctor had also ordered an ultrasound,&amp;quot; she says. The mammogram detected nothing, but the ultrasound yielded a suspicious image that necessitated a needle core biopsy. After GMA the next morning, Robin flew to Atlanta on a brief assignment. She turned on her cell phone as soon as the plane landed, and got a call from her doctor. All she remembers hearing, through the words of reassurance, is &amp;quot;Robin, it&amp;#039;s cancer.&amp;quot; She felt an immediate shift. She had boarded the plane in New York City as &amp;quot;just Robin. Now I was Robin-with-breast-cancer,&amp;quot; she recalls. She put on her sunglasses so no one around her could see her tears. With the help of her dear friend and then co-anchor Diane Sawyer, Robin made the decision to go public with her diagnosis. ABC World News anchor Peter Jennings had died of lung cancer two years earlier; Robin wanted GMA&amp;#039;s fans to know that &amp;quot;cancer&amp;quot; didn&amp;#039;t mean you couldn&amp;#039;t continue to work and lead a vital life. And so, she says, as &amp;quot;Diane reached over and grabbed my hand (because she could tell I was going to lose it),&amp;quot; Robin announced her diagnosis to the show&amp;#039;s viewers. Next:   Robin underwent a partial mastectomy, and some of her lymph nodes were removed. Initially, her prognosis was very good: The tumor was small. But one of the worst days in Robin&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;mess&amp;quot; came shortly afterward. She was in Connecticut, recuperating at her weekend house. Her family was visiting her, and &amp;quot;they were watching me like a hawk.&amp;quot; It was, ironically, when she begged to go into a department store by herself that her cell phone rang. Her doctor delivered the sobering news: The lymph nodes were clear, but the cancer was more aggressive than they&amp;#039;d originally thought. Chemotherapy would be required. &amp;quot;I get back to the car and I&amp;#039;m bawling! Bawling!&amp;quot; Robin says. &amp;quot;First they thought, We leave you alone for five minutes, and this happens! Then they got me home. That was a very bad day.&amp;quot; Robin&amp;#039;s cancer was found to be triple-negative, meaning it wouldn&amp;#039;t respond to certain treatments; such cancer is generally treated through surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation (all of which she underwent). She was told she wouldn&amp;#039;t get what many other survivors look forward to in five to seven years without a recurrence: a proclamation of &amp;quot;all clear.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I was mad!&amp;quot; Robin says. Some of that was the athlete in her. (The 5&amp;#039; 10&amp;quot; Robin was a basketball champ at Southeastern Louisiana University and will be inducted into the Women&amp;#039;s Basketball Hall of Fame this month.) &amp;quot;I like a game plan. I&amp;#039;m very coachable. I did everything I could do: the chemo, the radiation, and changing my diet to keep my body fat lower. So there was a sense of, Oh, gosh, I don&amp;#039;t get that &amp;#039;all clear,&amp;#039; where everybody&amp;#039;s going &amp;#039;Woo-hoo&amp;#039;?! Why not? Really? Seriously?&amp;quot; But she did not wallow. Even before she found out her cancer was triple-negative, she was already living her mother&amp;#039;s wise words and inspiring others. It started shortly after her chemotherapy kicked in. &amp;quot;When my hair started coming out in clumps,&amp;quot; she remembers, &amp;quot;for the first time I looked like I had cancer. There was no hiding it.&amp;quot; Robin&amp;#039;s decision to shave off her remaining hair in front of a video camera was a &amp;quot;teachable moment&amp;quot; for her viewers. &amp;quot;I chose this day to lose my hair; you&amp;quot; \u2014 meaning cancer \u2014 &amp;quot;are not telling me,&amp;quot; she explains. Still, after that, on the air she dutifully wore &amp;quot;my trusty wig, with the little anchorwoman flip.&amp;quot; But then she got even bolder. It started when her GMA compadres dared her to parade on a runway during Fashion Week. She accepted: Robin got dolled up in an Isaac Mizrahi gown and \u2014 wig securely in place \u2014 started toward the runway. &amp;quot;I looked in the mirror, and I&amp;#039;m like, Nah, that&amp;#039;s not me. And I took the wig off and walked the runway bald. It was a really profound moment.&amp;quot; Among many appreciative words, Robin says, was &amp;quot;this wonderful letter from a young mother who was watching on TV with her child. The mother was clapping and crying. Her child said, &amp;#039;Why doesn&amp;#039;t she have any hair?&amp;#039; The mother said, &amp;#039;She&amp;#039;s sick, and she had to take medicine that&amp;#039;s going to make her better [but also made her hair fall out].&amp;#039; &amp;quot; The woman told Robin that &amp;quot;if, heaven forbid, she were to ever go through [chemo], she could say, &amp;#039;Remember that woman you saw on TV? She&amp;#039;s fine.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; That letter drove it home: &amp;quot;I was a messenger for those who would go after me.