January, 18th 2025: Join us for food, drinks, dancing, and author sharing — all to support our mission. Learn more here!
AYA Cancer
Take Care of Me
Strong hits me in the chest, a shove
Away from the comforting embrace
I’m left longing for
Strong leaves me alone to go on
Because I’ve “got this” and
If I’m strong then you don’t have to see me
Strength, Redefined.
I learned too young that strength isn’t loud. It doesn’t always stand tall with its chest out, doesn’t always roar.
Read More...Finding My Pack: How Cancer Taught Me the True Meaning of Brotherhood
Through my cancer diagnosis, I never truly understood the transformative power of connecting with another survivor. I had read the bold-faced words: community, compassion, empathy again and again in pamphlets, online articles, and support brochures, but they were just concepts that felt far removed from my own reality.
Read More...Things I Wish My Doctor Knew
I do not write this to assign blame. I write it because I survived — and survival has given me clarity. There are things I wish my doctor knew. I wish my doctor knew how to calculate my breast cancer risk accurately.
Read More...Words Matter
I wish my doctors knew how powerful their words can be. Whether it’s on a diagnosis day, during treatment, or after treatment, words matter. And they stay with us. “I’m not gonna lie, I’m worried,” my surgeon said after I got that dreaded x-ray of my shoulder in November 2018.
Read More...Five Lessons from a Survivor
Sometimes I wish I could have said the things I was screaming in my head or cried about on the inside, fearful to say out loud. As a master-trained healthcare administrator, adult caregiver, advocate for health equity, and a patient with various conditions, I am no stranger to interacting with doctors.
Read More...White Flag
He walked in greeting me with a hello… as if he was waiting to meet me. And it began, Can I go over your story? My story? I was familiar
Read More...CANCER AND AUTISM/AUTISM AND CANCER
The narrative I knew of myself for so long was that I was difficult. I was a sensitive child who couldn’t be pacified, didn’t smile but cried easily and didn’t handle change well.
Read More...The Emotions of Cancer
Let’s begin by listing the emotions that I have experienced since diagnosis. Before diagnosis, I was a quiet girl, never said much, kept to myself. Upon diagnosis, I became scared, fearful and disenchanted with life and everyone around me.
Read More...Rebuilding Myself, Rebuilding Others
There’s a line by Taylor Swift that has stuck with me: “Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.” For me, that saddest story began in March of 2021, when a sudden pain in my right breast sent me to the doctor. I was 39, busy with work and raising two young girls, and my OBGYN thought it would be nothing more than a cyst.
Read More...