The day before the sturgeon full moon Charlie shaved my head. Before he’d arrived home from work I’d stood in front of the mirror whilst the kids watched Dinosaur Train and pulled my hair out in clumps. Plucking myself like a chicken. It came out easily at the root and I couldn’t stop. I hated my short haircut. It was looking so thin and patchy. I didn’t feel like myself at all. It had to go. I stood on the steps in the garden with the kids climbing around our ankles and Charlie took his clippers and showed me what each grade would look like on his own hair, then we decided to match and he started shaving right at the front before I could change my mind. I saw big clumps of thick brown hair falling around my feet and I bowed my head and felt very sad and very ashamed and started to cry and I held on to Charlie around his waist as he buzzed it all off. The kids hardly noticed what we were doing. I cried for about half a minute then decided I was over it. It had been such a long time coming and was almost a relief. Bonnie darted around collecting the fallen hair to make a nest for the birds. Toby was off hunting for blackberries as normal. Charlie did a very thorough job then gave me a kiss and we realised we were now matching and our heads would probably stick together like Velcro. Bonnie asked if we could shave her head too. I said if they both got nits then yes but right now she should keep her beautiful hair because she loves having it plaited like Elsa. I told Charlie I wanted to cover all the mirrors in the house like someone had died so I couldn’t see my reflection. But after I’d showered and really looked at myself I realised I didn’t hate it. Not that hating it would have brought back my hair anyway. A friend had told me a few times that once I’d shaved my head I’d realise I was still the same person. She knew from experience. Honestly I didn’t entirely believe her. I just didn’t think I could ever love myself with no hair. I thought if I hated how I looked with my short pixie haircut then I’d really, really hate myself with a shaved head. But somehow the opposite happened. I am now bald and undeniably look like I have cancer. And I’ve hardly reached for a hat. As my bob started thinning if my hat blew off I would cringe. My pixie hair was even worse. I couldn’t bare for people to see me without a hat on. Suddenly my entire scalp is a different story. I feel very brave. My confidence has come back. My truth is on show for the world to see and it makes me feel very strong. I am smiling and living and out here amongst it all, against all odds, and it’s so obvious. I feel less self conscious. I feel like a warrior woman. I feel like myself. I am also really looking forward to wearing an orange jumpsuit and dressing as a convict for Halloween.

I consider every single thing I eat and drink since I was diagnosed with cancer. I believe that food is medicine and I thank every tomato that passes my lips. Every glass of freshly pressed carrot juice. The organic meat and veggie boxes, the delicious fruit. I read the ingredients on the back of everything and put it back if the list is too long. I feel guilt around sugar and I don’t drink alcohol. I think about the way that everything I ingest has an impact on my recovery. And then yesterday, after spending the whole afternoon with my big girl, when the rain had passed and we were about to drive home, Bonnie and I stopped at the beach for fish and chips. We had had the most magical day out together and the wind had turned autumnal but the sun was breaking through the clouds and the road home took us past a fish and chip shop. “Chippies for tea!” She was so excited, wearing her princess dress, glitter on our faces after the woodland show we’d been to with friends. For a moment I thought, oh god, the fat, the seed oils, the total lack of any nutritional value. And then I decided, for fucks sake, imagine if the cancer killed me anyway and I’d decided to not share a box of fish and chips with my gorgeous daughter on the beach way past her bed time, dipping our chippies in ketchup, wiping greasy fingers on our dresses. After she’d crammed enough chips into her mouth she took off all her clothes even though it was cold and windy and ran into the sea, the waves chasing her back to me over and over again. We stayed until my bald head was freezing and then she chatted my ears off on the long drive home and finally fell asleep tucked up in bed next to me and I felt no guilt about the fish and chip tea.

I really want to break my Substack silence but I don’t know where to start! I’m a bit sick of hearing myself complain about chemo. It’s honestly just started to feel boring to me, so I can’t imagine how it feels for everyone else. I went out for dinner with the girls last week for a friend’s birthday and we just chinwagged about boys and the winter weekend away we’re going to have next year and other things that I hope the people on the tables surrounding us didn’t hear. I took my hat off in public for the first time since having my hair cut short. Charlie buttered me up with compliments until he made me believe I looked cute and it felt good to just get it over with. The girls were looking so hot and I felt so gross with my inflamed eczema and no eyelashes. I’m deep in a lesson of wondering why I care so much about how I look on the outside when it’s really what’s on the inside that is important. I wonder if I feel like this because I know my insides are not looking so good right now either. The chemo swirling around destroying all the goodness and the little tumour desperately trying to take me down. I’m hoping that after the chemo ends and the surgery is complete and the radiotherapy is done I will feel glowing again because the doctors will say I am cured and nothing ugly remains.

I remember watching the eclipse in 1999 when I was six years old. On top of a hill near Tregonetha with my mum and sisters and the House brothers and their farm dogs. In my mind it went very dark and the dogs went nuts. I have no idea if that is true. My mum will definitely have remembered eclipse glasses. 27 years on and Charlie and I have bathed our children and they are getting their clean pyjamas covered in charcoal and blackberries whilst we spy on the sun through six pairs of sunglasses stacked up like a Mad Max telescope. We’re sat on a bench my dad made, in front of the greenhouse Charlie built in the spring. The light changed to a sepia scale I’ve never experienced. It looked like a storm was coming. The definition of the shadows on the flowers, the colours in the vegetable patch, the tones in the hair of the children. Everything glowed and hummed as the sun went red and the light waned. We touched on the fact that events like this are interesting for more than the face value. Yes, we watched the 2026 eclipse, but it will mean we always remember what was happening during that summer. Just like when I was six years old with my sisters and the House brothers on top of a hill in mid Cornwall. In 2026 I sat in our beautiful little garden with the love of my life and our feral, pocket rocket children. I had just cut all my hair off and I cried. I had three chemo treatments left. It was the hottest, longest summer of our lives. Toby was learning to talk. I still had my dog. We’d got married that year. Charlie had become our carer. Our lives, whilst they hadn’t hit rewind had definitely slowed down to a glacial pace. That spring I’d thought I wouldn’t do one fun thing all year. I couldn’t imagine laughing or sitting outside or seeing my friends or playing with my children. Yet the 2026 eclipse rolled around and we sat out in the garden, laughing at our inability to forward plan and get eclipse glasses, watching the moon slide in front of the sun through every pair of sunglasses we had, our babies skipping bed time, in our tiny first house.

If I think about it too much I feel very sad that I won’t have anymore babies. The idea of hanging on to my ovaries for the sake of maybe, maybe not, feels like too big of a risk to take. But then I look at Charlie and the dad that he has become now that we are out of the newborn trenches. The way he cares for our children and takes his parenting responsibilities so seriously, yet he is so silly and laughs so much and the kids just love him. They light up when he comes home and follow him around like little ducklings. At the moment I feel like a very rich old fashioned woman whose children are just brought to her in bed to give a nice cuddle and when I don’t have the energy for them anymore they are taken away from me again and replaced with tea and toast. I know Bonnie is having the best summer ever with her friends and family but I also know from the tantrums and meltdowns that she finds it hard being away from me so much. From next week both Bon and Toby will be back in childcare and I don’t know what I will do with my time. I’m hoping that I can work again, and I’ll have the energy to run and surf. I’m also hoping that in the Spring when I am healthy again I could pull Bon out of preschool one day a week and I can have more time with them. I feel like this past year has robbed me of that. Toby is my favourite age, that sweet spot when they start walking and slowly learn to talk, that beautiful 16 month bubble when they are so funny and courageous and inquisitive and loving. I feel like I’m missing it. Bonnie is so full of beans and incredibly clever and has taken everything in her stride. She is so confident and friendly and brave. I woke up the other morning and all four of us were in bed together; Charlie, Bonnie, Toby and me. A big family sandwich. I felt very lucky.

