Breast Case Scenario

Disclaimer: Everyone feels pain. Everyone experiences challenges. Everyone faces roadblocks. The events in one person’s life do not invalidate or diminish someone else’s. Hard is hard.

That being said…

I’m tired of making my way through journeys no one else around me has lived through.

When I was 10, I hugged my dad before dawn in our garage because he had a plane to catch to Kosovo for a nine-month deployment. When I was 18, we left him again in San Antonio as he prepared to spend ten months in Kuwait. I watched my mom give birth alone. We celebrated birthdays, Thanksgivings, and Christmases without him. For a long time, I thought my dad’s military deployments would be the defining hardships of my life.

When I was 27, I moved across the country by myself.

When I was 28, I was laid off for the first time.

Along with other heartbreaks, rejections, and redirections, I remember thinking, Maybe this is teaching me who I’m supposed to become.

I kept learning how to take broken pieces of myself and put them back together. Looking back, someone could have seen everything I’d been through and still thought, This is hard, but survivable.

Then I was 29.

We unexpectedly found out we were pregnant with our daughter. Five months into that pregnancy, my grandma, arguably my favorite person in the world, died. Grieving while growing new life is something I still don’t know how to explain. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully heal from it.

I tried to find the good.

It was difficult when she wasn’t there to meet my daughter. I discovered a depth of grief I didn’t know existed.

Then I was 30.

My newborn and my freshly postpartum, recovering body spent 7 days in a pediatric hospital after a medical emergency no one could explain. I called on every ounce of strength I’d built since I was that 10-year-old girl standing in my parent’s garage.

I prayed to my newest guardian angel. Maybe everything doesn’t happen for a reason. But when I desperately needed someone in heaven, the person I loved most had just arrived—not a moment too soon.

The nurses told me they were amazed by me. They said my daughter was lucky to have a mom like me.

They had no idea about the road that had prepared me for that hospital room.

A few short months later, I was laid off again.

I cried because it didn’t feel fair. It felt like blow after blow after blow. Eventually, we found our footing. We bought a new house. We had our small, perfect wedding. We settled into raising an incredible little girl.

I thought maybe I could finally catch my breath.

Then I turned 31.

Breast cancer.

Say it with me: “What the f%^@?”

This isn’t a story about feeling sorry for myself. It isn’t a competition to prove I’ve suffered more than anyone else. It’s simply my story.

People have complimented my attitude, my resilience, and the way I’ve approached cancer. What many haven’t seen is everything that came before it. Looking back, it feels like life was quietly preparing me for this long before I ever knew it was coming.

If I’m being completely honest, there’s a strange part of me that’s almost grateful cancer happened to me. Not because I wanted it. Not because I deserved it. But because I know my story. I know where I’ve been, and what I’ve seen.

From the day I heard the words “you have breast cancer,” I never questioned whether I would fight. I already knew how. Life had been teaching me for years.

Breast cancer at 31 has changed my life forever. It always will.

But so did military deployments.

So did losing my grandma.

So did watching my daughter fight before she was even a week old.

So did losing jobs I thought would define my future.

None of it was fair, and I’m still searching for what all of it means.

Cancer is all-encompassing. It changes the way you think about your body, your future, your family, and every version of yourself that comes after it.

At the same time, I’ve watched friends bury parents, lose babies before they ever had the chance to meet them, or fight for the opportunity to become parents at all. I’ve held those hands. I’ve cried those tears too.

Pain isn’t a competition. It’s simply different for each of us.

For me, cancer is another ongoing chapter in a life that continues to ask me to become someone stronger than I ever planned to be. To be the woman who can walk into 16 chemo appointments with a smile on my face. To be the mom my daughter deserves even when the days are physically and emotionally exhausting.

I am strong. I am courageous. But I am tired.

I spend so much energy trying to make heavy things feel lighter. Sometimes there isn’t a way around the weight of it all. 

My life-defining moments somehow keep multiplying. Maybe that’s the lesson I’m still trying to learn.

Maybe strength isn’t measured by how much I can carry. Maybe it’s measured by my willingness to keep showing up after I thought I’d already carried enough.

I’m still here. I’m still standing. Onward we go.