“Health is a crown over the head of healthy person, that only an ill person can see”

Anonymous

I found the lump and ignored it for weeks, telling myself it was probably just a cyst, even though something about it felt different to both me and my husband. Eventually I booked the earliest gynecologist appointment I could get and was swept into a blur of tests—sonography, mammogram, biopsy—each step quietly pointing toward what I already feared. The technician’s expression said what he was not allowed to, and soon after came the words no one wants to hear: “The results came back positive.” For the next two weeks, I cried almost every day, replaying my entire life in my head—puberty, pregnancies, contraceptives, hormone pills, every diet choice—asking over and over, “Why me? What did I do or not do to land here?” The cycle of self‑blame was harsh and exhausting, and no amount of Googling gave me a simple cause‑and‑effect answer.

That “Why me?” loop could have swallowed me whole, but it was exactly at this point that the people around me began to matter more than any statistic or scan. Their presence gently shifted my focus from “Why did this happen?” to “What now?”—a question that would lead into the next chapter of my story: my support system of family, friends, and faith, and how they helped me stand up again when everything felt like it was falling apart.

Continue Reading: My Support System: Family, Friends and Faith