January, 18th 2025: Join us for food, drinks, dancing, and author sharing — all to support our mission. Learn more here!
AYA Cancer
What I Wish Someone Told Me About Thyroid Cancer
I think there is nothing that anyone, including myself, could do to prepare ourselves for thyroid cancer. How can we give advice, share information about our own past, validation and self-awareness pre-diagnosis with thyroid cancer? Sometimes I wish I knew about thyroid cancer right before I had my total thyroidectomy surgery. Since I was diagnosed […]
Read More...My Cancer Shadow
I drag cancer behind me, like a shadow made of lead. It’s heavy and invisible. If I give it control, it can fully weigh me down, pushing me into a depth of despair. I can fear-spiral into oblivion, expecting leukemia symptoms to pop up at any moment.
Read More...My Living Legacy: Advocacy Born from Survival
Cancer doesn’t just leave—it plants itself in your mind, body, and spirit. Even after ringing the bell, it clings to every aspect of who I am. The scars I carry are not just physical from my double mastectomy, hysterectomy, and DIEP flap reconstruction—they’re etched into my soul.
Read More...Expected Losses, Unexpected Gains
I don’t like surprises. As a child, I was told that when I received a gift I didn’t like, I had to swallow my disappointment and pretend that I liked the gift. I found this immensely difficult to do, and would often say “thank you, I love it,” with a grimace and tears threatening to spill over the edges of my eyelids.
Read More...The Mission Behind My Journey
Life often throws unforeseen challenges our way. As the saying goes, “Life be lifing.” For me, that challenge came in the form of a peritoneal mesothelioma diagnosis. This rare and aggressive cancer, usually associated with asbestos exposure, dramatically changed my life when I was just 21.
Read More...The Scars That Aren’t There
I haven’t begun treatment. No chemotherapy, no radiation, no surgery. My Oncologists say the cancer swimming through my veins “isn’t that bad yet”. I have all of my blonde hair. I haven’t lost a significant amount of weight. My Irish skin isn’t completely dried out. The soft outlines of my lips aren’t chapped. I have reached an understanding with the dark circles that developed under my eyes, my eyes that are the color of the sea following a storm. And, I do have scars.
Read More...My Cracked Earth
When I woke up from surgery,
Something was amiss.
The monitor beeped,
The plink plink of the dripping ringed,
The tubes were plugged into me
And my head felt numb
Like a dried-up earth
Ripped from nourishment
And cracked in pain.
An Imperfect Metaphor
I recently got unexpected good news within a still terrible situation. I’m 31 years old with metastatic breast cancer.
Read More...Alive and Scarred
Scars – by definition, are “marks left on the skin or within body tissue where a wound, burn or sore has not healed completely and fibrous connective tissue has developed. A lasting effect of grief, fear, or other emotion left on a person’s character by a traumatic experience. A mark left on something following damage of some kind.”
Read More...“I Won’t Let This Define Me.”
I remember very clearly driving home from my second-to-last chemo. My brother was driving us to his house, which he was trying to sell. He had his own way of being supportive during my treatment, which included occasionally being my support person during chemo.
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