Some very kind friends set up a crowdfunder for me yesterday, with the aim of raising enough money for a new surfboard. I was very surprised and so overwhelmed. There isn’t much anyone can do to make it all better. The childcare and the doorstep deliveries of food are all I have needed since April. But the crowdfunder felt like such an act of fun amongst a very shitty, boring year. A reminder that I will get back to myself eventually, and that person I used to be loved surfing! I miss it a lot. I tried to surf a few days after my first chemo MAX, at the start of the month. It was windier than I anticipated and so sunny. I plastered sunscreen on my face (probably where all the eczema sprung from) and battled against the howling easterlies and summer crowds and I could hardly paddle. I have become so weak since having treatment. Whilst I’m still walking and carrying kids and lugging the buggy around and doing yoga I haven’t done any real fitness and I can feel it. But pre-chemo MAX, when I was only on weekly chemo Lite treatment that didn’t suck the life out of me, I surfed! And I loved it. When I was first diagnosed my surgeon asked me what I liked to do for fun, and I told her, swimming, surfing, yoga. She told me my life was about to look very different but I would get back to it eventually. Luckily for me, for the first three months, it didn’t look so different at all. I still swam in the sea with my girlfriends, I just didn’t bake on the rocks in the eternal summer sunshine, and I paddled out at my favourite high tide spot and caught little peelers in my shorty and I still practiced yoga every week overlooking the ocean. I stopped eating sugar (minus the occasional ice cream) and I stopped drinking alcohol (and developed a taste for 0% Peroni, even though I felt jealous when the girls drank wine and got that nice glassy look in their eyes). But mostly life doesn’t look so different, I’m just knackered and a slightly miserable and my Instagram algorithm shows me a lot of cancer content but we can work on that. I feel so grateful that surfing has stayed a part of my life through the utter shitstorm that is being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 32. And I am so, so grateful to the wonderful people who have contributed to the crowdfunder, who will have put a beautiful new surfboard beneath my feet, and will take me to the warm waters and places that I have missed so much whilst I’ve spent this summer stuck in bed. So thank you, everyone.

Chemo MAX has been a whole other kettle of fish compared to Chemo Lite, as we knew it would be. It’s not on a drip like Taxol was, and a gorgeous nurse who I met through Instagram then in real life on the ward, sits with me whilst she pushes the four giant plungers of red liquid through my line, straight into my heart. We chat and are so similar. Both had dogs in our 20s. Same age daughters. Both love being outdoors and gardening and clothes. She says “lush” all the time like I did before I got so mopey. She reminds me of who I used to be before all this happened, and who I hope to be again when it’s all over. The first Chemo Max made me throw up and I ended up sleeping on the bathroom floor because the cold tiles felt so good. The nausea was so bad I could hardly roll over in bed and I needed a bottle with a straw just to drink water as I couldn’t move my head. The fatigue made my vision blurry and head fuzzy. Luckily this second round hasn’t felt nearly so bad. I was having horrible pelvic pain from the week of daily injections Charlie was having to stab into my stomach that stimulated my bone marrow(??), so the doctors changed these to a one-off injection the day after treatment (my nurse called it the ‘Moet’ of the bone marrow injections as it’s so expensive for the NHS but so much better) and so far, no pain. Also nice to not have six more injections to look forward to, Poor Charlie. The steroids seem to have kept the nausea mostly at bay and I feel like eating yummy food again, so once again thank you to every one who has been filling our freezer with goodness. I’ve read what feels like 50 books, made sure the washing always needs to be hung out to get myself outside, admired my squashes, picked some dahlias, tried to go for a walk, taken my supplements, attempted to scroll less, text my friends, planned holidays, researched trips. It’s hard to believe that five months ago I was diagnosed, officially the day after Bonnie’s 3rd birthday. Since then I have become a wife, cut my hair, relinquished control, spent an obscene amount of time in hospital, found out I have BRCA1, completed 14 of 16 rounds of chemotherapy and decided to have a boob job! It’s a strange life but it’s also very sparkly and filled with lovely people.

I thought this might happen - I’d start writing and it’d just keep coming. It’s very cathartic. Apologies for the radio silence - I was just fighting for my life!

This afternoon the warm breeze feels like late summer. Fluffy seed heads float by in drifts like fairies. I am crouched down in front of my son, palm outstretched and filled with blackberries from the hedgerow beside us. The sun beats down on our fair skin. His hands and cheeks are stained purple, berries clutched in each fist, shovelling them into his mouth. He looks up at me from below long, thick ginger eyelashes and instead of cramming the next berry between his own lips, he reaches up and pushes it between mine. My sweet one year old baby feeding me. I realise that for all the foraging I’ve been doing the past few days, I hadn’t eaten a single one myself. He feeds me a few more with his fat, sticky fingers before returning to eating them himself, until my palm is empty. We sit down in the shade on a slate slab and he grabs on to my dress. My favourite pink gingham. For one second I consider prising his hand away before he stains the linen, but in the next breath I decide I couldn’t care less about the dress. Stain away. Cover me in purple juice. Remind me I have beautiful babies and that summer doesn’t last and the fruits of autumn arrive before we’re ready and the dress is not important, but this is. Sat side by side with my son, feasting on blackberries.

Friday before last I had my port inserted. It’s a medical device that sits beneath the skin of my chest and allows the chemo to directly access my heart.

I dropped Toby at my auntie’s house saying, I’ll see you in two hours! I sat in the corridor outside the miserable waiting room and a very tall nurse came for me with a wheelchair and a surgical gown. I was confused why I’d need the gown, got changed, and told him I’d walk. He took me to radiology and I had no idea what radiology was or why I was there. His legs were so long I had to almost run to keep up with him. I waited almost an hour, and then I had to sign a waiver saying I’d never bled out or haemorrhaged. I started to feel like I was a bit naive about what was going to happen. The surgeon came and explained that he would be cutting a small incision into my neck, where the biggest vein goes to my heart. He’d also slice open my chest and fit the port. I didn’t listen to much else and I don’t know how it works because I started feeling very uneasy about my decision. Apparently I needn’t have worn that button down dress and they wouldn’t just be popping something in whilst I chatted to the nurse doing it. I would also probably not be back to collect Toby in two hours. I walked into the operating theatre with no prior knowledge (naively) that I’d be there. A huge ultrasound machine was next to the operating table. The nurses put up a sheet and I couldn’t see what was happening, but I felt the four huge needles being pushed into my bony chest, pumping me with local anaesthetic and adrenaline. It hurt and I tried to distract myself by talking to the nurse, but slowly the panic began creeping in. I started scratching at the sides of the bed, drumming my fingers, trying to expel the adrenaline. My heart rate was climbing higher and higher. I tried taking deep breaths but every exhale was a loud hum that I couldn’t control. I wanted to curl up in a ball or run but I could feel the blood running down my chest and the tugging and pushing of the tube going into my veins. The panic grew and I decided to try and dissociate. That morning I had been at the beach with a friend. Our babies were waddling about in the shallows, sunning their gorgeous naked bottoms, splashing in the sea. Neither of us had our swimsuits and we decided to go for a dip in our knickers, taking it in turns to look after the kids. The sea was luxuriously calm and warm and clear. I felt calm and warm and clear. Lying on the operating table I took myself to that moment, I imagined diving beneath the water, looking back at the shoreline and seeing our children playing and safe in the morning sunshine. The overwhelm was instant and I couldn’t control it. Tears began rolling down my cheeks and the crying that set in built to hysterical. Over and over again, all I could think was, I shouldn’t be here, I should not be here. I am 32 with young children and it is the summer. I should be healthy and on the beach with my friends and my babies all the time. I should not be lying in an operating theatre having a line put into my heart for my chemo because I have cancer. And the more I thought about the ocean and my children the harder I cried until I was shaking and the surgeon asked me if he should stop, if he had done something to upset me, if it was his fault. I couldn’t speak except to tell him to keep going until it was over because it need it all to be over. I need this to be over. (The chemo to be over. The hospital appointments to be over. The mastectomy surgery to be over. The radiotherapy to be over. The blood tests to be over. The anxiety to be over.) And then the moment was over. The surgeon wished me luck and left. The nurses told me it was time to get up but I just lay there completely fucked. I felt like I couldn’t move my legs. They handed me a tissue. I wanted them to roll me off the trolley like when I had my c-section. But I could use my legs and no one was going to roll me off the trolley so I eventually moved. The nurses changed my gown for a fresh one, naked except for my knickers I stood there bruised and bloody whilst they dressed me. Cold and pale and frail. I was offered a wheelchair and this time I sat in it. They wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and over my legs and wheeled me back to the ward where my mum was waiting for me. I felt like a shell of myself. My nurse hugged me and called me her poor little chicky and I felt like a sad little chick that had fallen out of the nest and hit every branch on the way down.

