The Three Circles: How Cancer Has Marked My Life

Today is World Cancer Day, a day meant to raise awareness, honour those we’ve lost, support those still fighting, and celebrate those who survived. But for many of us, this isn’t just a date on the calendar.

Cancer has a way of entering your life without knocking. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t care about timing. It doesn’t care about the plans you made, the people you love, or the future you imagined. It just arrives, sudden, sharp, unapologetic, and everything shifts.

When I think about cancer, I see three circles.

The people we lost.
The people still fighting.
The people who survived.

And somewhere in the middle of those circles is the everyone else, the ones who watched, waited, prayed, held hands, wiped tears, and tried to stay strong even when our hearts were breaking.

For me, cancer isn’t just something happening around me. It’s something that has brushed up against my own life too closely, too personally. It’s something that follows me into every exam room, every waiting area, every test result.

The Circle of Loss

There are names I still can’t say without feeling that familiar sting behind my eyes. People who loved me. People who should still be here.

Losing someone to cancer is a very specific kind of grief. It’s slow and fast at the same time. It’s watching someone fade and still hoping for a miracle. It’s holding onto every good day like it’s a lifeline. It’s learning to smile through fear, and learning to say goodbye long before you’re ready.

Grief doesn’t disappear. It just changes shape. It becomes a shadow you learn to walk with. It becomes a memory you protect. It becomes a story you tell, so they’re never forgotten.

The Circle of Fighters

Then there are the ones still in the battle, the warriors who wake up every day and choose to keep going.

Cancer strips life down to its essentials. Suddenly, the small things matter more, and the big things feel different. Strength stops looking like perfection and starts looking like showing up. Some days it’s fierce, some days it’s fragile, and some days it’s just breathing through the next hour.

Watching someone fight cancer teaches you a lot about courage. Not the loud kind but the quiet kind. The kind that sits in hospital chairs for hours. The kind that keeps laughing even when the body is tired. The kind that lets people help, and the kind that refuses to give up hope.

These are the people who remind me what resilience really looks like.

The Circle of Survivors

And then, beautifully, thankfully, there are the ones who made it through.

Survivors carry a different kind of story. One filled with gratitude, fear, relief, guilt, joy, and everything in between. They come out the other side changed. Softer in some ways, sharper in others. More aware of time, more protective of their peace, and more intentional about who and what they give their energy to.

Survival isn’t the end of the story. It’s the beginning of a new one.

My Own Brush With Cancer

I’ve had my own moment, that terrifying brush where the world tilts, and suddenly you’re not just a witness anymore. You’re a possibility. A risk. A statistic waiting to be confirmed or ruled out.

Words like DCIS, LCIS, fibroadenomas, in situ lobular neoplasia, extreme density, PASH, Stromal sclerosis and high‑risk lesions. They aren’t just medical terms to me, they’re chapters in my story. They’re markers that follow me around like shadows and put me into the high-risk category. 

And then there was the lumpectomy, a surgery meant to remove what the scans could see, only to reveal things the scans didn’t see. Findings that hid in the density of my breast tissue. Findings that only came to light because a surgeon’s scalpel happened to pass over the right spot.

That’s the part that stays with you.

The specialist is looking at your scans and saying:

"You are an absolute superstar for choosing to have the lump removed, because hidden behind it was a high-risk lesion"

or

“This worries me. With your density, anything can be hiding. Some things are only caught by chance.”

Chance.
Not technology.
Not expertise.
Not early detection.
Chance.

When you hear words like oncologist or genetic testing, your whole body reacts. You shiver, freeze and brace yourself.

And because, added to the mix, I have a strong family history, those words don’t fade. They echo.

So I live under constant surveillance.

The kind where every doctor’s appointment feels like a checkpoint.
The kind where every scan feels like a test you didn’t study for.
The kind where every “We just want to take another look” makes your stomach drop.

Each visit brings anxiety.
Each scan brings fear.
Each result brings a moment where you hold your breath and hope, desperately, that today is not the day you hear those words.

Living with that kind of uncertainty changes you. It sharpens your awareness of your own body. It makes you pay attention to every ache, every shift, every whisper of something that feels “off.” It teaches you how to live in the in‑between, not sick, not safe, just… watched.

The Ripple Effect

Cancer doesn’t just affect the person diagnosed. It affects everyone around them.

It changes families.
It changes friendships.
It changes priorities.
It changes the way you love people.

It forces conversations you never wanted to have. It teaches you to show up in ways you didn’t know you could. It reminds you how fragile life is, and how strong people can be.

Cancer has touched my life more times than I wish it had. It has taken people I love. It has tested others. It has brushed against me personally. It has shown me heartbreak and hope in the same breath. It has taught me that life is both unbearably fragile and unbelievably resilient.

What Cancer Taught Me

It taught me to say “I love you” more often.
To take photos even on ordinary days.
To check in on people.
To appreciate the quiet moments.
To stop waiting for the “right time.”
To hold people a little tighter.

It taught me that strength doesn’t always look like fighting. Sometimes it looks like resting. Sometimes it looks like letting others carry you. Sometimes it looks like simply surviving the day.

To Anyone Reading This

If cancer has touched your life too, if you’re grieving, fighting, supporting, surviving, or living under the weight of “what if”, I see you.

Your story matters.
Your fear matters.
Your hope matters.
You are not alone in this.

We carry these three circles with us.
We honour them.
We learn from them.
We love through them.

And we keep going.