At 37, Melody didn’t fit the profile. Too young for routine mammograms. Healthy. Happy. Busy raising her kids, sharing laughter with a supportive husband, and juggling life with the kind of energy that made her friends call her the sunshine of their group.

Cancer was never part of her plan. She had never even thought about it. Until one ordinary day in the shower changed everything.

“I usually use a loofah,” Melody recalls, “but that day I used my hand, and I felt something. It wasn’t pain. It was a presence. A lump that should not have been there.”

That moment became the beginning of a journey she never asked for. A quiet voice in her gut told her this was serious. She booked an appointment with her OB-GYN right away. What followed was a whirlwind of tests, an ultrasound, a mammogram, and then two biopsies. One for the lump and one for something else the scans picked up: microcalcifications in her milk ducts.

Then came the wait. One long, breathless month of not knowing but somehow knowing.

“I had already accepted it,” she says. “By the time April 4 came around, I knew why they weren’t giving me the results on the phone. They asked me to come in. And I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t angry. I actually felt relief.”

It may sound strange, but for Melody, the diagnosis lifted the unbearable weight of uncertainty. She had spent weeks waking up in the middle of the night, researching, praying, preparing herself for the answer she already felt in her bones.

“I didn’t cry when they said it was cancer,” she says. “I had already done my crying. I had already asked my circle to pray. A good fifty people knew I might have cancer before I even got the biopsy. I am not someone who hides. I share to heal.”

Her doctors told her to move fast. The tumor was aggressive. Her age made it even more dangerous. But even then, the system made her wait a few more weeks before starting.

So she took control of what she could. She picked up her phone, opened her TikTok and Instagram accounts, and began documenting everything. Every scan. Every thought. Every fear. Every small win.

“I needed an outlet. I needed something that felt like mine,” she says. “Social media became my therapy.”

On May 6, 2025, Melody began chemotherapy. Twenty weeks. Two kinds of drugs. One of them is nicknamed the red devil — known for being one of the toughest. After chemo, she will have a double mastectomy, followed by reconstruction, then radiation, then hormone therapy. A long road. A fierce one.

“There are days when I feel strong and others when I let myself cry,” she says. “That’s been the most healing part — not trying to be a superhero all the time.”

She named her cancer Jesabel. Giving it a name helped her take its power away.

“I believe Jesabel is no longer growing. She is being destroyed. Rapidly. Just as quickly as she came, she’s being taken down.”

Melody says it was hardest in the beginning. The weeks before treatment started, when fear was loud and everything felt uncertain. But once she began fighting, something in her shifted.

“I feel pretty good now. Not perfect. Not painless. But better. Emotionally stronger. I believe in what God is doing in me. I cry out to Him, and I feel heard. I feel seen.”

Her husband has been her rock. Her children give her reasons to laugh every day. Her friends and extended family continue to show up with meals, messages, and love.

“This journey has taught me that you don’t need to be okay all the time,” she says. “You just need to keep showing up for yourself. Let people love you. Let yourself feel everything. The fear, the anger, the hope, the gratitude.”

Melody is still in the middle of treatment. Her hair is thinning. Her body is tired. But her spirit? It is on fire.

“I am not just surviving. I am transforming. And that is something Jesabel can never take from me.”