There is room for grief here, too.
At Teal Diva, we talk a lot about hope. We celebrate milestones, honor resilience, encourage one another, and find reasons to laugh even when life gives us very little to laugh about.
We believe in the power of sisterhood. In showing up. In creating spaces where women facing gynecologic cancers feel seen, supported, and understood.
But there is another part of sisterhood that we don’t always talk about.
Loss.
The difficult reality of a cancer community is that sometimes we lose people we love. Women who have become friends, confidantes, mentors, cheerleaders, and chosen family. Women whose names once appeared regularly in our group chats, whose laughter filled retreat spaces, whose encouragement arrived exactly when we needed it.
And suddenly, there is an empty chair. A missing voice. A name we hesitate over because saying it out loud might bring tears.
So what do we do with that grief?
Maybe we begin by making room for it.
Hope and Grief Can Sit Together
Hope is one of Teal Diva’s guiding values. But hope was never meant to require us to be happy all the time.
We can believe deeply in hope and still be heartbroken.
We can celebrate someone else’s good scan while mourning a friend who didn’t receive the same news.
We can be grateful for our own healing while feeling the complicated emotions that come with surviving when someone we love did not.
Those feelings aren’t contradictions. They’re part of being human.
And perhaps one of the greatest gifts of sisterhood is knowing we don’t have to sort through those feelings alone.
We don’t always need encouraging words. Sometimes we need someone willing to sit beside us and say, “I miss her, too.”
No fixing. No explaining. No rushing toward the bright side.
Just being there.
More Than a Diagnosis
When someone in our community dies, it’s easy for the conversation to become about cancer. The diagnosis. The treatments. The recurrence. The things that worked and the things that didn’t.
But she was so much more than her disease.
She was the woman who made everyone laugh at the retreat. The one who remembered birthdays. The one who sent encouraging messages at two in the morning. The one with the fabulous shoes, the wicked sense of humor, or the ability to make a newcomer feel like she’d belonged forever.
She had a life full of stories before cancer entered it, and she continued creating stories afterward.
Those are the things worth remembering.
Not simply how she died, but how she lived.
What made her extraordinary? What did she teach us? What little piece of her personality still makes us smile?
Maybe she gave us permission to be brave. Maybe she showed us how to advocate for ourselves. Maybe she was simply the person who always saved us a seat.
These memories matter. And sharing them is one way we keep the richness of someone’s life from being overshadowed by the circumstances of her death.
The Gifts That Continue
There is another part of these stories that deserves recognition.
Some women in our community have participated in clinical trials, contributed to research, shared their experiences with medical professionals, or advocated for better treatment options.
They did so knowing that the answers might not come in time to help them personally.
Think about the generosity in that.
Their participation may help researchers understand a disease more clearly, improve treatments, or open doors for someone they will never meet.
Not every trial produces a breakthrough. Not every treatment works. And no woman should ever be remembered only for what she contributed to science.
But when someone chooses to participate in research, that contribution deserves to be acknowledged.
Progress is built, in part, on the willingness of people to ask questions, share experiences, and participate in the search for better answers.
We can honor that generosity without suggesting that their loss was necessary, purposeful, or somehow made acceptable by what might come afterward.
Because it wasn’t.
We would rather have them here.
And we can still be grateful for what they gave.
When Sisterhood Hurts
The deeper our connections, the more we feel their absence.
That’s the beautiful, complicated bargain of community.
We open our hearts to one another knowing that cancer brings uncertainty. We make friendships anyway. We plan trips, share meals, laugh until our sides hurt, and celebrate every opportunity to be together.
And when we lose someone, it hurts.
It should.
That grief is evidence of a connection that mattered.
But here’s something else worth remembering: we don’t have to carry the grief separately just because we experience it differently.
Some of us need to talk. Some need quiet. Some find comfort in photographs and stories. Others need a little time before they can revisit those memories.
There is no single right way to grieve, and no timetable for when we should feel better.
Sisterhood means respecting those differences while continuing to reach for one another.
It means checking in after the initial condolences have faded. Remembering birthdays and anniversaries. Saying someone’s name without worrying that we’ll make another person sad.
Sometimes, the greatest comfort is simply knowing that someone else remembers.
An Invitation to Remember
Perhaps it’s time we create a little more room within Teal Diva for these conversations.
Not because we want to dwell in sadness.
But because we want to honor the whole experience of sisterhood.
We would love to hear about the women who have touched your life.
Tell us about the friend who made you laugh when you desperately needed it. The advocate who inspired you to find your voice. The woman who welcomed you into a room full of strangers and somehow made it feel like home.
Tell us about her kindness, her stubbornness, her sense of humor, her courage, or the wonderfully ordinary things that made her her.
If you want to share how she contributed to research, supported others, or helped change the conversation around gynecologic cancers, we’d love to hear that, too.
And if you’re not ready to share, that’s okay. There is room for quiet remembrance as well.
With care for the privacy and wishes of their families, perhaps these stories can become something we hold together — a collection of memories, laughter, gratitude, and love.
A reminder that the women who have been part of this sisterhood are never just names or diagnoses.
They are people who changed us.
Hope Has Room for This, Too
We often think of hope as looking forward. Toward better treatments, more birthdays, another retreat, another chance to make memories.
But perhaps hope can also look backward with gratitude.
It can live in the stories we tell, the lessons we carry, the friendships we continue to nurture, and the ways we show up for one another because someone once showed up for us.
We don’t have to turn every loss into a lesson. We don’t have to make something beautiful out of every painful experience.
Sometimes, we simply miss someone.
And that’s enough.
At Teal Diva, we will continue to celebrate life, nurture hope, and create moments of joy.
But we can also make room for the tears. For the memories. For the women we wish were still sitting beside us.
And there is room for all of it here.
The joy. The heartbreak. The remembering. The hope.
All of it.
