If you asked me where I was when I got the news that my mom had cancer... I couldn't tell you. She swears it was in the living room with all of my sisters, I have no recollection of that at all. It's what we as humans do, we block out bad memories, things we never want to relive and remember. Now if you ask me about the months following that I could recall them very well. I'm the oldest child in my family, but never actually realized what that entailed until I was a freshman in high school. We had always seemed like the family that nothing bad happened to, my biggest challenge before this was making the high school soccer team. When you're this young and inexperienced with bad experiences, you literally feel like your life is crumbling down around you. Yet, if I were, to tell the truth, I am a completely different person than I would've been because of this experience. My mom's chemo schedule was one-week inpatient and two weeks at home, the first was normally spent in bed while the second she could sometimes make it to work. My dad owns his own business and always did and still does the best he can to make sure that we have everything we need, but he couldn't be home all of the time. We had many families help us throughout this time, who we could not thank enough for giving us rides to and from practice and making sure that we had dinners some nights. People who know me well, know that I "mom" my friends just like I helped "mom" my sisters throughout this journey and I take friendships and relationships seriously because I've learned to cherish the people in your life while you have them. When I see people being mean for no reason I don't understand it because going through this I've realized life is so short and you never know when challenges will arise. It wasn't an easy time to get through but I am a better person for it. So whenever to this day my mom and I get into a fight I think back to that time and how scary it was and realize how little any basic argument is in this big life that we have. So please cherish the people in your life while you have them, don't forget to tell people you love them, and just be nice to people because you never know what challenges that they're going through in their own lives.

Happy 5 Year Cancer-Free Anniversary Mom!