Being Latina and diagnosed, I felt like I had no community

When I was diagnosed, I felt the world around me crashing. No one in my family had ever been diagnosed with cancer. I didn't hear this being talked about in my community, so how was I "the unlucky one"? I knew of only 1 other Latina who had breast cancer. She'd been sick for year; chemo treatment, test drugs, clinical trials, and nothing was helping her.

Although my friend opened up to me, she was very private and also said "we as Latinas just don't talk about this much". We had good conversations about why that was and she felt that admitting you're sick for some, could mean we're looked upon with Pity. She felt that some didn't want to place burden on anyone with the news of their illness. In Latino culture, you work hard, you may fall down but you don't admit that and get back up and move on. While I understood that viewpoint, it also started to make me angry. Why is this such a fear in our community? Of all the times a Latina community should come together, it's this cancer diagnosis time! I began to think of the Latinas out there who felt this but On Top of That, what if they had a language barrier and didn't speak any English? Are they getting the right information from their doctors? Are they misunderstanding the information? I truly feel this needs to be addressed and I'm hopeful more Latinas add content here.

I think there's a true missed opportunity to look at Black/Brown women differently with the cancer diagnosis and communication. We each have certain cultural barriers to take into account - social stigma, financial barriers, language barriers - and those are additional stressors that other communities don't have to face. We need to raise awareness differently to these audiences to make a greater impact.