&amp;quot; Lucimarian, with other residents of the nursing home in which she now lives, continues to be a messenger for Robin. When she recently visited Lucimarian, Robin recalls, &amp;quot;Mom was there \u2014 she&amp;#039;s arthritic with extremely high blood pressure, it&amp;#039;s difficult for her to walk, Dad and her best friends are gone \u2014 and she was tired. But she said to me: &amp;#039;Count your blessings. They far outweigh the bad things that are going on.&amp;#039; She was there in her wheelchair [surrounded by] people far worse off. There was a little church service, and people were singing &amp;#039;Amazing Grace&amp;#039; as Mom played the piano, and they&amp;#039;re yelling requests: &amp;#039;Just a Closer Walk With Thee!&amp;#039; &amp;quot; The positivity in that room of elderly people buoyed Robin well after her visit. BOND BETTER &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not one of those people who say, &amp;#039;Cancer is one of the best doggone things that ever happened to me,&amp;#039; &amp;quot; Robin says. &amp;quot;I was appreciating life. But [the disease] has made me far more patient than I&amp;#039;ve ever been in my life. And I&amp;#039;m more in the moment with people. I know I missed some real opportunities&amp;quot; \u2014 nieces&amp;#039; graduations, girlfriend dinners, hanging-out time \u2014 because of work. &amp;quot;I was not a really good friend, because I [often] had to cancel.&amp;quot; Do people count more now? &amp;quot;Oh, my God, yes! It&amp;#039;s not that I was an ogre before, but I just find myself appreciating others more.&amp;quot; She positively coos about her GMA family: &amp;quot;Sam [Champion] is my heart; we can complete each other&amp;#039;s sentences. I look at him and I smile.&amp;quot; George Stephanopoulos? &amp;quot;He is such a lovely, giving family man.&amp;quot; And Lara Spencer? &amp;quot;People would love it to be&amp;quot; \u2014 she mimics a claws-out catfight \u2014 &amp;quot;raarrgh! raarrgh! But we adore each other! She&amp;#039;s easy-breezy. We go into each other&amp;#039;s dressing room: &amp;#039;What are you wearing...?&amp;#039; &amp;quot; And of reporter Josh Elliott, Robin says, &amp;quot;He is all that and a bag o&amp;#039; chips! We had the common bond of ESPN [where Robin worked for 15 years]. We met for drinks one night at 5 P.M., and suddenly I&amp;#039;m looking at my watch...and it&amp;#039;s 11:30!&amp;quot; She pauses. &amp;quot;I enjoy going to work! I enjoy being with them!&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s similarly eager to celebrate her family. The other day she surprised herself by rushing home from a chic cocktail party full of CEOs and celebrities and impulsively calling her mother: &amp;quot;I said, &amp;#039;Mom! Thank you! You and Daddy have given me more than I ever could have imagined!&amp;#039; &amp;quot; Meaning: She couldn&amp;#039;t have navigated in that world without the upbringing they had given her. &amp;quot;Would I have done that before? No, I would never have called my mom to tell her that.&amp;quot; Robin is now taking the time to express her feelings of love and gratitude when she feels them. Next:   LEARN TO TREAT YOURSELF RIGHT Just as pausing to celebrate her relationships is new to Robin, so is saying no to preserve her health and peace of mind. &amp;quot;I was not feeling well yesterday \u2014 I was tired from having been traveling.&amp;quot; Making her way back to New York City late on a Sunday night with a bad cold, &amp;quot;I raised my hand. I said, &amp;#039;I can&amp;#039;t come in tomorrow. I need to sleep.&amp;#039; This is something I would not have done before cancer,&amp;quot; she admits. &amp;quot;I was a &amp;#039;never let them see you sweat&amp;#039; kind of person. You know how you see this person above the water&amp;#039;s surface, looking calm, but underneath they&amp;#039;re&amp;quot; \u2014 she makes a gesture of furious pedaling. &amp;quot;Outside I was, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m as cool as the other side of the pillow.&amp;#039; But, boy, internally? I was, I gotta be this, I gotta be that...! This is a very stressful, very competitive industry.&amp;quot; Now Robin knows that her health has to come first. Her day is dizzyingly nonstop \u2014 but she works into it disciplined nutrition and de-stressing. Her alarm goes off at 3:45 A.M.: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll turn on TV for the overnight news.&amp;quot; She has the &amp;quot;luxury of walking out the door with bed head and in ragged jeans.&amp;quot; At the studio, she&amp;#039;ll change into her on-camera clothes, and her hair and makeup team will &amp;quot;put Humpty Dumpty together every morning. I&amp;#039;ve been spoiled for 10 years!&amp;quot; Robin doesn&amp;#039;t like to eat before she does the show, though she&amp;#039;ll sip green tea from her GMA mug on-air. When the show&amp;#039;s done, she has a container of Greek yogurt with a few berries, a sprinkling of cinnamon (&amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s a good anti-cancer agent&amp;quot;), some Salba seeds (&amp;quot;high-fiber&amp;quot;), and \u2014 here&amp;#039;s where her colleagues start laughing at her precise counting \u2014 &amp;quot;six to 10 almonds \u2014 they&amp;#039;re very good for you, but they&amp;#039;re high-calorie.