How did you feel when you were first diagnosed with breast cancer?
When I first found out I had breast cancer, I was kind of shocked because I did my mammograms in January because that’s my birth month and I would just celebrate by going get my mammogram. And so when I went and got my mammogram that year, everything was fine. I had no problems. I got a clear mammogram. And then a few, a couple of months later, I was doing my self brace exam and I felt a lump and with me having had fibrocystic breast lumps was not unusual in my breast. It was just something they did an ultrasound and every, it was just, it’s just what I had. And, but this one didn’t go away and it continued to grow. And then I thought I said, you know, something this is not right because I was working at that time as ac na I was doing private sitting in homes and I was actually working with cancer, people who had cancer. So I had to know the warning signs of cancer. A lump that doesn’t go away. A lump that gets bigger changes in size. I knew that. And so when it started growing and it just got bigger. And I said something is uh wrong going on here. And so I was just in shock, I was kind of shocked because I had just had a mammogram.
What has been the hardest part of your breast cancer journey?
One of the hardest things was, it’s been 2 things,my mom passed from breast cancer. And so when I got, and I actually took care of my mom, me and my husband, we took care of my mom and in my home and that was hard thinking that I would pay, I would have breast cancer and I would pass from breast cancer just like she did. That was one of the hardest part of my journey. And then, and it took me so long to get well afterward because I said, ok, I’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer. I’m gonna take a year off and I’m gonna get through this treatment and, but it didn’t, it didn’t work like that after a year of going through the treatment and everything I didn’t get well, my body, I just didn’t recover it the way I thought I would. And so it took from 2004 to 2008. I was just sick. I was in and out of the hospital. I was having different surgeries and, and it was hard, it was, it was really hard. And I remember one of my cousins was gonna come down and visit with me and she told her kids, she said, you know what? I think we’re gonna go see Rose earlier because she may not make it. And, and I think that was, and it was hard on my family too. It was really hard every year. You know, I’m going to, I’m having a surgery and I’m, I’m to do different doctors appointments. So our journey just didn’t end after that year of treatment. And that’s why I tell people ringing the bell is good. It’s good. Ringing the bell. But sometimes you go back, you go back and you have to deal with life after the diagnosis of breast cancer, the things that you have to, the different things that in your body. Now you, you’re not the same person. You might have other surgeries. I’ve had several surgeries since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And so the journey and like it keeps going, it keeps going and sometimes you wonder, when will it end? Will it ever stop? Will I not have another surgery? Everybody doesn’t like this. This was my journey. And I think that’s been one of the hardest things of the journey, you know, thinking that everything is gonna stop and then there’s something else come up.
What has been your biggest support through your journey?
And my biggest sort of my biggest support, uh sources of support was my family, my, my husband, he was there for me and he was a support and we had our three, our three sons, they was there and at the time of my diagnosis, my ex-husband, he was, we were, he was just coming in the ministry. And so we had a church family there. And since he was in ministry, we had, we was really blessed because we had, you know, we were just in, we, they just embraced us and helped walk us through this journey. And that’s why I always tell people I have a community standing around me and some women don’t have that for me. My family and my friends was my biggest support. And as of today, my sons and my support system and my family and my, the women in the support group, they also, they’re my friends. And so um we’re like, we’re still in this together. And so that has been my big, that has been one of my biggest, biggest support. And what motivated me through this journey was, you know, my relationship with Jesus Christ. I was a Christian when I was diagnosed, I question things with God and it’s OK to question God to ask the wives in life. I do. And I asked him why. I said, Lord, I’ve been a Christian ever since I was 19 years old. I raised my sons in the Lord. My husband is a minister in the church. He’s a minister of the gospel. We have a calling on our lives. And I’m like, why me, why is this happening at this time in my life? Why? And I question God on that. I question God. But that was my biggest motivation that I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ because I knew all of this will work together for the good. And that’s why I think a spiritual connection with God is good for me. It is. And this is just, this is my own personal journey. For me. It was good. It was that relationship that I could pray my way through the storms. And, and I remember one time my husband coming in and saying, what can I do for you? And I told him there’s nothing you can do. You can’t do nothing right now. At this time, I just needed to pray and I needed to talk to God about a lot of things to understand the whys. You know, every time it was another, I had to have another surgery. I’m like, why? And every time the Lord would speak to me, the Holy Spirit would speak to me. And that’s what that, what, that’s what carried me through those dark times. Those it’s times when in a journey of breast cancer is you have some dark days, you wake up in the middle of the night, nobody’s there to comfort you. And so what do you do? You? I talk to God. That’s what I do. I still talk to God about things I still do. And so that, that was one of the things that um motivates me and some of the lessons I learned in that, that, you know, life is precious. Life is very precious and you have to love people and don’t take life for granted. Because in one moment, my life changed in one day. When you sit in an office with a doctor and you walk in and they said Miss Holley, you have cancer. It’s like time stops, time stops and I don’t think you ever forget that time and everything changes because, you know, at this time and moment, your life is getting ready to change what was, is not gonna be the same. And you don’t know whether you’ll make it or not. You don’t know. But I knew that God had blessed me and that he said I should live. But, you know, sometimes we’re allowed to walk through the fire, we have to walk things out. And that’s what I tell people. Sometimes you have to walk it out and I walked it out. And so that was, um, that was a blessing to me. That was, that was one of my blessings right there. And my motivation to keep pushing forward. And that was a lesson. That was a lesson as being a survivor through that journey that you, you know, we survive all kinds of things in life. And cancer is just another thing that we as survivors, we have to live through and we have to trust God that the end result is in His hand. And so that’s how I got through the years. That’s how I got through those years.
