Gabrielle's Survivor story

   I thought I was going in for a routine Pap smear in April of 2023. A simple checkup, nothing more. Instead, that appointment unraveled a thread that would change my life. My results showed a positive HPV test and abnormal cervical cells. Soon after, I was sitting in an oncologist’s office, where I was told my cervix was beginning to change. In the same breath, he paused, tilted his head, and said, “Are you pregnant?”

I was.

   From that moment, my pregnancy and my cancer became intertwined. I spent those months in a high-risk balancing act—between joy and fear, between ultrasounds and oncologist visits, between carrying life inside me while facing the possibility of losing my own. In December of 2023, I gave birth to my baby, and for a fleeting moment, it felt like the storm had passed.

    But two months later, in February of 2024, a colposcopy delivered the words I will never forget: Stage 3 cervical cancer.

   What followed was not just a medical battle, but a spiritual one. Treatment left me with radiation-induced neuropathy that, at one point, took away my ability to walk. As a mother, as a wife, as a woman—I felt shattered and remade all at once.

     And yet, I kept going. I learned how to walk again. I learned how to breathe again. I learned that survival is not just about outliving a diagnosis, but about reclaiming your voice and your story.

     This is why I advocate. This is why I speak. Because too many women—especially Black and Brown women—are silenced, overlooked, or erased. Because no one should ever feel alone in the fight for their life. Because my story is not just about what cancer took from me, but about what it gave me: a deeper fire to live, to heal, and to tell the truth.

My name is Gabrielle, and this is my story.