Imagine your 40th birthday: It probably involves a grand celebration — a band and dancing, great food and drinks, friends and family from all parts of your life. For Trish May, the big four-oh had none of those things. Instead, the then Microsoft executive was in a Seattle hospital, undergoing a lumpectomy for breast cancer.

It was 1993, and just months earlier, May had lost her mother to ovarian cancer. As she reeled from that mammoth loss, she was faced with her own mortality. "I was just in shock because I knew firsthand how terrible this disease is," she says. "I thought I was going to die. I could not believe that it would be happening to me."

While some might get lost in worry — or wallow in self-pity — May turned her situation into something positive. She used every ounce of her energy to fight the cancer, and in 2003, founded Athena Partners, a not-for-profit corporation that sells bottled water and donates 100 percent of its net profits to early-stage research for breast and gynecological cancers. "We all have in the back of our minds the concern that [the cancer] could come back. Through Athena, I am helping in some small way to make a difference and find a cure. It's a therapy of sorts — a way that I can focus and prevail and make a contribution for others."

Here's what May learned in her ongoing journey to fight women's cancers:

Exercising control

While she felt like the disease had "taken over" her body, May knew she had control over exercise and diet — and that was the best place to pour her energies. "It gave me a wonderful feeling of participating in my wellness," she says.