My vision board for 2024 had one clear theme, growth. I was ready to launch my beauty brand, 3 of Cups, grow my social platforms, and step fully into my role as a founder. What it didn’t include was fighting for my life against breast cancer. If there was ever a plot twist to my life story, this was the equivalent of finding out that Disney World is coming to Abu Dhabi. I just never saw it coming.
From the ashes
To give a little context: for exactly 341 days, I fought like a warrior, in pink sparkly leggings, no less, against stage 2 hormone-positive Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. In August, to mark one-year post-chemo, I went with my daughter Veronica to the Katy Perry concert at Madison Square Garden. During the show, Katy declared, “I’m a Scorpio, b*tch.” I get this energy, because I invoke it as a Scorpio, too. We’re designed by the stars to look death in the eye without blinking.
Cancer stripped me down to nothing but my will to rise. I’m not big on quotes in my writings, but Hemingway is known to have famously said, “Every man has two lives, and the second starts when he realises he has just one.” When cancer forced me into the fire, I unknowingly entered my second life, the Scorpio’s highest totem, the alchemical Phoenix. I found myself in my first year of remission breathing fire into my new life as a cancer survivor with 3 of Cups, being the sacred flame, I carried forward.
The fire
My cancer was hormone-positive, which meant it fed on oestrogen. Oestrogen is the incredible hormone responsible for plump, elastic skin, glossy hair, strong bones, stable mood, and that lit-from-within glow. Pretty ironic for a beauty editor and budding beauty brand founder, am I right?
To eradicate the cancer, I underwent two lumpectomies. The first removed two tumours from my right breast and the second was required because the margins weren’t clear, meaning cancer cells were still present at the edges.
From there, I endured six months of chemotherapy. It wiped-out rogue cancer cells and forced my body into menopause, starving any remaining cells of their hormone supply. The side effects were intense. I had relentless hot flashes 24/7, bone-deep exhaustion, nausea, constant nose bleeds, neuropathy, steroid-induced acne, weight gain, and complete hair loss.
After chemo, I began radiotherapy. I lay beneath a giant machine that rotated around me, blasting my chest with targeted beams while I held my breath for up to a minute at a time.
During active treatment, I traded my social life for hospital visits. I spent hours on my bed, trying to rest.
Emotionally, I was scorched. I went from living my normal, everyday life to suddenly coming face to face with my own mortality. I’m a mom of two teens, and I couldn’t believe the idea of leaving them while they’re so young. It was clear early on that I’d have to delay my brand launch. I was devastated as I’d already worked for two years behind the scene on my first formulation, brand DNA, and storytelling.
Pre-cancer, I lived on a hamster wheel. I raced from beauty events to writing deadlines, from brand meetings to content creation, and even squeezed in moments of meditation. Cancer took that hamster wheel and threw it onto Sheikh Zayed Road during rush hour. This journey was as much as learning the art of surrendering to my diagnosis as it was fighting to live. I realise only now that this fire was an act of spiritual purification.
The embers
On November 20, 2024, I heard the words every cancer patient wants to hear. The results from my PET scan to see if the treatments had worked was back. My body was clear, and I was in remission.
To celebrate, we took a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. My brothers came along with their families and my mom did, too. The trip was pure magic, especially knowing that I was now cancer-free. My body was still weak from the treatments, and I had barely a centimetre of new hair on my head, but I felt a glow inside of me like embers after a blaze, quietly smouldering into the promise of a new life.
Although the relief I felt was palpable, I knew my cancer journey was far from over.
With chemo and radiation as ashes beneath my feet, I began my post-cancer treatment of hormone therapy. To keep my body free of oestrogen, I started taking letrozole, a small pill that blocks its production and starves any lingering cells.
In the early days of taking letrozole, I noticed my eyelashes would grow in, only to fall out again. I was curious if this was a side effect and what else my body might face as I adjusted to this new phase of treatment. I did a meditation with my medication, placing the pill in my hand, closing my eyes, and telling my body, this medicine is here to help us, to protect us, to keep us safe.
Spiritually, I became attuned again to signs, synchronicities, and whispers from the Universe. I also felt unshakable clarity. The inner work I did while laying low during chemo was a life detox. Without the noise of my hamster wheel, I had crystal-clear vision on the luminous threads I would weave into both my life and my brand.
Breathing fire
Letrozole proved to be its own beast and within months, I felt its claws. I once read a comment that this medication gives you the hormones of an 80-year-old woman, and while that’s not exactly true, it certainly feels like it.
