Featured Stories Straight From Our Pages
Laughing Together
My stomach sank a little every time the numbers changed on the outdoor temperature screen. I was excited about the trip, but I was dreading leaving the air-conditioned bus. My boyfriend and I were heading south to meet with friends for a weekend of camping and swimming, a tradition stretching back more than 20 years that I was determined not to miss. At least that was the plan.
The white and yellow houses announced our destination, a village on Alentejo’s coast. I stepped out of the bus, and the hot dry air filled my lungs and burned my skin, triggering a hot flash that radiated to my now crimson face. We were in the middle of a heatwave, and it was my first post-menopausal summer.
Cancer Doesn’t Get to Come on the First Date
I was sitting on my patio with coffee in my Hello Kitty mug when I decided I might want to have sex again.
Not eventually.
Not theoretically.
I mean the actual kind.
With another human being.
This probably isn’t how inspirational metastatic breast cancer stories are supposed to begin, but after eight years of cancer, I’ve earned the right to skip the inspirational part.
Beyond the Veil
My husband and I climbed into the car on a gray-sky Friday morning, reflexively starting the engine and buckling our seat belts. He pushed the clutch to the floor putting us in reverse, even stretching his arm to my headrest while looking over his right shoulder before he froze, looking at me. I stared back dumbfounded, unable to answer the question I saw on his tear-stained face: where do you go after you find out you have cancer?
We drove blindly through the city, sharing pieces of the pathology report we managed to hear: Stage III, aggressive, metastatic. My prognosis was unclear, but the nurse’s piteous face and tone did not bode well for me. We found ourselves by the water’s edge. Gripping each other’s hands, we gazed at the horizon: the vanishing point our eyes perceive to be the end of the ocean, but what our minds know is actually a curve of the Earth.
When we felt strong enough to play pretend, we drove home to the kids.
At The Rail
I have always taken issue with the word thriver being used to describe those of us with metastatic breast cancer. I prefer hostage or lifer. Thriver is too loaded, too wellness-branded. It sounds like green juice, gratitude journals, and photos of women in headscarves smiling into the sun. It sounds like something people want for cancer patients because it makes everyone else feel better. I have MBC, and I’m not interested in pretending this is fine. But if thriving means refusing to disappear from my own life, maybe I do understand it.
For me, thriving sounds like the first bass note thumping in my chest at a general admission show.
My Body Remembers The Way Home
All of a sudden, I realized I had stopped looking at my body. Not out of vanity, but out of distance. Somewhere along the way, it had become a thing I carried—not something I truly lived inside. It wasn’t intentional, nor an act of rebellion; it just… happened.
In the years after my diagnosis, my body became a vessel—something I moved through but no longer inhabited, carrying me from one shadowed place to another. I didn’t want to look at it. I was angry at it. It had betrayed me, hadn’t it? Grown something inside me that could take me away from my children. Altered itself without my permission. Changed the trajectory of my life in ways I could never undo.
So, I stopped listening.
Hope and Heartache, Hand in Hand
Stacy and I were like two kayaks, paddling down the same whitewater river. Despite all we had in common, we were never really in the same boat. As I plunged back into treatment as a metastatic thriver, Stacy was dipping into her first diagnosis, surgery, and treatment. I felt like I could share the random tips and experiences I’d collected with someone who needed it. She taught me how to draw my eyebrows and coached me through wedding planning. As Stacy completed her initial treatment and moved into “real life,” I waited for my miracle.
Friendship is Sacred
The hallway was long and fluorescent lit, and empty aside from the two of us, charging wide-eyed towards our respective adventures. Shoes squeaking on the flooring, I stopped abruptly, turned to her, and made a proclamation without thinking too hard about it: “Alright, you go to Scotland. I’ll go to Nepal. Then, when we get back next spring, we are going to be real friends.” Megan laughed and cocked one eyebrow with a mix of curiosity and skepticism in her eyes at my bold prophecy.
Thailand
It felt quite late when I landed in Thailand. I had been on a flight for two days, if you include the time travel. Bangkok was waking up for its evening shift when I left the airport. As we drove to the hotel, the sky was dark, the streets lined with vendors selling everything from the usual t-shirts to tourist souvenirs to household objects like batteries and pots and pans! The excitement was beyond real… Thailand was on my bucket list for so long. I was ready for anything.
Rosé-Colored Glasses
I have always been a girly-girl with a preference for feminine fashion. I loved creating fun, flirty looks for ordinary days. I loved heels for everyday wear (yes, even while working in the vineyard), and I loved wearing sexy outfits that showed off my boobs. My breasts were gorgeous, almost perfect – the kind that had a natural, yet full, teardrop shape with perky nipples. Until cancer happened. Twice.