This Friday marks the last round of weekly chemo before I move on to Chemo MAX. Three whole months of chemotherapy every single week. My poor body. I feel very nervous and apprehensive to start EC but also knowing I’ve completed such a mega milestone is very reassuring. From next week I will have four more treatments left until I ring the bell and hopefully never do it again.

Bonnie has a 3 year old’s awareness of what’s happening. She knows I am poorly and have been for a while, but that I am getting better. She doesn’t know the word chemo or cancer, or I’ve never heard her say it. She probably thinks I am having calpol every Thursday. She knows on Tuesday afternoons I need to get my bloods done, her and Toby came with me once. They sat either side of me on the bed in the little room. Bon in a princess dress and Toby in just a nappy. Bonnie stared at my arm in fascination when the nurse stabbed the needle in. Toby tried to grab the empty vials from the tray the nurse held, so I ended up holding the tray above my head with my un-tourniqueted arm. It was chaos. The nurse said it had made her day though. Bon also understands that I go to hospital every Thursday to see the doctors that make me better. She knows the medicine I take will make my hair fall out and my silk pillow is helping to protect it. When she climbs into bed with me she wants to share my special pillow so her hair doesn’t fall out too, which makes me sad. When she explained that to me it made me reevaluate what I tell her and how she absorbs information. Parenting tiny kids whilst undergoing cancer treatment is gruelling but so life affirming. I am so tired, the fatigue hitting harder each week, but their needs never change. Charlie stills goes to work at 6.45am every morning and I have to prise open my eyes and start making breakfast and sorting lunch boxes, wiping bums and snotty noses, breaking up fights and dishing out hugs and scrambling to keep ahold of my patience. But then we sit out in the garden on the second cup of tea of the morning and they play amongst the flowers and pick peas and share and look so beautiful that they give me a reason to keep going, even when I am feeling nauseas and knackered and anxious. Bonnie and I were lying on the sofa this afternoon and Bonnie clambered on top of me and hugged me and said, “A cuddle will make you better. That’s what cuddles are for.” When they were born the kids gave my life meaning and whilst they never ever give me a fucking break and I would love to just rot in bed and only look after myself, they are the sweetest distraction. Maybe ask me again how I’m feeling after the summer holidays though!

Last week I spent 7.5 hours in hospital. In the waiting room I was boxed in by men talking about their incurable cancers. The miserable woman who told me all my hair was going to fall out walked in. All the alarms went off on the ward. Someone had a cardiac arrest whilst on their chemo and became unresponsive. I felt sick knowing I was about to be hooked up to that same stuff. It reminded me that chemo is serious. My appointment was already 2 hours late and I ask the receptionist to call me when it was my turn and left. I needed some air and a walk. In the chair I told my specialist nurse that I hadn’t had a period since I started treatment 11 weeks ago, and the chemo nurse who was trying to find my vein told me I was probably going through early menopause. I cried because that also felt serious and also very real, no more babies. The needle was stuck into my arm three times before they found a vein that hadn’t given up. I closed my eyes and cried some more. Everyone around me was so old and it felt so unfair. I had a meeting with a clinical geneticist who told me that based on my specific gene alteration I have a 70% chance of developing a new cancer in my other breast if I don’t have a double mastectomy, nipples included. I didn’t cry. She also told me I have a 50% of having ovarian cancer. The anxiety is creeping. I’ve found myself craving sugar again and feeling guilty about that. I snap at Charlie because I am stressed about dying of cancer.

But the juxtaposition of beautiful moments is so stark it makes the shit times seem like a figment of my imagination. Bonnie graduated forest school in a blur of colour and sunshine. I was meant to be at chemo but I got the week off and I can’t imagine a better way to spend it than watching my gorgeous girl say goodbye to such a special place. She skipped through the willow arch with rainbow ribbons streaming in the wind. She hung her memory leaf on the apple tree and I saw her name written on another child’s leaf. She bounced around the orchard playing with her friends and hugging her leaders, brimming with confidence and happiness and play. I sat out with my sister until the sun had long set and we howled with laughter about things that no one else would find as funny. I looked at the clock and couldn’t believe how late it was getting. I have been prioritising sleep as I know how healing it is. But I reminded myself that laughter is probably just as healing. England lost the football and the neighbourhood fell silent and we still cackled and drank tea until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Charlie and I had our first date night since Toby was born. He caught two lobsters and we had them shredded onto chips from the fish and chip shop in the village. We watched the sun set over Constantine. It was so warm I couldn’t imagine ever wearing socks and a jumper again. I feel like this every summer. And by the time midwinter rolls around I can’t imagine how it feels to be warm. But for now it’s reading in the shade of our unbelievably flowery garden, picky bits and swims with the girls, tea with besties and the kids on the grass, swims in the rock pools with Charlie and our babies, yoga overlooking the ocean in shorts and tees.

As mentioned earlier I have a week off from chemo. It feels amazing not being knocked back to feeling like total shite. Knowing I have a weekend and a whole week ahead of me of just feeling relatively normal. I am overjoyed. My body needed a break and I was due one anyway. Tomorrow I will have a PORT put in under my skin on my chest. It’s a small medical device that means no more cannulas. Moving forwards I have two more weekly Chemo Lite treatments left, then I’ll move straight onto hardcore Chemo Max every fortnight with my last treatment hopefully being the third week of September. The new drugs will be way stronger, the fatigue and nausea intense, and I will probably really have to say goodbye to my hair, finally. I have a theory that the universe let me keep my hair until now because it knew all the shit news I was going to be dealt and didn’t think I could handle it. I am very grateful to the powers that be.

After treatment last week my nurse told me she needed to take a couple swabs to check I didn’t have a common but invisible skin infection that needs to be treated before I can have my PORT op. We went into the side room and I asked where the swabs were going to be. She said nose and groin. She turned around with the cotton buds and said, right I’ll start with the uncomfortable one. I didn’t know whether she meant emotionally or physically? Do I lift up my skirt or my chin? Luckily I didn’t show her my knickers as she shoved the swab up my nostril…

I look at my babies and then I look at my body and I feel so proud of it. Sometimes when I’m having a shower or getting changed I graze the lump in my boob and it makes me feel ashamed. I don’t like to touch it. It feels dirty and not of me. But I have to remind myself that whilst my cancer is sadly of me, it doesn’t change all the wonderful things my body has done. My clever little ovaries were the starting point for my gorgeous children. My strong womb grew them. My skin stretched. My cells became their cells and shaped their eyes and toes and organs. My body became their body and when they were ready (and they both took their time) I opened up and brought them into the world. My little boobies swelled and fed them, producing milk for a year each time. Day and night I held my children and nourished them with my blood turned milk, packed with antibodies and nutrients. Filling their big round bellies in turn. And even through all the sleepless nights I got stronger. Recovered from a birth. Then recovered from a c-section. And still my body carried my kiddies on my front and on my back and across the beaches and through airports and countries and grabbed screaming kids and laughing kids and with one on each hip we ploughed onwards into their childhood and my motherhood. And now it’s poorly and soaking up chemo every week and it still doesn’t give in, still loading the dishwasher and changing nappies. Still feeding hungry mouths and wiping away tears and picking flowers and playing games. Hanging out the laundry in the hot summer sun and chasing bare bottoms around with sunscreen or hats or a T-shirt to keep the burn away. Scrubbing them down at the end of the day and wrestling them into pyjamas and reading stories and cuddling them to sleep. All whilst fighting for my life. This strong, squashy, tired body does not give up.

