I am a woman; a strong, caring, loving woman. I can do anything and everything. I have strength in me that would scare the darkest depths of your soul. I am honest and true to myself. I can fight and I can love. I am a woman.
I am proud to be a woman. I have mood swings and periods and I cry when I get emotional. I spend time on my hair, my make up and my dress. I pluck my eyebrows, wax my legs and paint my nails. I am feminine and beautiful. I am proud to be a woman.
I am built like a woman. I can play and be tough, but I can be tender and sweet. I have soft hands, pink lips and round breasts. I have the ability to fall pregnant; to create life and support life within me. I have the ability to give birth. I am built like a woman.
Yet, with all these blessings, I take for granted every one of them.
…
I am a woman with breast cancer; a strong, fighting woman. I am taking on a disease, more powerful than you can imagine. I will find a strength in me, I didn’t know I had. I will fight this disease with every inch of me and I will win. I am a woman with breast cancer.
I am still proud. My mood swings may be worse; the chemo makes me that way. I cry, I am emotional, I break, I need support, but I fight. I spend money on my wig and where my scarf with pride, I draw on my eyebrows and sometimes add fake lashes. I paint my nails to match my scarf. I am feminine and beautiful, even if you don’t see it. I am still proud.
I was built a woman. I play, but I am gentle. I laugh, but there is a far greater depth to it. My hands are sensitive, the chemo kills my skin, my lips are chapped in a way no lip-ice can fix and my breasts are plastic implants that painfully remind me of what I once had. I can no longer fall pregnant. Chemo is eating at my very soul, slowly poisoning every inch of my body, but I must fight. I must survive. I was once a true woman, yet now I am a plastic imitation.
I am the greatest actress you will ever meet, because you will never see me break, you will never see me pity myself, and you will never see me fall. You are just a stranger and you may laugh at my bald head, I will laugh with you. You can mock my badly drawn eyebrows, hell I laughed at them too. You will never hurt me, because you are NOTHING compared to the battle I have already one. I have one this battle and chosen too fight, and I WILL win this war, whether you help me or not.
Do not pity me, for I pity you. Do not lie to me, I have seen more truth than you could ever. Do not try to shame me, you will only shame yourself.
…
No, I am just a girl. I have not experienced the pain of chemo; I have not spent three days vomiting up everything including bits of my stomach. I have all my hair. I am not addicted to sleeping tablets because I do not need them to fall asleep. I have never been asked to fight a battle that no-one believes I will win.
I have experienced first hand the true beauty of a woman who can fight cancer and carry on fighting through the chemo, and win. I have seen the torture of a woman losing her hair. I have watched as a woman fought for her very life in my home. And she won.
But not everyone is as lucky.
Think of every person you know who has fought this war, whether they won or not, think of all those who will still fight it and think of all those people who are fighting it right now. If you have seen their lives then you know, as I do, that they are heroes and I will fight for them!
Cancer: a dance composed by Tyce Diorio
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