Amy Robach Is Simply 'Happy to Be Alive' More Than 12 Years After Beating Cancer and Undergoing Double Mastectomy at Age 40

Journalist Amy Robach is "happy to be alive" more than a decade after beating b----- cancer.

The 53-year-old was diagnosed with stage two cancer at 40 after she agreed to an on-air mammogram encouraged by fellow anchor and cancer survivor Robin Roberts.

"I literally thought that I was doing it for other women, that I was doing it for someone else. I had no idea that I was actually going to be saving my own life," she told the "SHE MD Podcast" in their July 23 episode.

Robach's life-saving mammogram aired on an episode of Good Morning America in 2013. At the time, the preventative procedure was only recommended to women 50 and older.

Robach reflected on how survivorship has transformed her outlook on life, even all these years later.

"How happy I was just to be alive. How happy I was just to wake up. I didn't realize that that gratitude would come so powerfully, and that it would stay with me," she said.

"Going through b----- cancer helps me get through all of life's other challenges because it puts everything into perspective," Robach added.

After she was diagnosed, Robach underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy treatment, but even after being in remission for well over a decade, Robach said cancer is never truly in the rearview.

"It never leaves you. That cancer diagnosis is a lifetime diagnosis because you act differently, you behave differently, you treat your body differently and you have to deal with some real mental health aspects that come with this disease," she explained.

She recalled feeling "invincible" before she was diagnosed because her family had almost no history of any form of cancer.

"I did not think cancer could happen to me. It wasn't in my family..." she explained. "Really, there wasn't a lot of cancer in my family at all, so I really felt invincible."

Robach said that was the "biggest misconception" she had, which almost stopped her from getting screened at all.

"I thought if I didn't have a family member or I didn't know somebody who I was related to who had b----- cancer, I really didn't think that I could get it," she explained. "I didn't think I was somebody who was susceptible to b----- cancer because no one in my family had it."

The anchor said she is "proud" of who she has become after beating cancer. Robach referred to the post-diagnosis version of herself as a "stronger, better person."

"Someone who truly values her time, values how she spends it and who she spends it with," she reflected, "I am now a stronger, better person than I ever was before b----- cancer, and I would never have expected that to be the case when I was diagnosed."

Robarch has teamed up with Novartis and the B----- Cancer Unscripted campaign to share her story and raise awareness about the disease.

"When you tell your story, you have no idea the reach that it can have," she explained. "Even if it's within your own small circle of friends or your community, you are absolutely going to empower and inspire other women to go get their tests done because they think, 'If it could happen to her, it could happen to me.'"

"The power of one voice is real," she concluded.