When Rosaviyah found a lump in her breast in 2017, she almost didn’t get it checked. It turned out to be breast cancer, which then returned in 2022. After finishing her treatment for the recurrence, she decided to sign up for our Moving Forward course. She tells us how the course was transformative for her.
Tell us about your experience of breast cancer
My breast cancer story started in 2017 when I was 34. I felt a lump in my breast, but I thought it was a blocked duct from breastfeeding.
After speaking to a friend of mine who’d experienced breast cancer, I decided to get it checked by a GP. I pushed for a referral and was later diagnosed with stage 2 grade 3 breast cancer.
What treatment did you receive?
I had 8 rounds of , a full and 21 rounds of . In 2018, I was given the all-clear.
Then, in 2022, during a yearly oncology check-up, I felt a new lump. After a biopsy, the doctors confirmed that the breast cancer had come back in my mastectomy scar.
I had another 4 rounds of chemotherapy, but I couldn’t continue, as my electrolytes were dangerously low. So, I had a and I’m now taking and oral chemotherapy.
Did you get any support?
During my treatment, I felt really scared. I’d had breast cancer twice and my anxiety was overwhelming. But my oncologist, Dr Susan Lupton, was exceptional. Her team and the chemotherapy nurses were amazing and provided me with incredible support throughout my treatment.
My cancer specialist nurse, Rebecca, still checks in on me. Together we do our best to take part in breast cancer awareness events. We aim to raise awareness not only within the B.A.M.E. community, but also within the older community, particularly as people above a certain age no longer receive routine scans.
How did the Moving Forward course support you?
I found out about Breast Cancer Now’s Moving Forward course around that time. It’s a course for people who have finished breast cancer treatment, designed to equip us with the tools and insights to move forward with our lives.
I was hesitant to go at first. I just wanted to forget everything and not discuss it. But my previous CEO Angela Vernon-Lawson gently encouraged me to attend. She had lost her own brother to cancer, so this meant a lot to her. As a mother, and as someone who understands my community, she felt strongly that I should get support from people who had been through the same experience as me.
When I did go, the course helped me enormously. It helped me realise that I needed to move forward rather than bury my head in the sand.
I met a bunch of amazing women. Many of them shared very similar issues and side effects to my own, which was incredibly reassuring. The support, guidance and advice provided throughout the course were invaluable.
For the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel alone. We still keep in touch too, sharing updates and tips through our WhatsApp group, “Breast Friends”.
What would you say to people in your community?
Awareness is key to survival. I want people to know that looking well doesn’t mean someone has fully recovered. I also want to reach out to Asian and other minority ethnic communities to address the taboo of breast cancer: speak your truth.
Don't be embarrassed by hot flushes, hair regrowth, or physical changes.
You aren't a burden, and keeping secrets is more worrying than sharing them.
Let people support you - it isn't a sign of weakness. Whether it’s hiring a cleaner or admitting when spicy food is too much, be upfront about your needs.
If others don't understand, that is their problem. You fought this battle, but recovery isn’t always straightforward. In the Muslim community, we say God knows how our lives are written. Ultimately, God knows best – so let yourself tell your story.
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Rosaviyah's poem: I Am Still Here
I’ve created a poem for anniversary of when I found my lump, a day I never forgot.
I Am Still Here
Today remembers before I do.
The date holds its breath
nine years since my fingers paused,
since a small truth changed everything.I was thirty-four.
Raheem was two,
still learning my face,
still needing my arms as his whole world.Cancer arrived without permission,
speaking in tests and quiet rooms,
trying to shrink my future
into something manageable.I stayed.
Not because I wasn’t afraid
but because my son
needed his mum to keep showing up.Years passed.
My scars learned my name.
Strength grew where fear once lived.
Then cancer returned, bold enough to try twice.It did not know who it was meeting.
I carried pain and school runs,
appointments and packed lunches,
loss and love in the same hands.
I taught survival how to multitask.I learned something else too
that illness can make people uncomfortable,
that support sometimes ends
where inconvenience begins.At work, my strength was measured
in absence, not endurance.
Understanding grew quiet.
Doors felt heavier than they should have.
Still, I showed up
not to prove anything,
but because survival had already taught me
how to stand in unfriendly rooms.Raheem grew.
He is eleven now
taller, louder, full of tomorrow.
A living answer to every dark prediction.My body tells a story medicine cannot finish:
that endurance can look like laughter,
that courage can sound like ‘I’m tired’
and still keep going.Today is not only an anniversary of fear.
It is a marker of defiance.
The day I found the lump
is also the day I began proving them wrong.I am Rosaviyah Razaq
twice tested, still standing.
Not frozen in survival,
but moving, changing, living.On World Cancer Day,
I am more than diagnoses and dates.
I am a mother who stayed,
a woman who endured,
a life that kept unfolding.
Nine years on,
I am not what cancer took.
I am what it couldn’t
Moving Forward
Our Moving Forward courses offer supportive, open conversations in a safe, confidential space, and connect you with people like Rosaviyah who understand what you’re going through.