Pre-2025: I’m a single 36-year-old woman. I exercise regularly, love a good party with friends, adore my career in arts marketing (so much so that I hadn’t taken a proper holiday in ten years), and spend most evenings with my crazy ginger cat demanding endless cuddles.

Coastal walks, dating disasters (honestly, I think I could write a book on my dating life one day), songwriting, playing gigs, going to gigs — I was living a Perthian “Carrie Bradshaw” kind of life.

Then came 2025.

It was a Tuesday afternoon after work, and I was sitting outside the doctor’s office.

The door opened. I walked in. I sat down.

“I’m sorry, but you have breast cancer.”

It didn’t sink in.

I walked home, got changed, and went salsa dancing with my friends that evening.

A year on, I honestly don’t know how I got through it all — but somehow, I did. The hard parts changed me in ways I never expected: physically, mentally, and emotionally.

As my therapist said to me during one session:
 “What you went through in one year, most people don’t go through in five.”

Here’s the short version of the blur that became my life:

January — the end of a situationship (if you know, you know) and discovering a lump that I assumed was just fatty tissue.

February — my GP, who also thought it was probably nothing serious, gave me a referral for an ultrasound “just in case.” That referral saved my life.

March — the ultrasound turned into:
 “We’d actually like you to have a mammogram today.”
 Which turned into:
 “We’d like another mammogram tomorrow.”
 Which turned into:
 “You have breast cancer.”

April — meetings with surgeons, trying to figure out the best path forward. And opening up to my boss about my diagnosis, mentioning to her I would need some time off for my double mastectomy followed by working from home for the next six months with what would be following the surgery.

Her response?

“I don’t know if you’re suited to this role anymore. I need the Marketing Manager in the office. Have a think about what I said and take a walk around the block.”

May — a double mastectomy with tissue expanders. Also, did anyone else feel seasick going around roundabouts because they could feel the liquid sloshing around? No? Just me?

At the same time, I was trying to work full-time from home to prove I could still do my job (I still had the job).

June — auxiliary clearance surgery (as cancer was found in one lymph node), and the start of the egg freezing process. Still trying to prove myself at work. Still trying not to let cancer — or my boss — win.

July — egg retrieval surgery, and quitting my job because my boss made things increasingly impossible. And to top it off a Crohn’s flare-up (because apparently one life crisis wasn’t enough), which meant extra bouts of being in and out of hospital.

August — I made the difficult (personal) decision not to proceed with chemotherapy.

That decision carried a huge amount of guilt, no matter how many pros-and-cons lists I wrote. Even though I knew it was my body, my journey, and ultimately my choice, I still struggled with it. The reasons behind that guilt are probably a story for another time.

This meant I started on my endocrine treatment, and within the same month, got headhunted for a new job which I started two weeks later.

Oh and I can’t forget some of my amazing friends rallied together (and included me) to join Breast Cancer Foundation fundraiser Step Up, to walk as many KM’s as possible to raise funds for breast cancer research and more. Our goal was 365kms to raise $3000 and we ended up walking 389kms and raised $7,894 ranking 10 out of 1354 teams nationally!

September — surgery to swap tissue expanders for implants.

October — my landlord informed me that after three years in my apartment, he was turning it into an Airbnb. I had 60 days to move. But on the brightside I also had my best friend’s wedding, which I was a bridesmaid for). She had been amazing throughout the year with my capacity in helping out. It meant the world she still wanted me to be a part of it regardless how things could change with how I was feeling closer to the day.

November — bone scan results showed osteopenia, meaning Zolodronic acid would now be added to my treatment plan. Cue emotional breakdown while apartment hunting like it was a full-time job.

December — packing up my old life and moving into a new apartment over Christmas. And two wisdom teeth extractions in preparation for my Zolodronic Acid treatment due having Osteopenia.

In the space of a year, almost everything in my life turned upside down — my physical health, mental health, career, and home life.

But apparently the year from hell decided to spill into February 2026, just as I thought things were finally improving.

My new boss — male this time — let me go.

Before taking the role, I had been completely transparent about my diagnosis, treatment, brain fog, and the fact that I needed reasonable boundaries around work and occasional grace while navigating medically induced menopause at 37.

In the beginning, this was all met with understanding.

Apparently that understanding had an expiry date.

To add to the bitter aftertaste, he later told me he had “read about menopause” to better understand where I was coming from.

At the time, losing that job felt devastating.

My career had become my identity. Many women my age had partners, children, or were buying homes. I had work. And suddenly, I felt like I had lost that too, because of something happening to my body out of my control, that shifted the way I worked.

But in hindsight, being let go became another blessing in disguise.

It forced me to stop measuring my worth by productivity.

One could say 2025 made me into an entirely new person.

I experienced some of the lowest lows of my life, but also some surprising highs. Somewhere along the way, I started noticing the silver linings.

Before cancer, I was working myself into the ground. I hadn’t taken a real break in over a decade. I had goals, deadlines, responsibilities — but looking back now, I don’t think I was truly living.

I was just doing.

Cancer forced me to slow down.

It forced me to ask uncomfortable questions:
 Am I actually enjoying my life?
 Am I doing things because they matter to me, or because I think I’m supposed to?
 Am I constantly waiting to live later?

Breast cancer stripped away so many things I thought defined me, and somehow, in doing so, it taught me who I actually was underneath all of it.

I left workplaces that pushed me towards burnout and treated people like machines. I returned to passions that had quietly disappeared into the background.

Even being forced out of my apartment turned out to be a gift. The place was dark, cramped, and — as I later discovered — full of mould. If my landlord hadn’t pushed me out, I probably would have stayed there indefinitely.

Now it’s 2026.

I’m 37 (and a half).

I’m back to exercising regularly. I work in an environment where I can do my job well (a break from marketing however), and still have energy left for myself once the workday ends, surrounded by people who genuinely respect boundaries and wellbeing.

I live in a home filled with natural light, calmness, and space to breathe.

I’m dating again, and it’s still going terribly — so maybe some things aren’t meant to change…maybe I should take some comfort in that? haha.

And perhaps the biggest lesson cancer has taught me?

Take the bloody holiday. Europe for five weeks later this year, baby.

Strangely enough, despite everything that’s happened — and everything that’s still happening- because let me tell you it still aint’ all peaches and cream and won’t be for a long time (where are all my endocrine treatment girlies at?!) — I think I’m finally learning how to truly live, let the moments sink in and not take things for granted.