How do you feel about breast cancer now?
And, how do I feel about breast cancer now? Well, I think to me it was a blessing in a way because out of my journey with breast counselling, a minister would burst out of that hope for the journey. The nonprofit would burst out of, out of my journey because, and I believe in my heart, God allowed me to go through those years for the simple fact that I could see things differently. And I just went through because my life plan was to go through breast cancer for a year. I like having my life planned out like things don’t change. And I said, well, get through this year. And I’m just going right back to work and get back with my life. But it was a different plan. God had a different plan for my life and I walked through those years. So when I was going through that I saw there was so many different things in me. You know, you need, you need your doctors, you need a good team, you need people in your life that’s gonna support you. You need people to walk you with the journey. Even if, if it, if it keeps going continually on, you need people to pray for you. You need counseling people to counsel with you because I had because my journey was so long, I’ve developed anxiety. I went through depression, I had to go on medication. So I had to go to a counselor and let him talk, talk to me and explain things to me and dig deep inside of me to see what was really causing the anxiety and depression. Because when we go through a diagnosis of breast cancer, we bring other things to the table that whatever happened before it’s gonna eventually come back up. And my doctor told me he said, Miss Holly because you had, you had fought so hard because I’m a fighter. I fight, I like the ball. You know, he said you had fought so long and so hard that everything just came down on you when you sell it down in life. And so I, I needed that, that, you know, and those are some of the things that I learned also. So uh about being breast, being a breast cancer and that’s how I feel about it. That cancer is not breast cancer is not a death sentence and you shouldn’t look at it like when you’re diagnosed with cancer, oh I’m gonna die because you know, God is a healer, you know, he can heal everything.
What advice would you give someone who was just diagnosed with breast cancer?
And so I don’t, I advise women not to go into it looking like that. Don’t look at counts as a death sentence because it only brings on depression and anxiety and everybody may not think the way I think but this is my own personal opinion, opinion, you know, and what I give newly diagnosed lady is just, I mean, prepare for the journey if you got time to prepare, like I had time to schedule things. I was di I, you know, I was diagnosed in uh November, I was diagnosed in December. But my journey started early on because I had to go, you have to go to the doctors and go through all of these different tests. Back then. We did a lot of things have changed since 2004. But prepare for the journey, prepare for it. If you got time to set things in order, you know, you know, if you’re working on a job, go and talk to the people that go and talk to your bosses and your manager and say, hey, I’m going through this diagnosis of breast cancer. I’ve been diagnosed. They say I’m gonna have to take, I’m gonna have to take treatment and ask them to work with your schedule. Ask them to work with you, prepare your Children for the journey, prepare your husband for the journey, you know, your significant other because the journey is gonna be long and you’re gonna need help. You know, you’re gonna have a lot of things I had to learn along the way, but you’re gonna need help. And so I tell my clients to prepare for this journey and when I set your affairs in order. I don’t mean, you know, everybody to set, but set your affairs in order for your family to have people to come in and prepare your meals. You got friends and don’t turn down their health if they want to be generous. I remember when I was diagnosed, people on my husband’s job would send us food. I mean, they would send all kind of food and I was grateful for that. You know, they would, we schedule appointments for people to take me to the back and forth to the doctor to release things off, to release some of the burden off of my family members. So I had friends come in and do different things to me. If you got kids, see if your friends can pick up the kids from school, see if someone come in and babysit with you, especially the young single mothers who have nobody. So I tell them just prepare, you know, if you got the time to sit down and plan things out and get you a second opinion, you do not have to go. It’s good to get second opinions. I did on some of my surgeon. I would get second opinions. So that’s really good too. And so that’s what I do. Tell them. Prepare yourself for the journey. You have a diagnosis of breast cancer. Now you’re gonna need help. So prepare for this and prepare your family and friends for it and, and you can and give out only as much information if you want to give out. You don’t have to tell everybody, just give it out as you see fit. And sometimes I tell people to get everybody on the phone. We can do Zoom. Now have your family on the phone if they live in different places, have them all on the phone, on the Zoom call and do one and tell them one time said this is what’s going on in my life. And I will keep you all updated and you can have someone set up your page and uh Facebook page and just be posting on that. So that’s the, that’s what I would give to the newly diagnosed women that just prepare yourself, prepare yourself. That’s how you prepare yourself for this journey.
What have you learned on your breast cancer journey?
