During the 2025-2026 academic year, The Spokesman will examine the effect of cancer on the Morgan community, from the student body to faculty, staff, administrators and alumni. This piece is reprinted with permission from Kinsman Quarterly.
You never think about whether you deserve to live until you almost die. Staring in the mirror
at my noticeably disproportionate breasts, I felt both guilt and celebration. Two things can be true
at the same time.
Truth? The thought of having survived the fight of my life with Triple Negative Breast Cancer at the age
of 27, while also finishing grad school—filled me with immense gratitude, unspeakable joy,
and perspective.
Also, true? My godsister lost her husband to brain cancer just months after I had been declared as having no evidence of disease. Every chance I got, I shared my story unapologetically, and then I thought about them.
My godsister’s husband, Martin.
The first friend I made in chemotherapy, Eriel.
My dearest nana, Dorothy.
Watching each of them ripped from my atmosphere, fighting the same disease I endured, was numbing. No one warns you about the aftershock. There’s a guilt that plagues you the moment you watch someone die at the hands of a violence you were there to witness.
Did you pull the trigger? No, but it’s being in the same line of fire and not getting hit by the bullet that baffles you most. It’s watching that bullet fly past your face only to graze your skin while piercing and killing someone who was standing right beside you. It was not lost on me that I survived, and my survival was despite their death.
“Every day, it feels like I am trying to redeem the time I lost, and I don’t want to live only to die fighting to survive,” I would think often as I pondered why the others weren’t here.
If they were alive today, would they still want to fight? Living with cancer is tormenting. Surviving cancer is a bittersweet interplay between rain, sun, and fire.
My rain was searching for work almost a year after my cancer journey and feeling judged when asked to explain my employment gap. The conversation would take a turn after I said, “I was battling cancer,
but I am cancer-free now.” My hopeful explanation made them wonder, Is she really able to perform
this job? Will the cancer come back?
Job interviews almost always ended with, “We were really impressed with your résumé, but we feel you’re overqualified.”
It left me wondering if I wasn’t landing a job opportunity because they felt I would be incapable
or unreliable post-cancer. Was this a form of discrimination, or was I simply not good enough?
My tears would stain the carpet in my old bedroom at my parents’ house. These were deep tears, the kind that were hidden from everyone else but me. These tears happened behind closed doors after realizing
a year later that I still could not make a living for myself because cancer ripped away the life I once knew.
Despite the opposition, there were still so many reasons to smile.
Cue, “Here Comes the Sun,” by The Beatles. I was alive to continue pursuing every one of my dreams.
I graduated with my master’s degree and completed my final semester with a 4.0 GPA while enduring chemo.
Completing my thesis through constant trips to urgent care, ice-filled grocery bags cooling my red-flushed skin, which was plagued with itchy neuropathy, and blood-filled toilets—was a win. I was proud of myself because although I wasn’t able to work at the time, I became a graduate student, self-published two books, and produced a sold-out event.
Yet, life after cancer seemed to involve more fighting to survive—still. Despite the astronomical costs
of cancer care, there is no forgiveness for student loan debt. Many programs are available for cancer patients, but the support of survivors who have to navigate life after cancer is almost non-existent.
Sometimes, they don’t just lose pieces of themselves…they lose everything. Though I was fortunate enough not to lose everything, I still lost much.
You spend your days fielding questions about your battle while facing the reality that you are still very much in a war. Your body has muscle memory, and it remembers. Some days, if I wear the wrong shoe,
my foot gets the sensation one would feel if they were walking barefoot on a board of needles.
I look at my breasts and grieve what they once were. I touch the scar where my MediPort once lay tucked under my skin. I see my baby-like lashes, which were once full, now thin and fragile.
Is this survival? Guilt still hovers over me as I watch the stories of many lives lost to this disease I once contended with. While their death wasn’t my fault, it became my responsibility. I am charged to live a life worthy of survival.
After a year of failed attempts, I finally landed a job. I was grossly underpaid, but grateful nonetheless.
A year later, my team and I were laid off with severance. In the midst of uncertainty, I did what any respectable dreamer would do. I moved across the country from my suburban hometown in Maryland to the vibrant city of Los Angeles. It took me three months to find a job for an organization that others said was difficult to get into.
Within a few years, I was chosen to be an inaugural team member of a group that would open a medical school in the middle of a global pandemic. I would get married to my very best friend. More importantly,
I would stare in that same mirror looking at my disproportionate breasts. However, this time the celebration outweighed the guilt because I realized my life was worth living. My survival is a part of a greater story.
I am a part of the legacy of those who have experienced the battle of Armageddon against their beloved bodies and lost. Even though they lost, their fight resounds through the lives of those who have experienced the war with them and live to tell the story. There is a fight that happens after the fight.
However, your fight is not in vain. The Survivor’s guilt we feel for having survived what was meant to kill us, while others mourn loss—is the fire reminding us that our survival is worth the celebration others never got to have.
If you’d like to share a cancer-related story, whether it’s yours or that of someone you know, email us at [email protected]
Timea Faulkner, a Morgan alum born in Washington, DC and raised in Maryland, is a communications professional and creative writer based in Los Angeles. Her work explores emotional honesty, self-liberation, and the nuances of lived experience. She is the author of Self Preservation: A Book of Thoughts and Poems (April 2024) and the founder of The State of Fem Art®, a platform supporting women artists. Timea can be reached at [email protected]