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;ll snack on a banana during the subsequent hours of preparing for shows, and lunch may be a salad or a chicken salad sandwich along with SunChips. When she gets home, often in the late afternoon, she walks KJ and then chills out. Though she is Christian, she has two Buddha statues in her apartment \u2014 &amp;quot;not for religious content, but for serenity.&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;d had her apartment &amp;quot;Feng Shui&amp;#039;d.&amp;quot; (Feng Shui is a Chinese practice of orienting a living space and its contents for harmony and good luck.) The Feng Shui consultant said, &amp;quot; &amp;#039;You need an object that, when you look at it, makes you exhale.&amp;#039; I got the Buddha in my living room in Key West, one of my favorite places, and it makes me happy and makes me exhale.&amp;quot; In the late afternoon, she might take a yoga or Pilates class; then, if she doesn&amp;#039;t have a business dinner or a meet-up with friends, she&amp;#039;ll happily cook for herself, sipping red wine, or she&amp;#039;ll warm up, say, her favorite turkey spaghetti. (She&amp;#039;ll make it Sunday night and have leftovers for days.) Robin is a meat-and-potatoes girl at heart \u2014 &amp;quot;and I&amp;#039;m Southern: We would fry water if we could&amp;quot; \u2014 but with the help of a nutritionist recommended to her by her friend and fellow breast-cancer survivor Sheryl Crow, she&amp;#039;s learned not to eat as many of her beloved pork chops and to appreciate vegetables like green beans and Brussels sprouts. After dinner, she&amp;#039;ll watch TV; her indulgence is marathon viewings of Law &amp;amp;amp; Order SVU. (She will &amp;quot;arm wrestle&amp;quot; anyone for the right to come back as Mariska Hargitay&amp;#039;s character, Olivia Benson, in her next life.) Weekends in Connecticut are blissfully unscheduled \u2014 the only time Robin is free of her alarm clock. She&amp;#039;ll go on long bike rides on her town&amp;#039;s great trail network: &amp;quot;When I have nothing I have to do, that is utopia!&amp;quot; FOLLOW YOUR FAITH Beyond nurturing her body, Robin tends to her soul. She attends a Presbyterian church in Connecticut and is looking for a &amp;quot;home church&amp;quot; in the city. She listens to gospel music on the early-morning drive from apartment to studio. And, before that, &amp;quot;every day, as I walk out the door, I say a prayer of protection my mother taught me when I was working my first job far away from home.&amp;quot; Robin recites: &amp;quot;The light of God surrounds me, the love of God enfolds me, the power of God protects me, the presence of God watches over me. Wherever I am, God is.&amp;quot;* (Years ago, GMA filmed her reciting the prayer; since then, &amp;quot;barely a week has gone by when the network hasn&amp;#039;t heard from someone asking for a copy of it.&amp;quot;) At one point or another during her busy day \u2014 every day, without fail \u2014 Robin reaches for the devotional book Streams in the Desert \u2014 &amp;quot;I have a copy in my dressing room at work and one by my bedside.&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s a prayer for every day of the year; she reads it as her daily devotional. Now, Robin goes to her bedroom, fetches the book \u2014 this weathered copy belonged to her grandmother \u2014 and opens it. On the passage for today, her grandmother had penciled in, in a touchingly shaky hand, I have no other help but you, Lord. And I trust you. Like the two women in her family who preceded her, Robin trusts, too. Her grandmother trusted that she&amp;#039;d overcome dire poverty; she did. Lucimarian trusted that she&amp;#039;d write her book and see it published. And one of the things Robin most hoped for has already come true: She used to be sure she would &amp;quot;never, ever wake up and not think of cancer. I would stub my toe and&amp;quot; \u2014 she waxes dramatic \u2014 &amp;quot;Oh! I have cancer! It&amp;#039;s back! Your mind just does that.&amp;quot; But as the years wore on, she realized, &amp;quot;Oh, my gosh, it...really... does happen&amp;quot; \u2014 cancer fades from daily memory. About a year ago, she did a GMA story on Shannon Miller, the 1996 Olympic-gold-medal gymnast who&amp;#039;d recently been treated for ovarian cancer. &amp;quot;I asked her, &amp;#039;Has a day gone by when you haven&amp;#039;t thought about it?&amp;#039; She said, &amp;#039;No.&amp;#039; I said, &amp;#039;Trust me, it will.&amp;#039; &amp;quot; Not long ago, Miller called Robin. &amp;quot;She said, &amp;#039;I didn&amp;#039;t think about it for a week! It&amp;#039;s just like you said!&amp;#039; &amp;quot; In regard to both Robin&amp;#039;s own life and the optimism she was able to share with another survivor, that would rate as a good day \u2014 a &amp;quot;freaking blessed&amp;quot; day, indeed. *Prayer: &amp;quot;Prayer for Protection,&amp;quot; James Freeman, 1941 Next: Read an excerpt from My Story, My Song "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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