Bronx Author Finds Faith After Lung Cancer Diagnosis

She grew up on Prospect Avenue in the Bronx, a block from Arthur Avenue, where neighbors often knew each other’s business before they even left the stoop. Candles and saints from Santería filled her childhood home, a faith tradition she later left behind, adding a layer of cultural richness to her upbringing.

Early Life and Diagnosis

In 2011 her mother died, an event that profoundly altered the family’s emotional environment. In 2022, she came to Christ.

The following year, doctors confirmed a diagnosis of lung cancer in 2023.

Before the diagnosis, she believed faith functioned like a finish line—a point where searching stopped. She expected that surviving the disease would mirror that model: clear scans, a celebratory bell, and a sense of completion that would finally allow her to rest.

A Shift in Faith

After surgery, she spent a sleepless night cataloguing each ache, uncertain whether the sensations signaled healing or a new complication. In that quiet, she whispered the three words her mother once said at a locked door: “Lord, let me see clearly.”

That prayer marked a turning point. She realized that belief was not a destination but a repeated reaching for clarity, a muscle exercised over and over rather than a trophy earned once.

She now faces regular follow-up scans and occasional chest pain that prompts her to touch the cross around her neck before anything else. The routine reminds her that the journey continues long after remission paperwork is signed, and each appointment becomes a checkpoint rather than an endpoint.

Living with Ongoing Uncertainty

She has turned to writing, producing Bronx-set mysteries, a memoir, and a book about the mutation that tried to end her, told with as much humor as she could find.

Characters in her stories often pause to offer brief, unfinished prayers at moments of doubt, echoing the pattern she discovered in her own life. She did not plan this motif; it emerged only after she reflected on her healing process and recognized the power of a half-said request.

She advises anyone newly diagnosed or years into remission that there is no hidden line to cross. The notion of a final arrival, in health, belief, or grief, is a myth; the act of reaching persists, and each day brings a new opportunity to redefine purpose.

Each morning she repeats, “Lord, let me see clearly.”