Call for Submissions
April / May 2026
Vol 11, Issue No. 1
Guest Editor: Laura Carfang, Founder & CEO of SurvivingBreastCancer.og
WORTH
Cancer changes the math of our lives.
Jobs are paused or lost. Savings evaporate. The cost of simply staying alive rises in ways few people talk about. Many of us have faced the quiet panic of financial toxicity, the career detours we didn’t choose... And beneath all of that lives a deeper question: what is my worth now?
This new issue of Wildfire invites your stories about navigating money, employment, identity, and value in the aftermath of breast cancer, from money and career to purpose and worthiness. Tell us the truth of what cancer costs — financially, emotionally, spiritually — to rebuild a life. And tell us where you’ve found your own definition of worth along the way.
A Message From Guest Editor, Laura Carfang
“I once believed worth was something you could stack neatly — degrees earned, titles held, goals met. I moved through the world proving myself, mistaking motion for meaning and achievement for safety. Cancer dismantles that illusion quickly. It doesn’t ask who you are on paper. It asks who you are when the scaffolding falls away — when you are no longer performing, producing, or pushing. What remains is not failure, but truth.
Survivorship has asked me to loosen my grip. To release identities that once felt essential and discover they were, in fact, temporary shelters. I stepped away from a career I had built carefully and climbed instead toward a different kind of elevation — not higher status, but clearer ground. I no longer apologize for the many selves I hold. Cancer did not strip me of ambition; it taught me how to listen to it. How to let purpose speak more softly than pressure.
Now, worth feels like something elemental — not earned, not borrowed, not revoked. It lives in stillness. In choosing myself without witnesses. In knowing I am enough even on days when nothing is finished or certain. Cancer did not give me this understanding, but it made it unavoidable: I was never required to justify my existence. I was always already worthy — and so are you.” ~ Laura
We accept:
Essays: 650-1200 words
Poems: 50 line maximum
Artwork: high-resolution along with a written Artist Statement
Submission Deadline: February 25, 2026
Ready to submit your story? Fill out the submission form at the bottom of the Submission page.
Need inspiration to write your story in the Wildfire Journal way? We’ve got you. Scroll down for resources.
✏️Use writing prompts to unlock your story:
Write about when you realized money wasn’t just money in your family. Was it love? Control? Safety? Power? Shame? Silence? Now write about how cancer changed your relationship to that story.
Cancer altered my relationship with work; when my capacity changed, it felt like… (and what I discovered underneath all that doing was…)
No one warned me about the financial undertow of cancer—the bills, the tradeoffs, the quiet stress—and the moment I realized it was happening was…
Back when productivity was my proof of worth, I believed… and now, in the stillness cancer forced me into, I’m learning…
My career didn’t go the way I planned. It was interrupted / redirected / released, and the turning point was…
Money changed my sense of autonomy and worth; when scarcity or financial dependence entered the picture, I began to…
There was a season when “doing enough” became impossible for me; in that pause, I learned…
The story of the best money I ever spent is…
The invisible labor I carry now is heavy in ways people can’t see (healing, caregiving, surviving, beginning again), and today it looks like…
Cancer forced me to reckon with who I am beyond titles, income, or output; without those things, I realized…
My body is not what it once was, and my purpose has had to change with it; now, purpose looks like…
Imagine your family keeps an invisible ledger—not just of money, but of who contributed and who didn’t. What got counted as “real work” in your family? What was invisible? What did cancer do to your place in that ledger?
From my cancer experience, I inherited (money, debt, scarcity, hustle, fear, generosity, silence, ambition, shame…)… I refuse to pass on… (write about the moment you realized you had a choice)...
Worth is not something I have to earn anymore. Now I know my worth lives in…
Tip: Wildfire is focused on memoir, and memoir is about writing your transformation. As you write to these prompts, try ending your piece with a silent "... and nothing was ever the same again," to see if that rings true for you. Keep digging for how your life is has changed since your diagnosis.
Remember, we are looking for cancer-related stories, so no matter where your story begins, don’t forget to include how your experience of cancer has affected you, and the lessons you’ve learned along the way. Read more writing tips here.
