Breast Cancer Changed the Life I Imagined at 29. But It Was Still Mine to Build.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Twenty-nine was to be the first year of the rest of my life. I was active and healthy, an avid runner with a well-established career in healthcare. Newly engaged, Ryan and I were searching for our forever home and imagining what our future family may look like. One child? How about two? Yes, two! I’d always wondered what being a mom would be like. In no time, our venue was booked and our lives were on course to merge in the most perfect way.

But all of that would come to a halt in January 2016 when I returned to the comfort of my living room couch from an outdoor cold-weather run, just a normal part of a normal day. I crossed my arms to warm up, almost as though I was hugging myself. Almost immediately, I felt something in my left breast that wasn’t there before, something that did not belong. Something ... alarming. It was firm and nearly the size of a golf ball, not painful but strangely immovable. Recognizing this to be outside of what I knew to be normal for my body, I contacted my primary care physician’s office the next day, and I would find myself sitting nervously in her office the following morning.

“Mindy, I’m concerned,” my PCP said quietly. She looked at me with compassion and paused. She’d been my trusted physician since high school, and I took her words seriously. “Just tell me what we need to do,” I said. She referred me to the breast clinic where I’d eventually receive the diagnostic imaging and biopsy that would confirm our worst fears: stage 2 breast cancer, with involvement of one lymph node. My prayers quickly shifted and I found myself hoping with everything I had that it wouldn’t spread before I could begin treatment.

2016 (Photo/Courtesy Mindy Miller)

Over a decade before being of age to qualify for a routine screening mammogram, I found myself learning everything I could about what it meant to have breast cancer. I was the healthiest person — I knew until I wasn’t. As odd as it may sound, my first worries were not for my mortality but instead for my joy. After the initial shock and tears, I vowed that I wouldn’t let cancer steal my joy, nor Ryan’s. And instead of cancelling the dinner reservations we had hoped would be in celebration of good news, we made the decision to dress up and show up — the very same day that we received the news.

While we were seated next to each other in the dimly lit Italian restaurant that evening, we revealed not only our fears and worries but also our hopes for how we might be able to move together through this ominous, overwhelming chapter of the unknown. Tears fell here and there, yet somehow, we found ways to smile and even laugh between them. My treatment plan included IV chemotherapy, a mastectomy, radiation, several breast reconstruction surgeries, and a total of nearly six years spent in medically induced menopause. You see, my body’s natural estrogen production was working against me. It was feeding the cancer, and that meant our chances of becoming parents were delayed. We didn’t lose hope, though.

I chose to have only one breast removed in case I could still breastfeed someday. Not long after chemotherapy and my mastectomy, I would be declared cancer-free, and Ryan and I would marry just over a year later. We built our home in 2017, and in 2018, we began creating our farm, a place that would eventually become such a meaningful part of the life we were building together.

Mindy and Ryan on their wedding day. (Photo/Courtesy Artefact Image Co., 2016)

On paper, life looked much as we’d hoped. At the same time, I was lovingly watching my friends begin their families. One baby, then two. Sometimes three. I happily embraced their tiny human snuggles and I took joy in celebrating alongside them at their cutely themed birthday parties. What a gift it was to still be included in those special events even when I didn’t have similar milestones, myself. Even when I couldn’t relate. Instead, I was doing everything I could to manage the side effects of the medications I was receiving to keep my ovaries suppressed and my body in menopause — the hot flashes, extreme fatigue, difficulty sleeping, body aches, weight gain, and thinning hair and bones, with few effective ways to manage them.

So, I leaned into gratitude for these options in recurrence risk reduction and I did the best I could to endure the years that would lead up to the day I’d complete my treatment course. The most triumphant milestone! However, even though my menstrual cycle soon returned and my oncologist gave us his blessing to begin our efforts with family planning, that positive pregnancy test never came.

Even though we eventually received medical clearance to try, I think we had always carried a quiet feeling that having children might not be in the cards for us. While that did become our reality, we were already in the process of creating something beautiful: our life together. We leaned into a radical acceptance of sorts, a belief that if it was meant to be, it would be, and if it wasn’t, that was okay, too. Because a family doesn’t always have to be made up of the two-legged type.

Mindy and one of her lambs. (Photo/Courtesy Mindy Miller, 2020)

Our farm became a different kind of labor, a labor of love and a source of great meaning to us. What began as a hobby grew into something much bigger, giving us so many precious little friends to nurture. Today, we’re fortunate to call ourselves parents to numerous sheep, an alpaca, a llama, three miniature cows, three farm cats and one indoor dog. So many cold nights in the barn watching our sheep give birth to their lambs! How beautiful it has been to observe their motherly instincts taking over as they clean and begin to nurse their babies. Having the opportunity to bottle-feed babies as needed has been deeply rewarding.

There’s something incredibly special about caring for these little lives, watching them grow, and being a part of their earliest days. In many ways, our farm has given us a sense of purpose and fulfillment we never could have anticipated. It’s also taught me that joy can exist alongside grief. I can love the life Ryan and I have built, feel immense gratitude for the family we’ve created in our own way, and still grieve the experience of motherhood I once imagined for myself. One does not cancel the other. Our life may look unexpectedly different from the one I originally pictured at 29, but it is a life full of love.

And it is ours.

Mindy, her husband and their four-legged family members. (Photo/Courtesy Mindy Miller, 2026)

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