#WhenYouSeeUs: Educating My Sisters and Creating Images That Resonate with Women of Color

After a surprise diagnosis, I guided my sisters through their breast cancer journeys, too. Now, I create images to help people with breast cancer feel seen.

I discovered my first breast lump when I was only 15 years old, and even though that was alarming, my doctor was very certain that it was nothing.

I wasn’t even offered a mammogram. They just decided to remove it instead, so I had a lumpectomy while I was still in high school.

In some ways, that experience led to putting off a mammogram when I found another lump. Despite knowing better, I just didn’t go to the doctor because I figured it would be like the first time, where it wasn’t a problem and definitely wasn’t cancer.

The lump continued to grow, and I continued to delay getting seen for a year.

Finally, right before I turned 40 years old, I went in for my first-ever mammogram. Based on those results, they asked me to schedule a biopsy immediately — as in, before I left the clinic that day.

Even with that request, I was still convinced it was nothing. I kept going back to the memory of me at 15 years old with that first lump, figuring they would just take it out again, and that would be that. Except, of course, it wasn’t.

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Taking in the truth

The medical staff handed me a printout of the results of my mammogram and ultrasound, which included the Breast Imaging-Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) scale.

I’d never heard of that before, but I quickly learned that it’s a rating system that assesses the risk of cancer. I could see that the doctors who’d looked at this were convinced my lump was malignant. They wanted to do a biopsy just as confirmation.

At that point, I knew I was dealing with cancer. Even then, I didn’t tell my family on the off chance that I was wrong.

I got called at work with the biopsy results. I was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma — hormone-positive, HER2-negative, stage 2. That sent me reeling. 

Hearing that you have cancer, even when you know deep down that it’s likely, changes your whole world.

I was figuring out the next steps but also dealing with the news. It was a weird place to be, especially because I didn’t have time to take it in. It was just go, go, go with treatment and all the choices that had to be made. I was trying to catch up mentally.

The real challenge of treatment

For treatment, I did another lumpectomy followed by chemotherapy and then radiation. What I’ve found to be the hardest, though, is survivorship.

There’s so much to navigate in terms of side effects and the mental health aspects of dealing with cancer.

You’re expected to go back to “normal” life, except I was still on hormone therapy. Like so many who’ve had breast cancer, I was waiting to see if it would come back. Even when I decided to stop the hormone therapy, all of the side effects were still there.

They don’t tell you about how tough it is to go through medical menopause or that your vagina is going to stop working, basically.

Becoming an advocate

Learning as much as I could about cancer treatment options and the impact of having this disease helped me work through it.

That experience also became an advantage with another unexpected development. In the 5 years since my diagnosis, my two older sisters have also been diagnosed with breast cancer.

That was a mind-blowing development, especially since we all got tested for known genetic links. None of us have any. If there’s some genetic connection here, it hasn’t been discovered yet.

In a weird way, I was grateful that I was the first one to go through it because at least one of us had all the knowledge and experience.

By the time my sisters were diagnosed, I knew about resources, treatment options, and surgical procedures. I work in healthcare education and know about the health disparities that exist for women of color, so I was relieved to be a source of information for them.

Then, I found For the Breast of Us and realized I could broaden my reach by being a resource to others. I applied to be a Breast Cancer Baddie Ambassador and was selected.

A few months later, I met others in person at a Baddie retreat, and that’s when I started to get really excited about helping to carry out the organization’s mission.

Promoting visibility

My gift is graphics — I focus on creating images for all of our activities to help those with breast cancer feel seen. For example, if you do a Google search on “mastectomy scars,” you rarely see a black breast.

I became creative director, working closely with co-founder Marissa Thomas to develop images that resonate with women of color. I used artificial intelligence to create photos that overcome the limitations of stock photography.

It’s such important work, and I’m happy to be part of it.

Another aspect of this advocacy is that it shows people you can have a role even if you’re an introvert, like me. I only went to that first retreat because my friends made me promise to go. It was so far out of my comfort zone that I joked about sneaking an Uber home after getting dropped at the airport.

Then, I found out it was enough just to be in a room of other survivors. You don’t even have to say anything. They just understand.

The power of community

I’m fortunate that my family and my co-workers were all there for me and took such great care of me, but there’s something uniquely special about being with people who’ve been there.

It’s a gift to grow in this community, form these relationships, and give back through my work as a creative director and a health educator.

You never stop learning and connecting, and that’s the power of a community like this one.