By Emma Wright

October, to most of us, implies cooling temperatures, settling deeper into fall routines, cozying up inside, and decorating with skeletons and cobwebs in celebration. While the color scheme of October typically implies rusty oranges and reds of falling leaves, pumpkins, gourds and hearty meals, the warm tones are simultaneously disrupted by a flood of pink ribbons in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which has fallen annually in October since 1985. By taking an entire month to shed light on breast cancer, societies like the National Breast Cancer Foundation and the American Cancer Society can promote donations and funding to cancer research, help women in need, and educate women in early detection and risk factors.

While we typically refer to cancer patients and survivors as “fighters,” 28-year-old Hayley Brown of Boise, ID doesn’t feel like one. “Because it doesn’t feel like a fight,” she told me over the phone. On the 4th of July this year while on a camping trip in the Boise National Forest with her husband, Nick, Hayley woke up from a nap to a sensation she’d never felt before. 

“It was the strangest thing… it felt like my boob was asleep,” she told me as she described the numb and tingling sensation that was in her chest. In trying to “wake it up,” she found something that certainly hadn’t been there before — a lump, and it was painful. Hayley’s mom had breast cancer at age 36, and this was a strong motivator for her to make an appointment and get this new, tingly lump checked out. Today, as we approach the halfway point of Breast Cancer Awareness Month of the same year, Hayley has undergone a bilateral mastectomy to remove her breast tissue and is awaiting chemotherapy and radiation for Stage 3 breast cancer. 

Incidentally, Hayley’s cancer journey is almost identical to that of her mother’s. Same type of cancer, same stage, same treatment, same everything. Hayley thought she knew what was in store for her for this reason, but now she says, “you just can’t know how it is until you’ve been in that position yourself.” But despite annual initiatives by major institutes to bring awareness to the disease that affects an estimated 1 in 8 women in the United States, when Hayley began frantically searching the Internet for evidence of young women affected by breast cancer, she found next to nothing. Not only do so few women under 30 develop breast cancer, the few photos available — especially mastectomy before-and-after images - were those that you might find in medical textbook resources or physician’s websites. So, pushing past her comfort zone, Hayley launched an Instagram account dedicated to her cancer journey on August 1st that she calls @tittytimebomb (credit to her husband for the catchy handle). She describes this adventure as “completely backwards” from her actual personality, which I was surprised by because of how natural and honest her posts are. Hayley tends to be a very private person, and she opened up to me about how that mindset changed after her diagnosis. 

Hayley wants her account to be a balance of “humor and intensity,”  because the whole story of cancer isn’t all smiles and positivity. More than anything, Hayley wants to encourage younger women to educate themselves on breast cancer risks, what it might feel like to find a lump, how to self-examine, and to paint a fuller picture of her life. As she started exploring more resources for her own journey she found so many people who also chose to share their cancer experiences on social media, and this was incredibly validating to her experience. Beyond resources and updates on her treatment, Hayley has also chosen to share some of the most beautiful boudoir photos of herself that were taken by Macarah of @intimatethistleandpine prior to her surgery. A sweet friend gifted the session to her to “memorialize” her body before it would be physically altered in her cancer treatment, and although she doesn’t enjoy being in photos and nearly got cold feet, she said “it was so fun, I can’t imagine not doing that now.” The stunning greenery along the Boise river provides an incredible backdrop for poses of Hayley laughing, topless and confident, celebrating herself for no one’s pleasure but her own. 

I felt incredibly grateful to talk to Hayley for more reasons than one. She is so much more than her cancer journey — she has hardly stopped working at her job as a loan officer, she still manages the two properties that she and her husband own, she spends time with her two black labs, Taco and Buck (who, by the way, have matching camouflage collars with their names stitched on), and although trail running isn’t as comfortable as it once was, she’s walking on. It’s inspiring to see a person like Hayley regardless — to hear her talk about her love of the outdoors and adventure is infectious. Through her Instagram journey, Hayley wants to paint the full picture as not only a young woman with cancer, but as a young woman with a life that contains highs and lows and everything in between. 

When I asked Hayley about what Breast Cancer Awareness Month means to her, her answer went far beyond just cancer. “Cancer has shown me that everybody’s doing their own stuff,” she told me as we discussed how on the outside, she doesn’t “look” like a cancer patient yet — at least, not while she still has a full head of long, brown hair. Her diagnosis has made her more sensitive to what people around her might be going through, and that from the outside, you may have no idea what someone is struggling with.

“Since I got diagnosed, there have maybe been 5 days total that I haven’t cried.” Although a cancer diagnosis absolutely turned her life upside down, Hayley is still very much herself, and she doesn’t feel like a “fighter” or “hero” because this isn’t a life that she — or any person with cancer — chose to have. Nonetheless, she’s posting and sharing and educating and inspiring, balancing humor and intensity, and giving her honest, vulnerable self to the world in hopes that her story touches someone’s life for the better. 

Follow Hayley Brown’s journey @tittytimebomb on Instagram.

Emma is a lifestyle writer for La Tonique.