[Guest blog by Jennifer Young]
I was nineteen years old when I was diagnosed with cancer. Old enough to feel invincible, but young enough to believe that whatever happened to my body would not define the rest of my life. I survived, but for a long time, I didn’t know how to make sense of that survival.
Today, I am a long-term melanoma survivor. I am also the mother of four children and a college writing instructor who stands in front of dozens of students every semester who are the exact age I was when cancer disrupted my life. To me, survivorship exists at that intersection of who I was, who I became, and who I now help guide forward.
For many years after treatment, I believed survivorship meant moving on. I thought it meant not talking about it or dwelling on it. Instead, I tried to reinvent myself as someone untouched. I carried my scars quietly and privately, afraid that if I spoke about them out loud it might connect me to a version of myself I wasn’t ready to confront. I built a life—marriage, children, a career—while keeping that nineteen-year-old girl carefully hidden away.
But survivorship isn’t about erasing what happened. It’s about learning how to live with it. I celebrate National Cancer Survivors Day because it honors the long journey—not just to remission, but to finding meaning. Survivorship is not a finish line; it’s a lifelong practice. It is the choice to keep showing up in a body that once suffered from illness. It is the courage to envision a future when certainty has been taken away. It is learning to hold gratitude and grief at the same time.
As a melanoma survivor, I understand how cancer changes our sense of time. Diagnosis compresses life into scans, appointments, and waiting rooms. Survivorship expands it again––but not quite the same. There is a before and an after, and the gap between them is rarely talked about. National Cancer Survivors Day lets us stand on that bridge together.
Motherhood has deepened my understanding of survivorship in unexpected ways. My children see my body as the place they once lived and the arms that hold them. They see a mother who is present. They don’t see the scars first. They see a mother who is here. Each birthday, each school pickup, each ordinary moment is a quiet miracle: I am still here.
Teaching has also enriched my perspective. Every semester, I look out at students who are nineteen, twenty, twenty-one—young adults on the brink of possibility. They remind me of who I was when cancer rewrote my story. I don’t share my history with all of them, but I carry it as I teach them to find their voices, trust their stories, and believe that what happens to them does not erase who they are becoming.
Survivorship means realizing that your life can hold more than one truth. You can be strong and afraid, healed and changed, grateful but still mourning what was lost. It means welcoming joy back into your life without guilt. It means recognizing that survival itself deserves celebration—even when it’s complicated.
There is life after cancer, and it is not smaller. It is fuller and louder. It is made up of ordinary days and extraordinary grace. It includes enduring love, meaningful work, and moments you once thought you might never see.
I am proud to be a cancer survivor—not because I was brave all the time, but because I continued living even when I didn’t know how my story would end. National Cancer Survivors Day reminds me that survivorship is not a solitary journey. It is a shared language, a shared resilience, and a shared hope.
I celebrate this day for the nineteen-year-old I was, for the woman I became, for my children, for my students, and for every survivor still learning what it means to live forward. Our stories matter—not because cancer affected our lives, but because it deepened our understanding of what it means to live fully.
Jennifer Young is a long-term melanoma survivor, memoirist, and writing professor who helps audiences reclaim identity and voice after illness. A published writer in Coping Magazine, Elephants and Tea, and HuffPost, she blends lived experience with 20+ years of mentoring young adults to deliver candid, inspiring talks on survivorship, resilience, and storytelling as healing. Jennifer speaks with honesty and hope, guiding others to navigate long-term survivorship, embrace small wins, and find strength in their own stories. You can find Jennifer here.
Jennifer is part of the Official NCSD Speakers Bureau Roster.
