Breast Cancer has had a wide range of effects on my family. As a little girl, I was surrounded by stories of my great-grandmother Agnes and the life she was forced to leave behind. The fear I could see in my Grandmother Marie’s eyes had crept into mine over time. I was told at a very young age about my mother’s tumors and how to be watchful for my own. Even now, my family is always mentioning self-exams and how important being aware of your own body is. “You can tell before a Doctor can when something is wrong,” my mom told me. When my Grandmother recalls the effects cancer had on her family, you can hear the past lodge in her throat. Breast Cancer is a scary thing to acknowledge and even more frightening to experience. My mother has had four fibrous (non-cancerous) tumors removed; her earliest was at fourteen. Agnes kept her lumps a secret out of what I can only assume to be fear. My great-grandmother’s story is one that guides our way in health as a family. My grandmother Marie told me that after her mother’s passing, she believed cancer’s only outcome was death. She smiled at me as she talked to me about the people she knew and loved who had beat cancer as badly as stage three. “Believe in miracles and never give up,” she told me, “the Lord has a way.”