January, 18th 2025: Join us for food, drinks, dancing, and author sharing — all to support our mission. Learn more here!
Survivorship
The stories and experiences are written by people after cancer treatments. These stories are written for those learning how to get back to work, college or just trying to be themselves again. Just getting past treatments isn’t enough, it is surviving and thriving that is key to being you again.
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Winter Memories
It was October of 2018 when I passed out at an emergency room. I had been suffering from a random headache that for some reason didn’t seem to go away.
Read More...My Unbreakable Spirit: A 2x Cancer Survivor’s Story
Hello, my name is Nicole Lehrer, and I am a 42-year-old two-time cancer survivor. My journey began in 2009, not with me, but with my beloved Golden Retriever, Bailey, who was diagnosed with cancer. To pay for his chemotherapy, I started working two jobs. It was just a month later that I found a lump myself.
Read More...Connections Made Through Cancer
Where to begin with this topic? Well, I will start by letting go off all my previous friendships. Unfortunately, upon hearing my diagnosis in 2018, I was very disturbed.
Read More...Surviving Life: A Story of Mental Health and Cancer Intertwined
There is never a good time to be diagnosed with cancer and there was something about my timeline that really threw salt on an open wound. Before cancer was not easy, which meant that after cancer came into my life everything was just that much harder.
Read More...How My Experience With Thyroid Cancer Affects My Emotions
I think there are mixed emotions when you have experienced thyroid cancer. After I was diagnosed with papillary thyroid carcinoma 5 years ago, it really surprised me.
Read More...Dear Body, You’re Doing Okay
I am a marathoner. I had been a marathoner. I was marathon training. Being a runner had and has been such a big part of my identity since 2014.
Read More...My Breastie
Our eyes met in the waiting room, hers younger and bright and a smile that was small but ever present. I don’t recall who spoke first, but that August date in 2024 soon became a fast best friendship of two women battling breast cancer with genetic mutations as well.
Read More...My Radiation Tattoos
There was a random Tuesday in May of 2025 where I had to drive to this Brutalist structure in suburban Massachusetts and get some tattoos. Not the fun kind, but three small blue-green dots that would align with precision inside a proton blasting, life saving robotic machine.
Read More...Stolen Glances
Back in November, I attended one of the events Elephants and Tea hosted through the James Cancer Center’s “Care for Life” program. That was where I received my cancer treatments, but truth be told, it took me many years before I actually wanted to attend any kind of support group.
Read More...Dear Cancer, Stop Whispering To Me
Dear Cancer, You need to stop whispering to me when I am happy — when the sun is shining and rainbows are reflecting through prisms.
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