After a battle with cancer, time wears a different cloak. A weightier one. Less sparkly, perhaps, but more robust and practical. I measure my years now from the date of my diagnosis: four, at the time of writing. Every year banked feels like a privilege.
My cancer treatments have aged me. I can feel it in my body and see it in my face. Some days I feel ravaged by it; on others, I almost forget. But I am never not proud of my body, and endlessly grateful to it for what it endured and carried me through.
I started Poorly Boobs in 2024 because I wanted to help others navigate breast cancer. Then, last year, I couldn’t face it. I wanted to sweep it all under the carpet and get on with living my life. On several occasions, I found myself in the company of other breast cancer warriors and became unexpectedly triggered by snippets of conversation. I started comparing my treatment journey to theirs: Why wasn’t I given that drug? Why did I have this and not that? I tumbled down a rabbit hole and realised I needed distance – space between cancer and whatever came next.
One of the most important pieces of advice I give to anyone newly diagnosed is to follow your own path with blinkered precision, because no two journeys are the same. Yet I didn’t follow my own advice. I picked apart my treatment history and let comparison creep in. I fell off my positivity perch and into a darker place, worried that I’d spend the rest of my life being triggered and catapulted back to a time and place I didn’t want to revisit.
So I drew a line under it. I chose joy. I spent time with my loved ones. I travelled far and wide. I created new happy places. I embarked on new learning adventures. This is the direction Poorly Boobs is now taking: offering hope, and showing that there is life – joyful life! – on the far shore of calamity.
Recently, a friend reached out after receiving her own breast cancer diagnosis. “Charlotte, I need your help,” she messaged me. It reminded me how much I have to share, and it nudged me back to posting again. I’ve also been told by others that this blog has helped them through their own journeys, and that fills me with purpose.
It was always my intention to help in whatever way I could. I just have to do it while keeping myself safe, too. That balance is something I’m still learning – but I’m here and I’m trying.
