I'M A LUCKY WOMAN

Lawrence, the retired founder of a successful marketing company, shares her personal journey as a cancer survivor through verse, prose, and photography.

This memoir begins in 2016 with the Massachusetts-based author getting a routine mammogram that revealed that she had triple-negative breast cancer. For 44 years, Lawrence had anticipated this possibility, as her mother and mother's two sisters had all had the disease. While waiting for her radiologist that first day, the author took “an iPhone photo of my surroundings to stay calm.” This initial photo of a mammography machine begins her account of her journey through her illness, as documented in personal, often explicit, and powerful images. Lawrence, who felt “no control over the process ahead or the outcome,” was inspired to write haiku, and her poems appear throughout the book; they reveal themselves as a simple, profound method of sharing her feelings: “Keeping a promise / To be as strong as I can / Not sure how I will.” Lawrence soon realizes the seriousness of her cancer and how its treatment will soon consume her life. She’s supported by many people (“Friends and family came to the rescue.”), including her devoted and caring husband, Ron. Overall, she provides readers with an honest, revealing work; at one point, for instance, she relates in verse how she was motivated to stay positive: “How can I not hope / Positive thoughts surround me / Good news coming soon.” However, the news was not always good, and in addition to a bilateral mastectomy, Lawrence required chemotherapy and radiation, and these later sessions make up most of the remembrance. She effectively relates how yoga was a help to her, physically and mentally, and how sharing her story gave her focus and purpose as she tried to provide “guidance, inspiration, and hope to fellow travelers on a similar journey.” The memoir ends on a high note as she arrives at her five-year cancer-free milestone, which will likely be encouraging for readers on a similar path.

A revealing remembrance of the many “Downs and Ups” of one woman’s cancer treatment.