I was 31 years old when I was diagnosed with stage III, grade 3, HER2-positive, hormone receptor-positive breast cancer in 2017. It wasn’t however, my first encounter with it. My father had lived through melanoma, stomach cancer, and pancreatic cancer before passing away when I was 26. Years later, when I was 36, my mother would pass away from ovarian cancer. But this was the first time I was facing a diagnosis of my own.

Hearing that I had cancer at 40 was one of the scariest moments of my life. I was healthy; fitness and wellness had always been part of my life. I was a mother of two young girls and a stepson.

In 2017, Dawn received her own life-changing diagnosis: triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), an aggressive form of breast cancer. When diagnosed with this type of breast cancer, the message of hope is often lost amidst the urgency of treating an aggressive form of cancer. Being told things like, “survival rate is low, recurrence is high”, “it’s harder to treat", "chemotherapy regimen is very aggressive”, “the side effects are quite harsh”, “typically, the cancer may return in the first 5 years following treatment” can leave a person feeling helpless.