God I’m just so blessed with GIRLS. Being a woman is wonderful. There has not been a day when I haven’t felt support in some capacity. The forest school run covered. Homemade soup for chemo day. Doorstep drops of plants and books and meals and sweet treats. Packages of tea and organic bone broth. Massages and therapies. Childcare on the low energy days. Lifts to and from hospital. My house cleaned. Baby’s buggy nap done while I lie in bed with the windows open and the breeze drifting through. Messages every Thursday, 10 minute long voice notes, FaceTiming the kids to keep them entertained. And when I feel up to it, swims at sunset, coffees in the shade, pizza outnumbered by our children. A listening ear whenever I need it, met with exactly what I want to hear. I feel like all the women I know have been there for the good times and the bad. Friends who have been here since the beginning. Dancing into the sunrise on the cliff tops and now cutting my hair off before chemo claims it. A lot of people have said that you really find out who your friends are when the going gets tough, and I’ve learnt that all my friends really were my besties. A lifetime of gorgeous girls.

My car died. I loved that car. It belonged to a friend before me and he loved it too. It threw up all it’s engine oil and transmission fluid all over the road at 3pm when the big baby was due a nap and the big girl was hot from a day at forest school and the chemo was making me feel so sick. We pulled up to a roundabout and it simply never went forward again. I sat in the car for all of two minutes before deciding it was far too hot to be standstill with no aircon or breeze through the windows. Sweating I pulled Bon out of the car, then Toby, I grabbed her lunchbox as it was the only thing I could think to take with us, and I trooped my sweaty little children down a main road to a nearby farm who gave us shade and juice and use of their trampoline. My mum showed up and took us home. I abandoned the car and the tow truck took it away. With so many hospital appointments and childcare so vital I posted on instagram with a long shot plea for a car and was offered SO MANY. I cannot believe how many people have been showing up to help in so many ways. A friend of mine had a c-section recently so I now have her godsend car on loan until Charlie’s is out of the garage. The gratitude I feel is bottomless. Life has been giving me lemons to the point that I live in the lemon grove, but I’m also grateful for the shade.

My sister recently renamed my treatments Chemo Lite and CHEMO MAX which I find hilarious and very apt. Two more weekly chemo lites left until 4 hits of fortnightly chemo max and then we’re hopefully finished with the IV bags and hours and hours in the comfy chair.

A friend of mine often says to me, one day at a time. From anyone else I don’t like to hear it. But she has lived through this and worse, and her words ground me when I feel myself threatening to untether and float away. The vastness of my experience feels overwhelming. If I think about the treatment plan in its entirety it swallows me. Nine weeks of chemotherapy completed feels minuscule in comparison to what lies ahead; 7 more infusions, radiotherapy, three huge surgeries, a lifetime of drugs, physical healing, piecing myself back together from the trauma. I called my mum during my appointment today. I just want it to be over, I said, I am tired to my bones. Everyone says, keeping going Lottie! like I have a choice. But my friend reminds me, when the enormity of what lies ahead of me begins to engulf me, one day at a time. One foot in front of the other. A pilgrimage back to myself. The road is long and winding. Steep, full of potholes. Sometimes the path falls away entirely. But we adapt and scramble and build our way to the next stage, the next crossroad, making decisions and moving forward once more. I am living and breathing my sickness right now but one day this journey will be just another memory, like all the other trips I have taken in life, that were scary and enlightening, that introduced me to new friends and taught me so much. And each one of those trips shaped me into who I am today.

It has finally cooled down. The kids are both asleep. I am sat out in the garden with a tea and my book, Nica sprawled on the tiles below me. The church bells are ringing for weekly practice. The swifts are whistling as they fly overhead. A wood pigeon echoes across the estate. My sweet peas and roses are in full bloom. Charlie is out spearing off the end of Park Head. Last night Olive and I had girl dinner on the rocks overlooking Trescore Islands after a swim across the lagoon and putting the world to rights as the sun set. I sacked off lunch box prep and sorting the kids’ rucksacks and Charlie did bed time. It was the first time in a long time I felt like a 32 year old girl living in summer. Not a cancer patient or a mum of two but just an early thirties, ocean loving, picnic eating girl gossiping with her oldest friend.

(I wrote this last week when the news was fresh. I feel better now but thought it was good to share how I felt at the time.) Emotionally I feel like someone has beat the shit out of me and every time I try and get up they kick me whilst I’m down. My gene testing results came back as positive for BRCA1. Unsurprising given my family history but still a blow. In a nutshell, I have a fault in my DNA that stops my body from fighting breast and ovarian cancer. The chance of my current breast cancer reappearing somewhere else in my body in the next 10 years (bones, brain or liver, incurable) is up to 20%. Statistically, with the BRCA1 gene, I am 20-30% more likely to develop a new cancer in my other breast in the next 10 years, with a 35-45% chance of cancer in my ovaries before I am 70. The doctors have suggested I have a double mastectomy (both my breasts removed) at the end of chemo, and also have my ovaries surgically removed. I said to the surgeon it feels like we’ll just keep chopping out parts of me that could develop cancer until there’s nothing of me left. I spoke to a friend that evening and she cried. Then she told me that I am not a sum of my parts, but the shining light that is inside, and that part cannot be removed. Then I cried, too. For me, what this means for my family, how far the net is now cast and how after generations of cancer deaths and diagnosis’ how I am the first person to know why.

I don’t even remember what it feels like to be worried about normal stuff. How many wake ups our kids had. If the baby skipped a nap. The amount of oil my car burns. Mortgage rates rising. Cancelling plans. All my problems seem so much bigger than me that I feel like I’m looking down on myself from above most of the time. Watching a really unbelievable tv show where I am the cheerful main character and the writers just keep throwing shitty, unbelievable storyline after another at me to see how long it takes me to break. I am constantly stressed that everyone I love is sick.

On the other side of that I suddenly don’t sweat the small stuff. We have one of the kids sleeping between us nearly every night and we feel no need to get them back in their own bed.  Where I used to crave space, I now wake up wanting to see their sweet sleeping face on the pillow next to me.

We went to a wedding in the New Forest. They live in a beautiful old farmhouse where every room is unintentional art. The way the evening sunlight streams through the old curtains. Collected treasures from all over the world scattered across shelves. Stars on the canopy of the four poster. Antlers and shells and mismatched crockery and plants climbing towards the light. Dilapidated lean-to, runner ducks, cows turned out on the forest, pigs snuffling for apples in an overgrown orchard. It feels like time doesn’t exist at the farm. It feels like magic. The marriage of Charlie’s cousin and her partner was also like magic. True love, soul mates, their almost one year old gabbling throughout the service, our own kids playing with the confetti baskets at the back of the church, a deer grazing by the road. The whole day was sunshine. Beautiful people and music and huge smiles. It reminded me that lovely things are happening all the time. Most people aren’t sick. I had been all consumed by my illness to the point that I’d forgotten I can be a part of it all. Beauty and love. Like a tonic.

Last week was a week of tears; sadness and happiness. Longing and acceptance. And tears of really seeing one another, and being held in that. A friend who survived breast cancer a few years ago told me, “it’s like a club you never wanted to be a part of, but it’s a pretty special club.” I quoted this to another woman I have met on this journey, who beat breast cancer when her children were a similar age to mine. She cried and hugged me and I cried with her. For all we have lost and all we have gained.

I was chatting to a woman in the chemo waiting room today. We got on to the subject of hair, she brought it up as all hers had fallen out. It turned out we were on the same treatment plan and she told me, “you know, yours will fall out too.” I said, yes I know, I’ve made my peace with it. She replied, “so had I, but once it had gone I hated it. You will hate it. You’ll look in the mirror and think you look like a bald eagle.” Cheers for the vote of confidence. When people ask me how and why I stay so positive throughout this experience that woman is exhibit A. I cannot end up that miserable.

