Hope for when the waters rise

Just months after welcoming my fourth child, I heard the words, “You have cancer.”

I was 36, with a newborn and three other little people who still needed snacks, carpool rides, and bedtime stories. My world shattered.

In the early days after my diagnosis, I searched everywhere for encouragement from someone who sounded like me — a young mom with toys on the floor and chemo on the calendar. Most of what I found was written by women decades further down the road. Their words were helpful, but I longed to hear from someone who understood the strange overlap of packing lunches and heading to chemotherapy.

Before cancer, I thought I was preparing myself for suffering by imagining worst-case scenarios. I mistook anxiety for readiness. But when the waters actually rose, I discovered something surprising: nothing can prepare your heart for the storm.

I’m writing this for you — not because I have it all figured out, and not because I’m looking back on cancer from years down the road in tidy triumph. I’m still in it. I finished infusions only months ago. My port is still in. Some days I’m still waiting on scan results and praying that I’ll get to watch my little people grow up.

This space exists for mothers walking through suffering while still showing up for ordinary life.

My hope is simple: that you would know you are seen, that you are not alone, and that hope can still be found between the waves.

When the waters rise, it can feel like everything is slipping out of our control. But the story of Scripture reminds us that storms are not the end of the story.

My prayer is that every woman who visits this space would discover that she is not alone—and that even here, in the middle of the storm, God is near.