Editor's Note:
Nearly six years ago, at age 31, Haley Isbell was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer.
She made the mistake of Googling the life expectancy for someone with stage four breast cancer (26 months) just once and decided she wasn’t doing that again.
Instead, she decided that if someone with her diagnosis was going to live for 30 years, “it’s gonna be me” while also deciding, “if my life was going to be short, it was going to be meaningful.”
So she relegated cancer as another thing to do – like the kids’ basketball games and dinner parties – and not what her family’s world spun around.
And now, as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we are delighted that Haley, an Avadian member whose mother has worked for Avadian for more than 30 years, has decided to share with us what Breast Cancer Awareness Month means to her.
Click here to read more of Haley's blog posts at the Birmingham Mom Collective.
by Haley Isbell
I remember seeing the world painted pink in October before I had breast cancer. Pink socks on football players. Pink hair on hundreds of runners racing for a cure. Pink promises on commercials, advertisements, billboards, and buses; pledging not to stop fighting for those battling the beast that is breast cancer. Stricken images of moms and daughters dotted the everyday landscape of my life and never once did I picture myself as a beneficiary of the pink tsunami that washes over the world each October. Not until, at 31 years old, when a doctor called to tell me that I would be joining the legions of women represented by that little pink ribbon. Stage four breast cancer. I, like millions of other women, would be a beneficiary of the pink ribbon legion of solidarity that unites to spread awareness for the roughly 287,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer cases diagnosed each year.
While I appreciate seeing this little pink ribbon pop up in so many places in October, this dainty little wisp of a thing is an incredibly false representation of what it means to be a woman battling breast cancer.
This is my formal appeal for the symbol of breast cancer awareness to be more powerful. More substantial. More gritty. More intense. Because being a woman who has faced (and will continue to face) a breast cancer diagnosis, I am here to tell you – there’s nothing meek or tiny about it. I, like so many other women, have had to drop my head, square my proverbial shoulders, and stumble into the battle for my life with no guard rails and no roadmap.
We have all met those warriors in our lives. Their intentions are immovable and their focus singular: survive. Live. Don't die. The war is big, but the battles are small and constant from the second you hear those words. It's cancer. It's you. You have cancer. But what do these women do? They keep going. They keep going until the war is won and their hearts and bodies and minds and spirits are like a tattered flag blowing in the breeze. Victorious but tired. Survivors but different people. War-torn and weathered, these women slowly and quietly attend to their normal lives when every fiber of their being has been changed. It's molecular, that change. The shift is powerful and beautiful and sad. You did the thing you thought you never could and now you have the ultimate prize – your life – as a trophy. But that trophy can be heavy. All the amazing perspective and painful heartbreak you experienced melded into one shiny crown of achievement. All the things that that crown represents can never really be explained or articulated. Some wear it well. Some suffer the extra weight it adds to their lives. But let me tell you I love seeing those women with their crowns. Like a solder from the same battalion, I see them and smile for commonality I wish we didn't have to share. Like a sister you didn't know you had, that warrior is family. A bond that can't be broken. For once you've been to war, nothing is ever really the same. And although I would never wish that war on anybody, I'm honored to acknowledge their accomplishment.
So maybe instead of a ribbon, send the survivors in your life a crown. Send them this message and tell them you know it's been terrible but that you're a better person for watching them fight their battle. Let these women know you honor their diagnosis by giving to breast cancer research or maybe just taking them to dinner to hear their war stories. Let them know you've watched them battle from the sidelines and you're blown away by their strength, commitment, and survival. Women are incredible creatures, and survivors are in a heroic league all their own.
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