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In this deeply moving episode of Still I Rise, Allison Spampinato shares her story of living with metastatic breast cancer while carrying unimaginable grief, fear, and responsibility. Diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, Allison fought through chemotherapy, immunotherapy, surgery, and radiation — only to face a devastating turn when the cancer spread to her brain shortly after losing her father to metastatic pancreatic cancer.

As a mother of three, a wife, and a lifelong caregiver, Allison carried far more than illness. She carried grief, expectation, and the unspoken role of being “the strong one” for everyone around her — even after brain surgery and during ongoing chemotherapy.

Using the powerful metaphor of a shield and a trembling sword, Allison reflects on fear, resilience, and the slow, sacred process of learning that strength doesn’t mean doing everything alone. This episode explores stage 4 breast cancer, caregiver burnout, anticipatory grief, and the courage it takes to ask for help.

If you are navigating metastatic cancer, caring for others while silently breaking, or learning how to live alongside fear without letting it consume you, this story will remind you: you are not alone — and strength can be found even when the weight feels unbearable.

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Still I Rise features stories from You Night's STORY CRAFTING COMMUNITY. To read additional stories, visit our Facebook page:

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In this powerful episode of Still I Rise, Idun-Cara Byers shares a deeply moving story of resilience, caregiving, and healing after breast cancer. Diagnosed with Stage One Estrogen-Positive Invasive Lobular Carcinoma, Idun-Cara faced years of surgeries, body betrayal, and identity shifts — all while continuing to care for family, build a career, and live fully.

From a childhood shaped by love and resilience, to years of caregiving through ALS and stroke, to reclaiming her body through a transformative DIEP flap reconstruction, this episode explores how scars become symbols of survival rather than loss.

Through the powerful metaphor of an hourglass, Idun-Cara reflects on time, gratitude, and choosing joy over regret. Her story is a reminder that breast cancer does not define us — and that healing is not about erasing scars, but honoring what they represent.

If you’re navigating life after cancer, caregiving burnout, or the quiet work of rebuilding yourself, this episode offers hope, wisdom, and permission to live fully — right now.

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Still I Rise features stories from You Night's STORY CRAFTING COMMUNITY. To read additional stories, visit our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/YouNightStories. Would you like to participate in a 6-week Story Crafting small group experience so that you can share your story? Write to us at teamyounight@gmail.com

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Some moments in life change us quietly.
Others crack us open completely.

For Nicole Urbanek, that moment came at just thirty-three, when the life she knew split wide with a breast cancer diagnosis. It wasn’t just her body that changed — it was the way she understood loss, resilience, and who she truly was beneath it all.

Nicole is a teacher, a storyteller, and someone who has known grief long before cancer entered the picture — losing her father at twenty, and her brother just twelve years later. In the classroom, she found purpose and light. In her students, she found a reason to keep showing up, even on her darkest days.

In her Story Crafting piece, Cracked Open, Nicole invites us into a powerful metaphor — a life shaped like a set of nesting dolls. Each layer built from love, memory, heartbreak, and survival. Cancer didn’t destroy her. It revealed her — stripping away the noise and leaving only what truly matters.

This is a story about choosing not to orbit endlessly around what’s lost…
but reaching inward to find the next version of yourself waiting.

Because when life cracks you open, what you discover inside just might be stronger than you ever imagined.

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Still I Rise features stories from You Night's STORY CRAFTING COMMUNITY. To read additional stories, visit our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/YouNightStories. Would you like to participate in a 6-week Story Crafting small group experience so that you can share your story? Write to us at teamyounight@gmail.com

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Some stories are not about how strong we are —
but about who carried us when we had no strength left.

When we first met Catrina Sullivan, she carried herself with strength —
and with walls.
Walls built over years of heartache.
Of people letting her down.
Of being taken advantage of.
Of learning the hard way that survival sometimes means staying guarded.

Her life has been shaped by battles most people never see —
childhood trauma, silence in the military, abuse, loss, motherhood carried alone.
And then, at thirty-nine, a diagnosis that stopped everything —
Stage Two HER2-Positive Breast Cancer.

But as our team circled the wagons around her, something shifted.
Catrina realized the love being offered wasn’t conditional or performative — it was real.
Safe.
Given freely, without expectation.

And still — this is not just a cancer story.

This is a testimony of faith forged in fire.
Of a woman who kept walking, not because the road was easy,
but because God never let her walk alone.

In He Carried Me Through the Sand, Catrina reflects on a life marked by struggle and resilience — and the unmistakable presence of God in every chapter. When her strength failed, His did not. When she could no longer stand, He carried her.

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Still I Rise features stories from You Night's STORY CRAFTING COMMUNITY. To read additional stories, visit our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/YouNightStories. Would you like to participate in a 6-week Story Crafting small group experience so that you can share your story? Write to us at teamyounight@gmail.com

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What does it mean to survive when life never gives you time to rest?

