“You Should Write a Book!”
If God granted me $5 every time someone told me I should write a book about my journey through breast cancer, I’d be able to buy a new pair of retro Nike Jordan 4’s by now.
How do you write about a journey that is not over?
Yes, I finished the most grueling experiences of the journey: chemotherapy, double mastectomy, radiation, and breast reconstruction. But has life returned to normal? In the words of the late, great Whitney Houston: “Hell to the naw!”
For the next 5 - 10 years, I will be receiving hormone therapy. I get a monthly injection in alternating buttcheeks to induce menopause so I can take the most effective prescription. Each night before bed, I swallow a tiny pill to block estrogen from my system. I am walking proof that estrogen doesn’t make you feminine because the last time I checked, I was a whole lotta woman!
I desire to write a book—I truly do. While writing poems comes easy to me, writing an entire book feels daunting. But like most things in my life, I gotta step out on faith. Like the Bible says: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Action is a necessary step to achieving goals.
I am taking action. I am reading my journals, looking through photos from last year, and watching my old social media content. I am increasing my writing ability by writing daily. As I do this, I will share these memories and writings on my blog. It feels like putting a complicated puzzle together. Let’s start with the first puzzle piece: diagnosis.
On October 9, 2022, I felt a lump in the lower right corner of my right breast while showering. Unlike bug bites or hives, the lump was on the inside—invisible to the naked eye. That afternoon while talking about the lump with my therapist, she said something so profound:
“Anxiety loves to thrive in the present and the future.”
I say that sentence to myself whenever I begin to feel anxious. Repeating that mantra brings me back to the present, the only tangible moment. The past is hearsay and the future is not promised today.
Exactly one month after finding the lump, I was diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, the most common form of breast cancer. Not only did a tumor live in my right breast; cancer cells painfully hijacked four lymph nodes in my underarm. The whole experience felt like a sucker punch to the heart.
But by the end of the month, I found the faith in God that I buried deep down years prior. I knew there was a reason I was being presented with breast cancer and I was determined to find it. I knew that my story was not over yet but that cancer was just a juicy chapter in the middle. I began to glow again.
I filmed this video for social media on November 27, 2022:
Here is the transcript of the video:
I am in the middle of a serious trial—very serious one. You know, I’ve gone through the phases of feeling upset, “Why me?”, “Is this gonna work out?” And I reached a place of peace and positivity of: regardless of how tough this trial is gonna be, or how long it’s gon’ last, I’m still gonna come out on top.
I asked myself the question in the shower this morning, of: “Is that naïveté—to believe that I’m gonna come out on top, even though this is serious?” And the response that I got is: “That’s not naivete. That’s what faith is.” And there’s a scripture—I think it’s in the Book of Hebrews. It’s been a while since I’ve been a regular church attendee. But it says: “Faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for.”
I guess that substance of things hoped for can come off as naïveté. But for me, it’s not naïveté because there’s been evidence that things work out for me in the past. And I hope that they will again. And that’s what’s carrying me through this trial. So…
I don’t know if this is gonna help anybody who watches this. But I just felt it on my heart to share that, that it’s not always naive to be optimistic. That’s how we work through trials. And if you are going through a trial and don’t have a belief that it’s going to work out—that’s HARD! It makes the trial even harder because it’s not just the external trial. It’s the internal trial of accepting that “Life isn’t going my way” and feeling like life won’t go your way when, in fact, it can.
Today, I chuckle hearing myself say “I don’t know if this is gonna help anybody who watches this.” In December 2022, I shared the news about being diagnosed with on Instagram and TikTok. I began chemotherapy on January 6, 2023. Since then, I have reached and inspired tens of thousands of people through sharing my journey back to wellness. We have no idea how powerful our stories are.
I honor the past version of me in that video. She chose faith over fear and look where she ended up: healed, elevated, and pursuing a new dream. If my late mentor, Ancestor Dr. Walter “Skip” Dallas, were here, he would shout, “See!” If I close my eyes and listen, I can hear him.