Charlie asked me last week. If I weirdly looked forward to chemo days. And I worry it makes me sound full to the brim of toxic positivity but I do. For one, every Thursday is another day closer to completing chemo. And two, I know that chemo is not the enemy. At one point I was convinced otherwise, and we spoke about that this morning on the journey up the A30 to hospital, that cancer and cancer care is a strange experience because you can go from feeling fine with cancer to feeling very poorly from the medicine. Medicine which you willingly put yourself through for the greater good. But yes, I do look forward to Thursdays. I like knowing that the little black bag that is drip, drip, dripping into my veins through the needle that makes me feel fuzzy is medicine that is curing me. I have had to reframe my whole way of thinking about hospitals and pharmaceuticals. I cried the first time I was put through the CT machine. By in my second MRI I taught myself to lean into it. The machine banged and clicked and the far-too-quiet headphones do nothing to mask the loud whirring and beeping. The first time I was lying on my back, face up in the cylinder with a breathing monitor plate half the size of my body and half as heavy, on my upper half. I couldn’t lift my arms or move my legs. All I could do was stare at the scuff marks on the inside of the tube or the darkness behind my eyes and strain to listen to Heart Radio over the mechanical sounds like scanned my body for cancer. The second time I was lying on my front then reversed backwards into the MRI machine. No escape there either as I had a cannula in my arm feeding dye into my veins. I don’t enjoy the experiences at all. But I have been using mind over matter to remind myself that all these machines and fluids and appointments are quite literally, hopefully, saving my life. Plus on chemo days I get to read my book and scroll and drink tea and eat snacks in a comfy chair and I don’t have to think about nap time or if someone is hungry or cold or needs their nappy changed. The things us mothers will do to catch a break, hey?

A friend very flatteringly told me I should write a book. When I said I didn’t know what I’d write about (not to mention I don’t have to skill or attention span), she laid my life out so beautifully in front of me. She said, “Well you could write about this girl who travelled around Europe and slept in her car and rescued a dog from Nicaragua and surfed everywhere and then had two beautiful children and has now got to face one of the toughest journeys in life… that would be a pretty powerful story I reckon.” I loved to see it like that. The sum of the sweetest moments that have made me who I am today, seen from the outside. She described what I am going through now as the hardest thing I’ll possibly ever do. And I truly hope this is the hardest thing I will ever do, because if it is I will feel so lucky. It’s obviously not great, but if the worst thing that happens in my life is completing chemo I will feel blessed. Surviving cancer, I will feel blessed. I would take this over and over (please no, but seriously), if it could protect my children and others around me that I love. If we are all dealt one hard thing I’d bite fates hand off for this one. I have seen what hard is and it is truly devastatingly awful. This is not it.

On days where I slip into the “why me” mindset I try and reframe my cancer as a learning. It’s like life’s way of saying, oh you thought parenting was hard? Try parenting with cancer. Oh, you’re just going to put off getting married because it’s never the right time or you don’t have the money? Here’s a reason to just get on with it. Oh, you think you’re lonely? Look how many people rally when you need them most. Oh, you’re taking your beautiful life and children for granted? Have a summer off and see how you feel next Spring when you’re healed and full of energy, you’ll love it so much more. I thought I was invincible. It’s almost laughable how sure I was that my lump wasn’t cancerous, considering my family’s track record. Next week I’ll find out if the cancer is genetic. Cancer in my genes. It terrifies me. But if the test comes back positive there will be more learning in that.

Advice I’ve been given that I actually put into practice:

Drink plenty of water on and after chemo day (it helps flush the treatment through and keeps your kidney’s happy)

Keep nails painted (chemo weakens them and keeping them painted saves them from breaking)

Use chemical free shampoo (I’ve been using the kids shampoo and it’s working so far!)

Change your bed sheets regularly (helps to keep you well when immunity is low)

Drink bone broth (health and strength)

Eat leafy greens (proven to help with breast cancer)

Drink celery juice (a wonderful stage 4 survivor swears by it and now it makes me feel like I’m being cured, too)

Take turkey tail tincture (gifted by a friend, recommended by a fellow BC survivor, made locally with love)

Go outside as much as possible (shakes off the fatigue and the fresh air feels so good in my lungs)

Ask for help (I am surrounded by it and couldn’t feel more supported)

Last week I outlined what my typical week looks like. The funny thing is I forgot to mention that every Tuesday I get my bloods done to check my body has bounced back well enough to have another round of chemo. Every Tuesday I get my appointment time wrong and end up having to race to get my blood test done before the doctors closes and it’s too late. They’ve set me up with automatic reminders now because it was getting a bit ridiculous seeing as I booked the tests in myself right up until the end of July. And they are on the calendar. Quite often written down wrong. Cancer treatment is SO hard for Type B people. I have FOUR appointments on Tuesday! The nurse today told me about one of them that I didn’t even realise I had!

This one is dark. At the beginning of each chemo session the nurse asks a bunch of questions about the possible side effects, nausea, hair loss, bowels, skin irritation, fatigue, the lists goes on. You answer and she grades your answer onto a sort of side effect spreadsheet that has options 0 to 5 of severity. The list starts with: 0 - normal, moving on to 1 - mild etc. The grade 5 column is titled ‘Death’. From the SIDE EFFECTS. You literally sign a waiver when you start chemo to say you understand that it might kill you.

On Thursday nights, after chemo, I can’t sleep. It’s such a shame because I am so, so tired but all the steroids keep me awake. Bonnie stays over at my mums house and Toby sleeps so soundly when she’s away. The room is dark without the rosey hue of the salt lamp, only a few faint glow in the dark stars shine on the wall above his bed. It’s quiet and cooler. Charlie sleeps deeply next to me and I would love love love to be making the most of the peaceful house after so many years of broke nights but I can’t. I just lie in bed itcy and awake. Counting, reading, scrolling, writing. Waiting for a sleep that eventually comes but is normally interrupted by Toby crying. Thursday nights are rubbish. Fridays are better. The steroids wear off and I am exhausted. I feel fuzzy, like I could float away. Just not really of myself. Mum keeps Bon, Charlie goes to work and a friend will come over to keep me company and help with Toby. My face and neck are red and flushed from the steroids and I’m hungry but food doesn’t taste quite right. My voice gets very quiet after chemo. From Thursday until Monday I can hardly raise it. It’s a huge pain to go into shops or talk to people I don’t know so I don’t bother. The effort of repeating myself is, more than anything, really boring and annoying. I mostly gently garden and drink tea and feed the baby. Sometimes go for a walk with the buggy in the village. We don’t venture far. On Saturday I am at my worst. Miserable, uncomfortable, exhausted, irritated. I am practically incapable of looking after the kids. Charlie takes control of the day and I wander about the house in my pyjamas, eating, sleeping, reading in bed, lying outside for 10 minutes before getting sick of the neighbours and the lawnmowers and go back inside and climb into bed. My arms are covered in bruises from blood tests and cannulas. On Sundays I am still tired but I have been waking up feeling a lot better and it’s such a relief. We go out together, Charlie and the kids and I, for a walk in the woods or a swim in the sea. Sometimes I find the strength to surf but it wipes me out but it’s worth it. Then we’ll head home at lunch time and spend the rest of the day snacking and gardening and watching movies. Mondays are quite tough as I don’t feel a hundred percent but Charlie will be gone by 6.30am. Me vs kids. Luckily a friend normally pops over or I go to mums. We potter about. Nothing full on. No beach days or food shops. Just a wander up the lane. Books and blocks on the sofa. If the insomnia holds off I wake up on Tuesday almost back to normal. I wrestle Bonnie into her forest school gear. Make packed lunches. Brush teeth and hair. Pack waterproofs and wellies. By 9am I will have bundled everyone into the car and we’ll be on our way to Outside Tribe, marching the kids across the meadow, catching up with friends on the school run, watching Bonnie play amongst the blossom, chatting to the leaders. Now Toby’s on his feet he plays with the wooden train set at the entrance or finds something messy to chew on like chalk or clay. Sometimes we see friends, sometimes we just take it easy. Maybe pop to the shops. And every Tuesday evening I head to the Zen Den overlooking Watergate Bay for a divine yin yoga practice with my gorgeous friend and teacher. I stretch and watch the ocean and let the incense and the sound of the waves wash over me and heal me and make me feel like myself again. Wednesdays are the best. I feel more or less fine and both Toby and Bonnie are in childcare for a few hours. It is blissful. After the general morning chaos of getting every ready and out the door and at the respective settings I can finally just exist in a state of peace and silence and I rejoice in it for the next four hours. Sometimes I’ll have something delicious like a facial or a massage or yoga booked in. Other times I’ll go for a swim or a surf or just plant my seedlings in peace without someone pulling them straight back up again. I also do boring things like the dishes and the washing and tidy because I am still a mum. Then on Thursday, until the end of July, I pack my little chemo bag with a nice salad and some snacks, headphones, obsidian bear and rose quartz angel, water bottle, lip balm, phone charger and book, and head back to the Headland Unit to see the lovely nurses who make me better. Charlie takes the morning off to drive me, sometimes he waits, other times he heads to work and a friend collects me. I feel fuzzy, like I could float away. And the tumour is shrinking. And the whole cycle starts again.