In this powerful episode of Still I Rise, Cat Black shares her extraordinary story of surviving breast cancer and leukemia — not once, but twice — while raising two young children. Diagnosed with breast cancer at 36 with a four-year-old and a five-month-old at home, Cat fought not just for herself, but for her family. Just as life began to stabilize, a second diagnosis — leukemia — burned everything down again.

Through hospital isolation, failed chemotherapy, and a life-saving stem cell transplant from a perfect international donor, Cat rose from the ashes — scarred, transformed, and stronger than before.

Using the metaphor of the phoenix, Cat reflects on survival, motherhood, identity, and the relentless fires that shape a woman when she has no choice but to rise. This episode is a testament to maternal strength, resilience, and the quiet sparks that keep us going even in the darkest moments.

If you’ve ever faced cancer, cared for a loved one, or wondered how people survive the unimaginable — this story will stay with you long after the episode ends.

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Still I Rise features stories from You Night's STORY CRAFTING COMMUNITY. To read additional stories, visit our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/YouNightStories. Would you like to participate in a 6-week Story Crafting small group experience so that you can share your story? Write to us at teamyounight@gmail.com

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For more than twenty years, Tara Warner has stood at the bedside of people facing cancer.

As an oncology nurse, she’s walked thousands of patients through diagnosis, treatment, fear, and hope — always reminding them that the mental battle is at least fifty percent of the fight.

But everything shifted when Tara crossed the line from caregiver to patient… when she herself was diagnosed with breast cancer.

In that moment, she saw what the system doesn’t have time to hold — the emotional fallout, the identity loss, the quiet unraveling that happens when life splits in two. Bodies are treated. Diseases are managed. But the mind and spirit are often left to carry the weight alone.

What followed wasn’t just illness — it was awakening.

In her Story Crafting piece, Becoming, Tara shares a life shaped by eruption and rebuilding — storms, loss, and the moment she made a powerful decision:
“I will not rebuild what broke me.”

Not the patterns.
Not the silence.
Not the version of life that required her to disappear to survive.

This is a story about choosing a new blueprint.
About becoming truer instead of tougher.
About honoring the mind and spirit with the same urgency we give the body.

This is Tara’s rise.

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Still I Rise features stories from You Night's STORY CRAFTING COMMUNITY. To read additional stories, visit our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/YouNightStories. Would you like to participate in a 6-week Story Crafting small group experience so that you can share your story? Write to us at teamyounight@gmail.com

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Once upon a time, in a quiet land of shifting skies and whispering winds, lived a girl named Denise.
In her village, children didn’t build houses from wood or stone — they built them from beliefs.

Denise learned early how to build.
Be small.
Be silent.
Keep the peace.
Don’t shine too brightly.

So she built carefully. Brick by brick. Approval by approval.
A house that looked strong on the outside — but never quite felt like home.

She grew, succeeded, achieved… and then one day, a storm arrived.
A breast cancer diagnosis that shook the foundation and asked the questions she could no longer avoid:
Am I living the life I want?
And who am I, really?

In the rubble, Denise heard her own voice for the first time — quiet, steady, true — whispering,
“There’s another way.”

This is the story of rebuilding.
Of choosing alignment over applause.
Of learning that worth is not earned — it’s remembered.

Welcome to Still I Rise —
where storms become awakenings,
healing becomes a choice,
and coming home to yourself is the bravest thing you can do.

Welcome to my guest, Denise Whittaker.

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Still I Rise features stories from You Night's STORY CRAFTING COMMUNITY. To read additional stories, visit our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/YouNightStories. Would you like to participate in a 6-week Story Crafting small group experience so that you can share your story? Write to us at teamyounight@gmail.com

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Today on Still I Rise, you’re going to meet a woman who describes herself through the image of a firefly—small, steady, and lit from within, flickering even when everything around her feels dark.

Our guest, Dawn Freret, was stepping into a new chapter: rebuilding after a painful divorce, raising her boys, and finding love again—ready to turn 50 and see it as the beginning of the second half of her story. But then a routine mammogram became a biopsy… and in February 2025, Dawn was diagnosed with Stage 2 HER2-positive breast cancer.

Before treatment could begin, her oncologist ordered a standard echocardiogram—just to make sure her heart could handle the drugs. What it revealed stopped everything: an ejection fraction of only 20 percent. Dawn felt fine. She was active. No symptoms. And yet she was in heart failure.

In an instant, she was carrying two diagnoses—breast cancer and congestive heart failure—and her cancer treatment paused before it ever started. For six long months, she had to wait as her heart became the priority, learning a new kind of bravery: trusting her doctors, trusting timing, and allowing people to hold some of the weight.

And along the way, Dawn learned to look for what she calls “glimmers”—tiny sparks of joy, gratitude, and peace that still appear in dark seasons.

This is Dawn’s story entitled "Dancing through the Darknesss". It's a story of resilience, vulnerability, and hope—of not just surviving the darkness… but learning to light it up and dance through it.

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Still I Rise features stories from You Night's STORY CRAFTING COMMUNITY. To read additional stories, visit our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/YouNightStories. Would you like to participate in a 6-week Story Crafting small group experience so that you can share your story? Write to us at teamyounight@gmail.com