Every morning up to this day, I do what I jokingly call the “letrozole shuffle.” My joints are so stiff when I first wake that I hobble through my first 50 steps until they loosen. I take ten pills a day, most of them to counteract the side effects of the one keeping me cancer-free.
Weight gain has also been a challenge. In a world where everyone seems to be thin thanks to injectables, I’m the biggest I’ve ever been, with the shortest haircut I’ve ever had. While this isn’t my most glam look, there’s a part of me that doesn’t care. At least, not like I used to. Cancer reframed my self-worth, and being alive and adjusting to this medication is more important than fitting into my US size 4 jeans right now. Two truths can co-exist as I’m comfortable with where I am yet still committed to evolving.
Wings unfolding
When I first was diagnosed with breast cancer, intuitively, I knew I didn’t want to share the news on my socials. I decided to post about it after I finished chemotherapy, to keep my energy protected and my mind focused on my treatments.
After the news came out, I received an outpouring of love and compassion. I began to share my story on Instagram, but looking back on that time a year later, I was still coming to terms with accepting my own diagnosis and the enormity of what I just endured.
In May of this year, I had my first ever viral moment on Instagram. I posted a carousel story about coming to terms with my post-chemo weight gain (a whopping 15kg) and how I didn’t let it hold me back on a trip my family and I took to the Maldives. I never knew it would take me wearing a one-piece floral Temu swimsuit in a size XL with a bald head and some residual steroid-induced acne to go viral. What was I thinking all those years trying to curate the perfect feed
After that post, thousands of women reached out to share their own breast cancer stories. Even women with other cancers wrote to say my words resonated. I kept sharing, reflections, lessons, truths, and in doing so, I felt myself healing.
I started TikTok as well, and just as I write this now, jetlagged after summer in the USA with my kids. My TikTok following has surpassed Instagram. People resonate with vulnerability. As my accounts rose like a phoenix, I realise I’m building a community rooted in truth, resilience, and sisterhood.
Flight path
Sisterhood is a powerful word in both my cancer journey and my brand. My company is named 3 of Cups after my favourite tarot card. The card shows three women in flowing dresses with flower crowns, raising golden chalices high as they dance in a circle. It symbolises harmony
after hardship, the creativity of feminine energy, joyful gatherings, celebration of milestones, and women uplifting one another.
The number three is sacred. It’s the trinity of mind, body, and soul, and it mirrors the three phases of a woman’s life: The Seeker, in her becoming era, The Temple who is no longer chasing youth but finding alignment, and The Luminary, shining with sacred glow.
3 of Cups was meant to launch in May 2024. Ironically, that very month, I decided to make a big change. I already had my first product perfected, but instead I created something entirely new.
I found myself asking, as I laid bald in bed, why does a shower mask not exist?. We can purchase sheet masks, overnight masks, and traditional masks, but nothing designed for the place where most of us begin and end our daily rituals, the shower.
My debut product, The Shower Mask, is new in beauty. I designed it to work with steam and water, and to cocoon skin in gentle exfoliators and rich moisturisers, leaving it soft, supple, and luminous. The formula is perfect for multi-tasking queens and includes HappyBelle, a mood-enhancing complex that supports skin vitality and emotional well-being. I perfected every detail with my lab in France, going through dozens of iterations during chemotherapy until it was flawless.
My brand is as sacred to me as my breast cancer journey. From the little girl watching her mom apply skincare before work, to the beauty editor who knows every ingredient by heart, to the survivor who rebuilt her life from the ashes, I created 3 of Cups and The Shower Mask to be more than skincare. It is science, soul, and sisterhood in a purple tube.
The rising
If I had to summarise the first year of my remission in one word, it would be aligned. From the ashes of treatment, weak and charred, I now feel a cosmic life-force within my wings, ready to lift me into the vast horizon of possibility.
My health will continue to be monitored with scans, mammograms, and hormone therapy. I accept this fully. Not with fear, but with gratitude that I can keep walking, breathing, and living this extraordinary second life.
I am ready to breathe fire into year two of remission and to mother my children with deeper presence, use my social media voice as a torch for others walking through the fire, and finally launch my beauty brand this fall. Like the Phoenix, I carry the ashes of my cancer battle with me. I don’t see them as heavy, but as gold dust that lights my way forward. Today I am aligned. Aligned with my purpose. Aligned with my passion. Aligned with the breathtaking gift of simply being alive.
