October brings breast cancer awareness into full focus, serving as a reminder of the thousands of lives touched by the disease. Behind the pink ribbons and awareness campaigns are families and friends learning how to navigate life after losing someone they love.
For Christa McGraw, Breast Cancer Awareness Month is deeply personal.
Watch: Grief after cancer: How remembrance can turn loss into action
Christa lost three friends, Kelly, Amber and Beth, to breast cancer. Kelly and Amber were friends from college and young mothers who were diagnosed with the disease in their mid-30s.
“Kelly and Amber were great friends in college and both just exceptional people, wonderful mothers,” McGraw said. “And somehow through their fight against cancer, they kept very selfless and steadfast in keeping their families first and foremost.”
As her friends went through treatment, Christa watched them try to maintain a sense of normalcy for their children while juggling doctor’s appointments, treatments and the physical and emotional toll of cancer.
Even after both women died, Christa said her connection to them remained.
“I think a lot of it is about keeping their memory alive,” she said.
Clinical psychologist Timothy Fowles said grief can look different for everyone.
“There’s not a right way to grieve,” Fowles said.
For people coping with loss, moving forward does not necessarily mean leaving grief behind.
“That’s one of the, I think, misnomers about grief is that, well, I’ll work through it and then I’ll be done with it,” Fowles said. “But it doesn’t really end. It keeps going. It just transforms.”
That transformation can mean acknowledging what has been lost while learning how to build a life around it.
For McGraw, Breast Cancer Awareness Month is ultimately about the people behind the statistics and pink ribbons. Kelly, Amber and Beth were friends and mothers whose impact continues through the people who knew and loved them.
Grief may never completely disappear. But as Fowles explained, it can transform.