On the days when I feel better, Tuesday and Wednesday, I feel the old pull to pack in the good stuff. Fill the hours with seeing friends and rushing from fun thing to fun thing. I make plans to squeeze every drop of goodness out of the day, out of life, when I’m feeling up to it. And then I remind myself to slow down. A friend said to me, after recently finishing treatment, “I never want to be busy again,” and that resonates so deeply within me. I have always been someone to love and immerse myself everything so deeply and want to live every hour in a state of perpetual enjoyment. Whilst I relish being alone I never prioritise it. I’m late for everything and most of the time my foot is half way out the door on the way to the next fun thing. This year has been a forceful teacher of taking a step back, relishing in the joy of missing out, knowing that my time to rush will come again, but it is absolutely not now. The FOMO is real and I miss festivals and weddings and dinner out but I constantly remind myself this is temporary. I feel like our garden, as I water it on a warm evening. The wildflower seeds barely poking through the soil, the sweet peas slowly climbing their tipi, the roses taking their time to bloom. And soon they will burst through and up and out and into colour and I will be left behind. But next year they’ll be back and so will I.

It’s Toby’s first birthday and it’s so disorientating to think how much has changed over the past year. On the 29th of May in 2025 I was, at the exact moment of writing this, lying on a hospital bed with 10 doctors in the room, unable to move my legs with my belly cut open. Our 11lb son, gloriously ginger and fat and furious to have been disturbed from his 15 day overdue slumber, had been passed to me. His yellow hat was too small for his enormous head. I felt incredibly relieved to have chosen a C-section and also totally alienated by the surroundings in which I’d brought Toby into the world. It was a very odd experience, but not a negative one. Just a lot more medicalised than I’d originally planned for. The total opposite of a home birth in water, actually. Last year I became a mother of two and I relaxed into my role and I loved my kids more for it and I slowed down. A year on and I am slowing down again, when I thought I’d be gearing back up to get out there and surf and travel and party and claw back some more freedom. I really felt like I was getting my pink back. I’d had my hair done and was back in my summer dresses and the gym was making me feel strong. I was winding down breastfeeding and work was going well and I had so many kid-free things in the diary. But we’re all taking it in our stride. Charlie has been thrown into dadhood in a huge way and he is, whilst exhausted, smashing it. A rock within our household. I couldn’t function without him.

Last night Bonnie couldn’t sleep so she climbed into bed with Charlie and I and I fell asleep cuddling my big girl. Holding her in my arms with my chin resting on her short blonde hair that she insisted was chopped like me and like Rapunzel’s at the end of the film. We woke up when the sun had finally gone down and Toby was crying and Charlie heaved himself out of bed to soothe him, then he came back for Bon, extracting her from my arms, carrying her to her own bed. Our heads no longer sharing the silk pillow that I bought in a last attempt effort to save my hair from chemo. Week four and so far, so good. Our hospital in Cornwall doesn’t offer cold capping, which is a method of scalp cooling which stops your hair falling out. It’s probably the only hospital in the western world that doesn’t have the option, but it’s also the only hospital for chemotherapy treatment in the whole of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. I was heartbroken at first, when I didn’t have the option to save my hair. My nurse explained that cold capping just adds too much time to treatment (at least an hour either side) and there are too many people needing chemo, and not enough seats and not enough time in the day. Saving all those lives does seem vastly more important than saving my hair. I cried a lot at first, about the idea of all my hair falling out. As women, or maybe as young women, or maybe just as the type of young woman I am and am surrounded by, I feel like we hold a lot of value in our hair. A beauty standard reflected in length and thickness and ability to wander out of the sea with salty locks and it to dry blonde and crisp in the sunshine. I have never had short hair in my life. Maybe a bob once, when I was about 10. And as a group of friends we rarely have short hair. Always long, dyed, loose, down. There to be flicked around and played with. Twirled in our fingers or hidden behind when anxious or shaken when we’re dancing. Simply, I loved my hair. At the beginning of this journey, when I thought about my hair falling out, it was the worst part. Not just because I loved it but because it would be an obvious, outward symbol of my diagnosis and for some reason, that brought up shame for me. A strange shame that I had got sick. Having no hair would make me look like a victim. But I only felt like this on a personal level. Whenever I have seen women with no hair, as a result of chemo or another illness, I have never thought it looked bad. I have always thought it made them look like a fighter. Strong in the face of something that was trying to take your body down but you wouldn’t allow it. Warriors against an invisible sickness that we won’t let win. Intuitive, trusting, surrendering, beauty. I see strength and bravery, women out there, in the world, being part of it, amidst everything she is carrying. Whilst my hair is still hanging in there after a month of chemotherapy, when it finally does go I already feel better. Ready. There are blonde strands tangled in my fingers every time I run my hands through it, and I’m sure I will cry in the shower as it comes out in clumps, and I will find it hard to parade my sickness so visibly, but I do feel differently about it now. I hope that I can find the courage and self-assurance to walk around without a wig, without a scarf, proud of the journey I am on and the mental and physical strength it is taking. I wrote, just a month ago, “My hair falling out feels like I my defence against the world stripped away. No where to hide. A stark reminder in the mirror and an unavoidable signal to the rest of the world that I have cancer in my body. All privacy snatched from me by treatment that I had no choice in. It breaks my heart knowing that my hair will fall out.” People said to me, oh, it’s just hair. Which I don’t think is very fair. Especially if you’ve never been subject to all your hair falling out. My mum understood. She has been through it and she comforted me whilst it felt like my hair was the end of the world and now she’s here to support me through the next stage. It’s incredible how quickly my mind has changed, the waves I have moved through, the acceptance I have reached, the things I have reevaluated.

Every couple of weeks I talk to a clinical psychologist. It doesn’t feel like anything groundbreaking is being unearthed and I have imposter syndrome that I am utilising a service that someone needs more than me, but my specialist nurse keeps reminding me that I have been through a lot, and it is reassuring to be reminded. The little voice inside me that says, it’s just cancer, it’s only stage 2, it’s HER negative (my surgeon called it, with a little thumbs up and lots of eye contact, “a good thing”). And in some ways I do count myself very lucky. Chemotherapy ages your ovaries by ten years and luckily for me I’ve already had my gorgeous babies. If the kids were older they’d possibly be traumatised by what’s happening, but luckily for me they probably won’t remember. I am young and fit and healthy and I caught it very early, so luckily the chemo isn’t so hard on my body. As far as getting cancer in your early 30s goes, I would consider myself very lucky.

This slightly toxic positive attitude leaves me feeling unworthy of the help and support I receive. That I’m not sick enough to have food dropped on our doorstep or my cousin and auntie cleaning the kitchen or friends swooping in with childcare or my mum constantly picking up the slack or Charlie taking over the nights and mornings. In those moments I have to really stop and remind myself, Lottie, you have cancer. Actual cancer. Completely unexpected and unexplained and it would have eventually killed you if you hadn’t caught it. It is so easy to pick yourself up and carry on when you feel physically able. My nurse saying the words, you’ve been through a lot, makes me reassess and feel seen. It’s okay to accept help. People want to help, my psychologist says, so let them, in whatever capacity they can. And confronting what I have been through brings home the enormity of it. Losing both my grandmothers to cancer. Watching my mum and auntie go through chemotherapy. Seeing how cancer has affected the lives of my dearest friends. Floating on the highs of the radical remission stories and hearing the heartbreak when the treatment isn’t enough. I feel it all.

On these hot nights I also feel like I am being left behind whilst everyone else’s lives are dancing onwards in a summery haze of wine and sunsets and tanning.

