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.

The hot flash didn't arrive gradually. It exploded.

I was standing in line at the fish counter inside the St. Lawrence Market when a wave of heat suddenly rushed through me. It felt like a fire had started deep inside my body, beginning at my toes and racing upward until it burst through the top of my head.

When Jill turned 50, breast cancer was the last thing on her mind. Living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she was enjoying life as a newly trained paralegal, wife, mother of three, and grandmother. Breast cancer did not run in her family, and she had no reason to think that her life was about to change.

I vividly remember the first night, after I found out I had breast cancer. I was lying in bed, wide awake with my eyes closed, listening to Trixie the cat purring beside me. My body was heavy, but my mind was wild, racing with thoughts of nothing and everything all mashed together. That was the beginning of a new kind of insomnia. Not the kind where you just can’t fall asleep, but the kind where sleep feels like something you used to do in a different lifetime but can’t access any more.