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Cancer runs in our family. I lost my grandmother to it. There's a saying that you meet people and instantly know them. My grandmother and I had that. The first time my heart was broken was when my grandmother passed away. I was twenty-one.

I lost my mom to breast cancer about three years ago, and it has changed me forever.

I cried like a baby. When no one could see me or hear me. Not because I feared what cancer would do, but because I didn't want the disease. I wanted my life to be normal, which it could no longer be.

In December 1988, my mother died of lung cancer. I died too. I couldn't function.

Having cancer empowered me to take more risks. I knew beating cancer was going to shape me, but it wasn't going to be all of me.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, like so many other people, my life changed forever.

What really got me focused on cancer was when my best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, and even though she was a well-to-do person, I found that her treatment costs were crippling.

I think one of the worst things that happened to me was, you know, my voluntary fallout with my father. And then the greatest thing that happened to me was when I saw the light, and realized I needed to love him in a way that he could love me back.

After the loss of my sister - my darkest time - I tried to think of the beauty she'd brought to this world and the lives she had touched and the love she had left behind.

The loss of my father was the most traumatic event in my life - I can't forget the pain.