I watched her fingers halt mid-lather in the shower. Just a flicker of confusion, a momentary pause, then both hands pressed down again, slower this time.
At first, she didn’t say a word. She continued dressing with a kind of stiffness, as though her body had become something foreign, something to navigate rather than to inhabit.
That night, lying in bed, she finally spoke. Quietly, she whispered, “I think I felt something.”
And with that, life splintered…
It wasn’t the diagnosis, it wasn’t the biopsy, it was simply *that sentence*… From then on, everything was cast in a new kind of shadow. Waiting rooms, Scans, The sterile smell of paper gowns and fluorescent bulbs buzzing louder than my thoughts.

The phrase came cloaked in clinical politeness: “Invasive ductal carcinoma.” It felt like an uninvited houseguest, a threat looming over the home we had built. She nodded, as she always did as if she believed she could out-discipline the fear gripping her.
Mastectomy, Chemo, Pills with names too long to sound out, side effects far too extensive to recount. Hair falling in clumps onto the pillow, Steroid bloat rounding her cheeks, and Bandages covering her chest where softness, symmetry, and skin had once been.
Yet, it wasn’t just her body that transformed, It was her walk, Her laugh, She began to avoid mirrors…not out of vanity, but because they reflected a stranger, someone she hadn’t chosen to become.

She made it! She’s still here, But survival doesn’t equate to restoration; It means reconstruction of: body, spirit, and self. Some days, she gazes at the wall and asks, “Who am I now?”
And I respond in the only way I know: “You’re the woman who stayed, The woman who fought, The woman who *is.*”

She survived the cancer, but no one warned her she’d also grieve the woman she once was.”