Brave Hearts !

I went to refill water and saw this lady in the pantry. Her hair looked different this time, so I complemented her – how good it looks. She said “oh, jeez…” and revealed her secret of beautiful tresses - Breast Cancer.

Yup, she’s a survivor y’all.

She told me how becoz of chemo, her hair is baby soft and there is nothing she can do with it. So opened a catalogue and ordered her self a great set of hair, which she “weaved” (for the lack of better word) herself. She worked on it for 2 months, she exclaimed. Another friend of hers who also works here, resorted to wearing a scarf after her chemo sessions, which she didn’t want to, I believe. She said, it would be declaring it to the world, “hi look I have cancer and I didn’t….” she paused to look for the right word to fill the void… I prompted “settle down”, she said “yeah, exactly, I didn’t want to settle down with it, I wanted to make it a part of my life and not the other way around, because I know it can come back any time”.

I just beamed at her and said she looks terrific and I meant it. She smiled with no sighs, and went on, “there are days I don’t feel my fingers and bottom part of my legs, there are no senses to them, but if someone asks me, “how was I feeling”, I’d just reply, “great and you ?”. I felt so proud of her, as a person and I told her "you are brave, you really are", she said "I don’t know about that", but I reaffirmed she is that and much more. She smiled again and told it feels good to hear that.

My backaches from new life inside me, just evaporated, that sleepless feeling from last night just …gone. While walking back to my cube, I realized I don’t know her name, but then we didn’t have to know, we touched each others lives in some way. My heart is swollen with pride to all women with great hair or not, with or without breast cancer who face the world with such fierceness. You go girls…