You know, it’s been a long journey for me, but I’m 17 years out now and I have a nonprofit, Hope for the Journey. And that’s my way of giving back, helping other women, you know, who they wanna call and talk with me. And that was my way of giving back. And II, I believe that’s why I survived the storm of cancer. So I could give back and help other women on this journey when they have nobody, you know, they have nobody to talk to and they can call me up and they can talk to me and I can give them resources and I, what I can’t do, I can point them in the right direction. And so that’s, that’s what I do. And that’s what I’ve learned on this journey called breast cancer that I survived. I have survived and can be a survivor too. And people ask me, well, when do you survive? When are you determined to survive the day that you’re diagnosed with breast cancer? That’s the beginning of your survival survivor. You’re surviving. So that’s my advice. You know, that’s, it’s, it’s been a journey, but it’s been good too. It’s great things came out of my journey and I am Rosie Holley. I am a survivor and this breast cancer Awareness Month.
How have you made an impact since being diagnosed with breast cancer?
Hope for the journey. Like I was saying, I started it out of my journey with breast cancer. When I seen that there was a greater need after you rang the bell, which is wonderful to ring the bell because it’s like the beginning of life. You have survived. You have survived the treatment. But then after the treatment, what do you do? So I hope for the journey. We created a community to uplift and support women’s fighting breast cancer because we believe I believe that no one should have to face breast cancer alone. And so our vision, our mission is to give hope to those that’s facing breast cancer and those walking the journey with them. So we offer, we offer a range of, of, of help for them. We offer counseling, which we, we help with the counseling uh cost of the counseling because we have two counsels that work with our chaplain. She’s a counselor also. And then we have another council that work with us. We provide uh gas cards, financial support. Uh We, we provide the spiritual support but we don’t, I have to say that we don’t discriminate against people who don’t, who are not Christians. We don’t because my, my thing is that cancer do not discriminate. It doesn’t care what your social standing, what your spirituality is, it doesn’t care, it just don’t discriminate. So we welcome all kind of people into the support group if they want. If they want the support, we offer financial assistance, we help with um food, we help with medical bills, lymphoedema sleeves. Those are some of the things that we do. We offer monthly education and outreach is uh one of the things we do where we offer, we have a monthly support group and since the pandemic had happened, we have to change a lot of things. So now we’re doing our support group on Z Zoom where people can if it doesn’t matter where you are, if you want the link, you just reach out to me and I can send you the link to the uh support group. It’s not, I don’t put it out that publicly on Facebook because uh because of the ladies because of hippo also and that personal information. But we have a great speakers that come on every month. And so those are some of the things we do and we walk with the families also. And what I don’t, if I cannot help you, then I can um connect you with somebody else. And this is a good story right here. So one of my ladies, she had, she opted out for doing traditional uh uh treatment. And so one day she called me, she said, Miss Rose, I’m in Mexico. I’m like, what you doing in Mexico? She was down there getting treatment, you know, because she chose to do the homeopathic method of treatment. And that’s another thing I’m here to support you, whether you do traditional treatment or you choose homeopathic or whichever way you walk, I walk with you on that journey. I’m your support because I want you to do something. I don’t want you to just sit there and say I’m not gonna do anything but I want you to do something, you know, and whatever you choose to do, I walk with you on that journey. And so that was the beauty of, you know, phone and, and the beauty of having zoom and everything that she just called me up and said, I just want to give you a good report in there. I’m damn here and, and I’m cancer free now and everything. And so that was the beauty of having, you know, the phone and then the zoom meetings. We have ladies can tune in to with me or another lady of mine. She was a client of mine. She was getting treatment that day and her insurance got all mixed up and she called me and she was actually in the treatment room and she was talking to me and the nurse with that and they said, who are you talking to? She said this is my support team I’m talking to. And so I was able to give her the information that I said. Now this is what you tell them and she told them so she could get the help she needed. And um they agreed with her because it was right. They need to give her that help that she needed at that time. So those are some of the things that we do and we have other stories, great stories, you know, to tell, but that’s what we do at. Hope for the journey. And I have a great team of ladies that work with me also. And so uh we can connect women with, uh different women who they wanna talk with. But hope for the journey. We help women before, during and after diagnosis of breast cancer and those and after the diagnosis, when you’re recovering from breast cancer, when life is beginning and again, and you don’t know, you don’t know what you’re gonna do because your life is different. I use myself as an example. I couldn’t go back to the job that I was doing because of the emotional part of the job and the physical part of the job. So I had to do something different and a lot of women can’t go back to their jobs. So they gotta figure out I, what am I gonna do now? What about insurance? What about disability? So I kinda point them in the direction where they can get the help that they need. Also after a journal of breast cancer. And the young ladies, we talk about, you know, we talk about remarriage, we talk about having kids. We talk about dating and dating is a big thing. It’s not only for young women, for women that are old and all we have to talk about that, you know, you know, like this is it, this is me right here keeping being real like, you know, these girls may not be real, but this is what I have. So they have to discuss, you know, these are things we talk about and they want to start dating again. You have to have this conversation and I said have this conversation upfront if this is a person you wanna be with and you know that you’re gonna, you wanna be with this person, have this conversation with them, you know, have it and see where their minds are and don’t wait too long if you really wanna keep dating this person. And so they do that, some of them have done it and come back with good reports. Some of them come back with the report that are bad, but I said that’s ok that God got somebody else for you.
