Everything I wish someone had told me at the start. The essays I wrote the day I learned I had cancer.
My scans are tomorrow, and in honor of whatever may come, I wanted to share something with you.
There isn’t any easy way to say it, so I’ll just say it: I have cervical cancer. It’s invasive, seemingly advanced, and terrifying.
In the last few days following my post, I have been flooded with outreach and love. I cannot begin to tell you how much it means to me.
A series written during my first round of treatment.
I wanted to do a photo shoot at home with my parrots before leaving SF, but they’re wild. I never know when they will come and go.
02I am an astronaut in space now. I wave hello to Earth. The signal is static. The messages are garbled.
03I’m in the darkness. There is no light around me. I hang onto my tether and breathe.
04The battlefield surrounds me. The enemy is multi-dimensional, multi-modular. I duck from the bullets whirling past me.
05I find myself apologizing to my body for what I’ve put it through, then remembering we’re on the same side of this war.
06Treatment ends with bell-ringing. Recovery begins in silence with the slow work of reclaiming what medicine broke.
A guide I wrote for myself and a mix of essays and intellectual explorations.
I’m treating this as my north star as I start to undergo chemo, radiation, and other treatments.
To set the ambience, I share with you a poem to encapsulate my experience:
I lost my hair a couple of days ago. While baldness is somewhat of a cancer cliché within popular media, only 30-40% of cancer patients...
A couple of days ago, I went surfing for the first time in more than a year. My cancerversary was last week, my initial diagnosis of...
I was late to church and desperately needed a shower, and there it was - directly in the basin of my tub.
What should you say to a cancer patient? How my mom and community supported me through this.
I need to tell you something. I don’t know what to say.
Read this →My scans are tomorrow, and in honor of whatever may come, I wanted to share something with you.
Read this →I think the hardest thing in the world is to be a mother, and perhaps the second hardest is to fathom how none of this would exist...
Read this →My mom’s birthday is today, and I truly have no words for how grateful I am for her.
Read this →I wept from the strangeness of return.
A few days ago, I showered for the first time without fear of my hair falling out.
The hardest grief I have ever known is for a life that was never lived.
I am exhausted. Worn down to my bones. My scans came back not clean, but stable, that strange purgatory of continuation.
I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. It comes from questioning how I best spend my limited time, but also what time fundamentally is.
When the ground shifts and you learn to hold it all loosely.
This week was supposed to be a week of triumph, of gentle applause, of exhaling in the quiet.
I’m about as well as one could expect given the circumstances. It’s funny. Now that I’ve had a minute to digest, all my emotions have...
In a year full of difficult news, I finally, thankfully, have been graced with some good.
the in-between / I opened / a chrysalis once. / I wanted to see the butterfly inside.
Do you ever think / how the tide goes out / each evening, / not to abandon the shore,
Ever so often, a sentence arrives that splits me open.
Ever so often, a sentence arrives that splits me open. Two weeks ago, one did.
I’m writing this as the sun is rising, the sky shifting from cool violet to amber as it climbs.
I am almost done with this cycle of chemoradiation—I finished chemotherapy today and have two external radiation sessions left.
2025 may have been the worst year of my life by any external measure. And yet, when I look back, it actually was the best.
I’ve lived long enough in cities / to lose the sound of a body / falling apart slowly, / like fruit on the branch.
What I actually used.
There is nothing you can say that will solve it, but there is much you can say that will keep someone company inside of it. Try: “I love you. I’m here.” “I’m thinking of you every day.” “I don’t know what to say, but I want to be with you in this.” Avoid silver linings, miracle cures, “you’re a fighter,” and asking for specifics. Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing. Just sit with them.
Build your care team before anything else: choose your hospital and oncologist, designate one advocate to attend appointments and take notes, and consider a second opinion. Then reduce the information flowing in. Do not go down a Google rabbit hole. Statistics are averages of other people’s stories, not yours.
Consistency means more than grand gestures. A weekly “thinking of you, no response needed” text goes a long way, and don’t be offended if you never get a reply. Offer something specific (“Can I take something off your plate this week?”) rather than “let me know if you need anything.” Follow their energy on visits: be available without pushing.
No. I’m a cancer survivor, not a doctor. This is lived experience, what actually helped me through diagnosis, chemotherapy, and recovery. It is meant to sit alongside the guidance of your care team, never replace it.
Please do. The whole guide is free to read, and there’s a PDF you can download, print, or send to anyone who needs it. That’s why it exists.
from diagnosis to now