By: Brittany Groover, 32, Melanoma

The biggest lesson I have learned from cancer is that there is no finish line. Not in the way people imagine. You do not cross some magical point where everything goes back to normal and you get your old life handed back to you. Instead, at the very moment of diagnosis, you step into a new starting point. Without your knowledge, you’re immediately thrown into a new chapter: ready or not. You’re about to begin to create a new version of yourself that you never asked to meet, but you learn to grow into anyway.

When you are first diagnosed, you think you are running toward something. Answers. Clarity. A white and black checkered line. A moment where someone tells you; “OK YOU ARE DONE!”. But the truth is that you are walking into a life that keeps unfolding. You learn and grow and change in ways you never expected. And the whole time, in the back of your mind, you are searching for a finish line that does not exist. But, it’s important to know that cancer does not give you that. It gives you a journey. And that journey becomes part of you forever.

I was diagnosed with Cutaneous Metastatic Melanoma at 27 years old. I knew it was skin cancer, but that was about it. I did not know what an oncologist was. I did not understand what “the deadliest form of skin cancer” actually meant. I was still in my 20s. Mortality did not feel real. I thought I was too young to die.

Then suddenly I was being slid into PET scan machines. I was waking up from surgeries I couldn’t even pronounce. I had doctors talking at me, not to me, using words I had never heard in my life. I did not know what to ask. I did not know where to look for information I could trust. I was scared to search anything online because I did not know what was real and what was misinformation. So I just kept showing up. One appointment at a time. One step at a time. That was all I could do.

Those steps were what taught me. Not the big dramatic moments. The small ones. The quiet ones. The ones where I was just trying to get through the day.

Sometimes other patients look at me funny when I use the word “journey.” I understand why. It can sound cliché. Or like I’m putting a pretty pink bow on something as horrific as cancer. Which I’m not doing at all.

To me, it is the only word that makes sense.

Everyone’s cancer journey is different. Everyone’s path —and pain— looks different. But it is a journey because it changes you. It teaches you. It forces you to grow in ways you never wanted to.

It does not end when treatment ends. It does not even when there’s no evidence of disease.

On a personal note, if I can get through 2026 without a recurrence, I will be discharged from treatment completely. For now, a survivor of Stage 3A melanoma. The deadliest form of skin cancer. The thing that tried to take me out before I even turned 30.

And here is the wild part. The whole time I was in treatment, I thought I was Stage 2A. I didn’t know the difference between the stages. Miscommunication + an oncologist who assumed I understood more than I did. Someone who had been in the job so long that she forgot what it feels like to be brand new to cancer. I did not know the right questions. I did not know the vocabulary. I did not know how to advocate for myself yet. I was just trying to stay alive.

But now I am on the other side. I have done the research. I have learned the language. I have learned how to find trustworthy information. I have learned how to fight misinformation online. I have learned how to help other cancer warriors find their footing in a world that feels impossible to navigate at first.

That is why I call it a journey. There is no end. I still have side effects from treatment I live with daily. It is forever a part of me. It is woven into who I am now. It is the reason I advocate. It is the reason I speak up. It is the reason I show up for other patients the way I wish someone had shown up for me.

There is no finish line. There is only the next step. And the next. And the next. And somehow, through all of it, you become a more empathetic, more grounded, more valuable version of yourself. Not because cancer is a gift. It is not. But because surviving it forces you to see the world differently. It forces you to see yourself differently.

This is my life now. And I am still walking through it, one day at a time!