But I also release what is not meant for me. I believe what’s meant for me will be for me. These are a couple of lines from a song sent to me by a new friend who had breast cancer last year. Her story is different to mine but really inspires me. I see her now, gorgeous new hair and a new outlook and a calm and clear way of being and I can see how I will be when I’m fresh on the other side. Another friend and survivor said to me, it’s like a club you never wanted to be a part of but it’s a pretty special club.

My psychologist also said that whilst it doesn’t seem like it, positive things will come from this experience and I do already feel that. Not when I’m sat in the chemo chair every week with an IV bag dripping into my arm or when I’m lying in the MRI machine as it clicks and bangs and crackles. But in the little moments that might have escaped me before. When I lie on the cool grass in the shade or I plant seeds with Bonnie or I stroke Toby’s face and his heavy eyelids can resist sleep no longer. When I have conversations with mum and I know she truly understands. When I dive naked into the ocean and it just feels so cold and good and I feel so alive and so still here and a part of it all. The constant little check ins from friends old and new. No one forgets. I am so held.

Just a short one this week as it has sent me over the edge, in a good way. Despite it all I do feel very lucky.

Back at the end of March, after the doctor delivered the news and left the room, the lovely nurse who looked very sorry for me said it was important I had positive distraction over the next few weeks whilst I waited for my official diagnosis. Positive distraction? For three weeks? How was I going to think about anything else? Later that evening after the kids had gone to bed Charlie and I were staring into the void and ever practical he started coming up with options and solutions. “We can do anything you want Lot. Go on holiday. Move to Spain. Get married.” We had been engaged for over two years but I had never even considered planning our wedding. I was paralysed by guest-list anxiety and we never had any money and if we did we’d rather use it to go on holiday. I loved attending weddings but the idea of planning something big and expensive was not appealing to me, nor did it feel important. I could happily have stayed engaged forever. But when, post-diagnosis, Charlie made an offhand comment about our wedding I clung to the idea like a lifeline. That night I lay on the sofa (we were trialling sleep arrangements that involved me not sharing a bed with Toby) and Googled last minute weddings, registry office in Cornwall, how quickly can I get married. At 11pm I was emailing the registrar to find out their soonest availability. By the next afternoon, still reeling from the cancer bombshell, I had booked our wedding for the earliest date legally possible. May 2nd. For the next 28 days I lived in la la land. Every time I felt myself spiralling or sinking or starting to Google something morbid I would scroll through wedding dresses. I spent hundreds of pounds on Free People and sent them all back. I trawled Instagram and Pinterest. I roped everyone in to help. Sal, my mother-in-law-to-be, made mine and Bonnie’s bouquets. Katie, Charlie’s sister, baked and decorated our beautiful wedding cake. Maisie, my other now sister-in-law, sewed us a beautiful flag for the registry office and reception. My mum dried all the flowers for our confetti. Olga, our close friend, made our amazing wedding rings from gold cufflinks Charlie was gifted at his christening from his godfather. She also did my hair for both the wedding day and the party the day after. My oldest friend Olive took over the beach party organisation and I relinquished control gladly as I honestly wasn’t doing much prep for it. She sourced decorations and made the guest book, did the set up, brought down bunting and flowers in the pouring rain. Bryony was subjected to many, many links and screenshots and ideas and never once told me to stop. Monica found me the perfect dress in Tk Maxx for £80, plus a second stunning one for the day after. Then the girls took me out the night before for my ‘hen do’ at May Day. Kathryn listened to me drone on and on about plans and ideas and acted like I wasn’t a crazy person avoiding the elephant in the room. The list went on, another friend doing my nails, someone else altered my dress, people brought food and fizz and another lovely lady offered up her house at our favourite beach for the entire weekend. Our DIY wedding was pulled together in less than a month on the smallest budget and it would have been impossible without our friends and family.

The day before our wedding was one of those still, hazy, hot days that taste like the summer to come. The perfect Beltane day. It was May Day and my sister and I lounged in the garden of the glorious house and painted our nails before going into Padstow. I woke up on the Saturday and the mist had rolled in, but it was calm and cool and I walked down to Mother Ivey’s at dawn with my cup of tea and watched the water lap the shore and the choughs fly by and the horizon melt into the sky. The registry office was perfect. My dad walked me down the aisle and Charlie very almost cried (he never cries) and we were married in front of our family and the children and it was the shortest, sweetest ceremony and we needed for nothing else. Charlie said afterwards, we could have been anywhere. We all went back to The Pig for lunch and the rain poured outside and the babies napped in their buggy’s in the courtyard and the candles flickered and the speeches were beautiful and the food was delicious. We had cake in the late afternoon and walked down to the beach, bare feet splashing in the puddles, a few people swimming, the rest of us sheltered under umbrellas. Charlie and I went back to our beautiful beach house, put the kids to bed, opened our cards and ate an Indian takeaway on the sofa. It was honestly everything we needed it to be. The next day we celebrated with family and friends back on Mother Ivey’s, taking cover from downpours under a gazebo strung with streamers and balloons, popping bottle after bottle of champagne. Everyone brought a picnic and we sat in damp groups of coats and kids, snacking on fresh bread and more wedding cake and salads and sandwiches. The sky was green and the sea was turquoise and thunder rumbled in the distance and it all felt like the perfect storm to send us off into a totally unexpected year, but one in which we were husband and wife and we could weather together.

The registrar spoke Cornish so eloquently, and at the end of our service he recited a poem, first in Cornish then translated into English:

An Bennath Kernewek - The Cornish Blessing

May the strength of the wind and the light of the sun,

The softness of the rain and the mystery of the moon

Reach you and fill you.

May beauty delight you and happiness uplift you,

May wonder fulfil you and love surround you.

May your steps be steady and your arms be strong.

May your hearts be peaceful and your words be true.

May you seek to learn, may you learn to live.

May you live to love, and may you love - forever.

Wow body, what you have withstood. Growing my babies. Taking the chemo and letting it cure you. Walking barefoot on the earth.

Monday 18th May and I feel like myself again for the first time. I went for lunch with my sister and we laughed about all the stupid things people say to us when they don’t know what to say. How I’d recently been getting stuck having long, painful conversations with people I couldn’t be bothered to talk to about depressing hardly relatable situations. All I can think is, my minutes on this earth are precious and I don’t have time for this. I drove myself to the hospital for the first time since before my diagnosis. Probably since before my kids were born. Always driven around by Charlie or my mum. Always slightly out of control. But today I was listening to my relaxing hippy music, speeding down the a30, walking myself down to The Mermaid Centre (the cancer clinic), at my own speed under my own steam, no anxious conversation, just listening to music and writing and for the first time relaxed and confident. As in control as I can be during this chaotic time. In my appointment I was having an ultrasound and some small metal clips were inserted into my breast and armpit to monitor my tumour. I asked the technician to measure the lump. She told me it was 7mm smaller than when they had found it originally. Already! In two chemo treatments! I tried to squeeze as much more positivity out of her as I could but she wasn’t giving me anything, considering that she wasn’t actually a doctor and she wasn’t my doctor either. But nothing she said could dampen my mood. I text Charlie, my mum, Kathryn immediately. Elated. Thank you body. For everything you do. For quietly healing and regenerating and accepting the medicine. It isn’t easy and you are taking it so well. I am so grateful. I am doing everything I can to protect you and support you. I do not take you for granted. I am very aware that my treatment and recovery is a marathon, not a sprint, but this snippet of good news had me skipping back to my car.

My world has been dialled back. I spend all my time at the hospital or in the garden. We ate the first strawberries yesterday, the kids and I, greedily picking and gobbling every single one. They couldn’t get enough of the sweetness. I’ve hung the plants from the roof of the greenhouse and Bonnie can’t reach them even when she’s stood on the deck chair. Luckily. Toby busily splashing in the Belfast sink or digging up compost with his hands, turning his head, mouth open, expectant for another bite. I’ve been planting flowers and fruit, vegetables and seedlings, inside the greenhouse, into the raised beds, straight into the ground, in pots on the patio. Watching new life unfurl, spring is here for the world whilst my inner winter works overtime to cure me, ready for next years summer.

