“Hearing the words ‘you have cancer’ blew me away, but I was determined to beat it.”

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Natasha had been around women with breast cancer professionally through her work as a community nurse. But in 2018, she became the third woman in her family to hear the words ‘you have cancer.’ Both her mum and aunt had been diagnosed with breast cancer previously, making her more conscious of regularly checking herself, but she never thought she would find a cancerous lump.

Coming from a Jamaican background, she recognised some of the cultural barriers that prevented many women in the same situation from being able to talk openly about cancer, resulting in black women being statistically less likely to have successful treatments due to later diagnoses.

“That’s why I started my Instagram page @blackbaldnbeautiful as a way of connecting with other women, breaking down the taboos around cancer in ethnic communities.”

Natasha is now cancer free following chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery and five years of taking Tamoxifen, and she is determined not to live in fear.
“Cancer doesn’t care, so we have to.”