January, 18th 2025: Join us for food, drinks, dancing, and author sharing — all to support our mission. Learn more here!
brain cancer
Becoming More Than Okay
“No one will ever understand.” “Just pretend to fit in.” “Why can’t I just be normal?” And more hyperbolic, rhetorical questions to harass myself with over the years.
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...My Invisible Illness
While it’s been 6 years since my emergency brain surgery and discovery of my rare brain tumor, whenever I unexpectedly hear the word cancer in the media or in a conversation nearby, I cringe. It’s a surreal reaction.
Read More...Dear Cancer, I am Making Ashlynne Proud
I always wondered what I would say to you, if given the chance. I had it all planned out in my head, the hatred I had for you, the anger. I have sat down to write just to delete it, and write it again.
Read More...I wish someone told me
I wish someone had told me—Told me how much it would hurt. Not the blade that cleaved my skull, To extract the unwelcome guest, Nor the threads that stitched the wound shut, Or the scar, fracturing my head, Like parched and cracking earth.
Read More...The Part That Died
When I found out I could not carry a child, a hush fell inside me—not silence, but something colder. A part of me dropped dead.
Read More...My Identity After Cancer
My mother is crying in the other room, and I don’t understand why, but I am already trembling. My heart beats faster and faster as the doctors and nurse’s shoes squeak across the hallway floor as they walk swiftly past my hospital room to see what the commotion is.
Read More...A Kinder Way to Life
Cancer, like a death sentence, was pronounced on me at the age of 33. I guess I can be only thankful that I didn’t know I had it until long after my operation was over.
Read More...My Cancer Story
I was diagnosed with Brain Cancer in December 2012. My anesthesia level was full. My treatment was five days a week for chemotherapy and one day a week for radiation therapy. I will not mention the name of the hospital that treated me, but I will say that it needs to be closed down.
Read More...You Will Be Brave, Too
Human lives are stories, and as such, defined by words. In my own case, like so many other incurable cancer patients, the word “incurable” is coded for “hopeless” and/or “doomed,” in the first weeks after diagnosis.
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