After my first CT scan I cried. In that moment it felt very real. The machine and the hospital and the looming reality I was about to undergo. The machine slid me out and the technicians came back in and I cried quietly. One nurse said, “It’s just not fair, when you’re so young.” The other said, “My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, and they told her she had a year to live, and she’s still here four years later!” Wow, I answered, that is amazing. She continued, “Yeah, and some people they say will be fine and then they just drop dead!” Dear god.

Oh, and the ultrasound tech told me “there’s no point in crying over spilt milk until it’s spilt”. Which I would argue for one, doesn’t make sense, and two, I would consider the milk spilt in this instance. I wasn’t even crying for once.

A friend said this to me in the park when I first told her about my diagnosis. We were pushing the kids in the swings and trying to have a serious conversation whilst her son scaled a climbing frame that is incredibly high and Bonnie started scrambling up after him and our youngest’s were swinging happily and our nervous systems were on edge. It was before I had the results back from my CT and I was telling her how scared I was that I was going to die. I explained to her that one of the reasons I didn’t want to die was because I just loved living so much. There was so much I loved about the world and I didn’t want to leave it. I appreciated it so much. I loved the spring flowers and the cold ocean and the way the clouds changed with the wind and how the morning sun made the dust motes in our bedroom sparkle and Bonnie was so intrigued by them. She replied saying, “You still look at the moon and think it’s beautiful.” And I thought, don’t we all?

I have been speaking with some truly wonderful women since receiving my diagnosis and sharing the news. There is something so different about to speaking with people who, one, have experienced cancer closely within their own lives, and two, have been through breast cancer themselves. Three women in particular have shared their experiences with me, all survivors of breast cancer, all with two children, all interested in alternative healing and ways of supporting their bodies. These women have been on hand at any moment I’ve needed advice, sharing their stories, suggesting dietary changes, tinctures, practices that they used alongside chemo to heal themselves. I have soaked up the advice and information like a sponge. The outpouring of love from these ladies has been so beautiful and I have felt very held and understood and seen. The consensus was always the same, it’s just different when there are kids involved. Harder in some ways, easier in others.

Through conversations I’ve been having and the yoga classes I’ve been attending where my mind has wandered away over the sea and into the depths, I have started to discover a different side of my cancer. A philosophical side filled with questions that I don’t yet have the capacity or words or knowledge to answer. The experience has left me pondering on a lot of things. Before I was diagnosed I was dog tired. The fatigue was in my bones. I could hardly function. It was all I complained about. I would be playing with the kids and fall asleep on the carpet. I craved sleep. I felt like I was carrying a lot. The wants and needs of my children, and the family as a whole. The mental load of check lists and appointments and lunch boxes and drop offs. I was constantly chasing my tail on the brink of burn out. Texting everybody back and filling every hour with plans and chores and caring widely about so many people. I never protected my own peace and I paid for it with all my energy. And then I was diagnosed with cancer. And once I shared that information the offers of help came pouring in and I accepted them. Asked for it even. For the first time I didn’t feel like the weight was mine alone to bear. Dinner arrived on my doorstep. I stopped doing the forest school pick-up, and Bonnie was scooped up by family or friends. Charlie did bedtimes and breakfasts, my cousin cleaned my house, a Riverford delivery started landing at my door. I had never been sicker but I suddenly didn’t feel tired anymore. My mental load felt lighter. I have always found it hard to relinquish control and I hate to ask for help. But there has been so much reward in surrendering to the outpouring of love and help I was received. It has also brought me so much closer to some of my girl friends. The ability to be vulnerable and honest in front of each other from both sides of the table. It hasn’t always been them comforting me and that has actually been very affirming and strengthening of the friendships. They run deep within us. These girls we have known for 20 years or 2. A different kind of love.

My funny thing to end the article with: this comment on my post sharing the news about the cancer. From someone I have never met and have no mutual friends with. They are talking about Charlie. I hear it all the time actually. The hilarities of a public profile:

I have decided to name each of my newsletters after something someone said to me that really stuck. A line in a fluid conversation that didn’t run into the next like most sentences do.

Let the chemo do it’s magic

This completely rewrote chemotherapy for me, literally an hour before my first appointment. Luckily. I didn’t realise how anxious I was until they put the cannula in and I almost passed out. I was boiling hot and seeing stars and the nurse had to raise my legs and get me a pack of Jaffa Cakes. I was so glad Charlie was there, and they let him stay as long as I needed, probably because I started crying when I was talking to the nurse about how I felt. “I turn the Wi-Fi off at night. I don’t use any skincare with fragrance. We don’t eat MacDonald’s. I think all of it gives you cancer.” It felt so stupid to say. Fuck all good that did, I said. It’s not your fault, she said, it’s very likely genetic, you could not have avoided it.

A friend of mine who beat breast cancer a few years ago said “let the chemo do it’s magic” in a voice note that I listened to on the outside sofa whilst eating my lunch. The last salad I’ll eat sat in the sunshine, I thought. Like when I thought this morning as Toby slept in my arms, the last time I’ll hold my baby before having chemo. I needed to hear it. A real reminder from someone who had been through it. That chemo is not the enemy. It is the cure. It is magic. After seeing my mum go through chemo then finding out I had cancer, at first I thought, anything but chemo. Please not chemo. It makes you so, so sick. It makes all your hair fall out. I can’t do it. But my friend reframed it for me. My little IV bag was pumping magic through my body. Cancer killing, cancer fighting juice that would allow me to cuddle my babies to sleep for many years to come. What a privilege to receive chemo. Lucky me. Ish.

For some of you reading this it will be the first time you’ve heard about my diagnosis. In a nutshell, I found a lump that the doctor told me was definitely a cyst but because of my family history I should have checked. This was then confirmed by a GP at the hospital, but she sent me for an ultrasound to just confirm. From the ultrasound is snowballed rapidly into about 8 mammograms, each one more detailed and with more specialists in the room. I was then sent back to the ultrasound lady who very, very sadly told me she thought I had cancer. I cried silently, lying in the dim room, with my eyes screwed shut, thinking about Toby. He was too young. I hadn’t enjoyed him enough. I couldn’t have cancer because I couldn’t die because my babies needed me. My mum met me in the consultation room where we both cried and I fed Toby and the GP told me it was almost definitely breast cancer. 3 weeks later my diagnosis was confirmed, that it had spread to my lymph nodes, that I had to stop breastfeeding, I had to decide asap whether I wanted more children so they could harvest my eggs, I needed chemo, surgery, radiotherapy and more, I had to have a CT scan to see if it had spread. Google told me that if I had spread it would most likely be in my bones and I’d have two years to live. I waited a long, long week for my results. A few hours before my scan I sat on the stairs with my head in my hands and I sobbed and I prayed and I begged to anything listening to not let it be in my bones. My whole body ached with cancer. I felt it everywhere. Creeping into all the places that would never recover. I prayed very specifically. I knew it couldn’t change what was seen on the scan and written on the paper but I prayed for 10 years. I said, 10 years is enough. To see Toby run on the beach after Bon, to hear him talk, to be there with Bonnie when she started school. No one appreciates them they way I do. No one cares for them like I do. They need me, i said, please, if you have to take me, give me 10 years.

And when I sat across from my oncologist and she said, we have seen something on your scan, and I said, is it my bones, and she said no, Lottie, it’s on your liver, and we don’t know what it is but we want to do another scan to check, I said, what does that mean? If it’s cancer? And she said, it means your cancer is incurable but we can treat you and you’ll have at least 10 years. I exploded. The relief that left my body was messy. I could hardly catch my breath. I cried so loudly and from such a deep place within me, with my head in my hands. The nurse asked if I was okay, and I said god yes, I am so, so relieved.

My CT scan then showed that what they saw on my liver was not cancer. They saw something else small but I’ll have that checked again in 3 months. They aren’t worried. So my treatment started. Every week for 12 weeks. Every Thursday. Followed by every 2-3 weeks for 2-3 months. A summer of chemo. But at least I should be here next summer. For those who like the details, my breast cancer is HER2 negative and oestrogen driven.

Amongst all this very depressing and honest writing I wanted to share some things that have made me laugh along the way, because if I don’t laugh I’ll cry, and I’ve done enough of that. Below is an amazing card my cousins 7 year old daughter made for me. I think I will frame it.