From Where I Stand: A Letter from the Executive Director
Dear Community,
Welcome to Hope in Motion—a space created with care, intention, and deep belief in the healing power of shared experience. As the written companion to The Journey Forward, this blog will be a place where stories unfold gently, reflections take shape, and creativity becomes part of the healing process.
Here, you will find many kinds of voices and expressions: personal stories from members of our community, reflections on recovery and resilience, thoughtful essays on identity and healing, creative writing, poetry, and moments of quiet truth that are sometimes hard to say out loud. Some posts will inform, some will comfort, some may challenge—but all are meant to remind you that you are not alone.
We also hope this space becomes yours. If you feel called to share—whether through writing, art, reflection, or story—you are warmly invited to contribute. Creative expression can be a powerful companion through uncertainty. It gives shape to what feels overwhelming, meaning to what feels senseless, and voice to what might otherwise remain silent. Healing is not only physical; it is emotional, creative, relational, and deeply human. Sometimes, putting words to an experience is itself an act of recovery.
I would like to share a small part of my own story.
During what was meant to be an ordinary season of anticipation, a tumor was discovered in my mediastinum while I was 28 weeks pregnant. At 29 weeks, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. What followed was a convergence of moments I could never have imagined—undergoing chemotherapy while finishing my third trimester, preparing for birth, welcoming my child into the world, and navigating the fragile and sacred postpartum months while my body fought to heal.
There were times the journey felt harrowing. There were moments of fear, uncertainty, and surrender. And yet, it was also a journey that reshaped my understanding of life, love, and purpose more profoundly than anything before it. It may sound simple, even cliché, but when life changes in an instant—when you no longer know how things will unfold—you learn to trust the process of healing in a different way. You learn gratitude for each morning you wake, and for a body that, despite everything, carries you forward.
While my diagnosis was not breast cancer, living through cancer and its aftermath has given me a deep awareness of the layered and often invisible challenges that accompany a reconstructive journey—the patience it demands, the resilience it asks for, and the quiet courage it requires. Reconstruction is only one part of a survivor’s story, but it can feel like a mountain of its own.
We often speak of “feeling better,” of “moving forward,” of “winning the battle.” For some, these are meaningful goals. But healing is rarely linear, and sometimes our urgency to arrive—to be whole, to be finished, to be past it—can unintentionally pull us away from the deeper destination we are meant to discover. Healing is not only about returning to who we were; sometimes it is about becoming someone new, with tenderness for the path that shaped us.
In this space, I will share pieces of my own journey when they resonate—when they meet the stories of breast cancer survivors whose voices will also live here, and on our forthcoming podcast, The Journey Forward. Together, these stories form something larger than any single experience: a shared landscape of courage, vulnerability, rebuilding, and hope.
It is my deepest hope that Hope in Motion becomes more than a blog. May it grow into a refuge for reflection, a canvas for expression, and a circle of community. May it be a place where healing is not rushed, where stories are honored, and where hope continues—quietly, steadily—in motion.