Through the lens of love: a journey of healing amid cancer

I was at work when the call came. The woman on the line from my doctor’s office asked if I had five minutes, then casually told me she was sorry but that I had cancer. I glanced out the window, watching people walk, talk and carry on as if it were just a normal day. But for me, everything had changed. At that moment, I felt like I was already dead.

My husband, Jordan, and I had just started talking about having a second child. Now, suddenly, that future was gone. I was 37 years old, and I would soon learn that even if I survived the cancer, the treatment would leave me infertile.

The day after my diagnosis - later confirmed as triple-positive breast cancer - Jordan and I picked up our cameras. Photography has always been part of our lives, but now it became something more: a shield, a way to cope without words. We documented everything - the sterile waiting rooms, the narrow hospital corridors and the quiet moments at home - capturing our new reality as it unfolded. But we never shared our images with each other.

Our cameras helped us express our inner lives while concealing our pain. It’s hard to talk about the most painful parts of life. Sometimes, words fail and silence takes their place. That’s when photography stepped in. The result is the photos you see with this story, as well as a book we published in October.

I started taking self-portraits. As treatment progressed, I no longer recognized myself. The more fractured I felt, the more people told me I was strong, even beautiful. But inside, I mourned my fertility. Chemotherapy had damaged the eggs in my ovaries, while Tamoxifen (which I still take) put me into an early menopause.

The combined treatments stripped me of my ability to give my then-3½-year-old son, Jesse, a sibling, and I felt betrayed by my body. The loss created a wedge between Jordan and me. He, too, had wanted another child, but as he learned more about my cancer’s aggressive nature, an unspoken fear crept in - what if he had to raise our son alone? That fear, paired with my grief, deepened the divide between us.

Conversations turned into arguments, so we stopped having them. Silence became our default.

We explored adoption and foster care, but the process felt overwhelming. As the reality of not having another child set in, the emotional distance between us grew.

A 2018 study by researchers at the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City found that young cancer survivors - ages 20 to 39 - “were at an increased risk” of divorce and separation. “The emotional and financial burdens of cancer may lead to marital stress for younger cancer survivors,” the researchers concluded. Infertility can add new layers of stress, tension and sometimes anger.

Jordan and I experienced firsthand how illness can expose the deepest fractures in relationships - how emotional needs go unmet, not out of neglect but because neither partner knows how to reach the other through their pain.

Through it all, we have continued our project, using photography not just to nurture and heal ourselves but also to start the conversations we once avoided. The images became a bridge, piecing together what illness had damaged. As we shared our work, we found many others who carried similar unspoken burdens.

Many of my self-portraits included images of broken mirrors, shadows and decay, reflecting my struggle to piece myself back together. Jordan felt guilty and worried that his portraits of my “strength” and “beauty” reinforced unrealistic expectations for women facing illness. I reassured him that his photos reminded me of our love, even when I felt unworthy.

Looking at my photos of him and the ones he had been taking helped me to finally see his pain. Jordan also confessed that there was time when he went to the car every day to cry so I wouldn’t see him. It broke my heart but also helped me finally understand the emotional weight he carried.

Our conversations also uncovered our shared grief over our unfulfilled desire to have another child. Exploring adoption and foster care brought emotional challenges that drove us apart. I felt a profound longing for another baby, while Jordan was simply grateful for my survival.

We sought professional counseling to address our growing arguments and resentments. It helped him understand how deeply I was grieving and helped me understand his fears of being a single father to two children rather than just one.

Four years ago, one night before bed, I walked into Jesse’s room and found him crying. When I asked what was wrong, he said he wished he had a sibling like his cousins and friends. He promised he would be an amazing brother, and at that moment, I realized he thought we hadn’t had another child because of him. My heart sank.

That night, for the first time, we had a real conversation about cancer and how we had wanted another child more than anything, but I couldn’t have one because “Mommy got sick.” It broke me to know he had been blaming himself.

In trying to protect him by keeping things unsaid, I wondered if, instead, we had caused more confusion and pain.

Looking through our photographs, we finally understood how much we had withheld from each other as a family. Concealment, meant to protect, had created distance. Sharing our photographs became an act of healing.

I’m nearly eight years out from my diagnosis now, though I still go for yearly scans and annual appointments with my oncologist. Even though I’m “cancer-free,” there is still a space in me where the fear hides. The years after treatment have been harder than I expected. I’m still piecing together who I was before, during and after.

But I have learned it’s possible to hold gratitude and grief at once, to feel both happiness and anger. And I now know love exists even in moments when I have struggled to love myself.

As our book was getting ready for a final edit before going to press, we asked our son if he wanted to include a photo. He chose one that he had taken.

It’s a blurry shot of Jordan and me kissing, and its meaning is clear: He wanted to show his parents together in love.

Anna Rathkopf is the co-author of “HER2: The Diagnosed, The Caregiver And Their Son” with her husband, Jordan Rathkopf.