Sedona: A Journey Through Sisterhood, Survival, and Light

The First Visit: 2022

I first arrived in Sedona in 2022, almost a year after my breast cancer diagnosis. I came with my sisters, Linda and Olivia, and everything about that week felt gentle and beautiful. I was struck by the landscape, the stillness, and the deep sense of connection that forms when women who have walked similar paths come together.

There was comfort in being seen without having to speak. There was healing in laughter, shared meals, and quiet moments. Spiritually, though, I stayed near the surface. I didn’t yet understand the depth of what was being offered. Still, it was a meaningful experience, made even more special by sharing it with my sisters, a moment in time that I hold with gratitude.

The second time I attended, I again came with my sisters, and this time my cousin Nelia joined us, yes, the cousin I was named after. The week echoed the first in many ways. We hiked, explored Sedona, spent cold afternoons playing games in the lodge, shopped, meditated as a group, and bonded in ways that felt nourishing.

Yet emotionally, I remained guarded.

I wasn’t ready to open myself fully. I didn’t know most of the women, and vulnerability has never come easily to me, not even with family. I was determined that cancer would not define me, and in protecting myself from that label, I also kept parts of my experience tightly held. I am someone who takes care of others, often at the expense of allowing myself to be emotionally cared for.

The one moment that pierced that armor came during the closing ceremony. More than fifty women stood shoulder to shoulder in two rows, facing one another. Each of us had chosen a word from a bowl without looking at it. One by one, our facilitator whispered the words into our ears, beginning with “You are…,” and then guided us forward as each pair of women repeated that word softly.

With my eyes closed, I listened as affirmation after affirmation landed somewhere deeper than sound. I cried, harder with each word. I was embarrassed, standing there with my sisters and strangers alike, yet something undeniable was happening. It wasn’t that the words weren’t true; it was that they felt unfamiliar. That moment planted something in me, even though I didn’t yet know what to do with it.

The Years Between

In the years that followed, life became heavier.

My sisters weren’t able to attend the retreat with me for a time. One year, Linda joined a separate retreat for women living with metastatic cancer. The following year, our focus shifted entirely to our parents, whose health was declining both physically and cognitively. They had moved back to São Miguel, Azores, Portugal when my father retired over twenty years ago, and as their needs increased, distance made everything more complicated.

All seven of us children took turns traveling back to help care for them while they were still living in their own home. Even with seven siblings, it became clear that we could not sustain what was required. They were losing mobility; their memories were fading; their health was unraveling. By 2025, the strain became unbearable.

That period fractured parts of our family. Decisions made on our parents’ behalf created rifts between siblings, some of which may never fully heal. I carried anger over what transpired, grief over what was lost, and a deep sense of helplessness, especially after my father passed away in April.

At the same time, I was approaching five years post–breast cancer. My tamoxifen regimen is set to end in October, a milestone that feels both hopeful and frightening. Five years is supposed to mean safety, yet fear has a way of lingering. My diagnosis mirrored my sister Linda’s, and hers returned years later as stage four. That reality never leaves you.

When I returned to Sedona in February of 2026, I came with my sister Linda and my dear friend Kristen. This time, everything was different.

I arrived not only as a survivor, but as a grieving daughter, a sister navigating fractured relationships, a woman holding anger and fear, and a writer who had discovered her voice through breast cancer. I could no longer stay on the surface. Something deeper needed to be acknowledged.

During this visit, I participated in a guided meditation called Healing with the Archangels, and what unfolded there changed me. In the stillness, I felt strength, expression, healing, and illumination meet me where I was. It felt less like something arriving from the outside and more like something being awakened within me.

It was then that I fully understood the metaphor that has come to define my journey.

Stained glass is not something I create with my hands. It is how I understand my life after cancer. It is made of fragments, fear, grief, love, resilience, and survival, pieces that feel broken and unrelated until they are held up to the light. Writing became the way I traced those seams, the way I learned that broken pieces don’t need to be hidden to be whole.

Sedona didn’t fix what was broken. It didn’t erase grief, fear, or loss. What it gave me was permission to be transparent, to let light pass through every part of my story, even the jagged edges.

I no longer believe healing means returning to who I was before cancer, or before loss. I believe it means learning how to live honestly with the pieces I carry.

Like stained glass, I am not defined by where I broke, but by what happens when I allow myself to be open. Sedona reminded me that even fractured things can glow, and sometimes the most meaningful transformation happens not when we protect ourselves from the light, but when we let it in.