SHAY SHARPE: You know I have had people say that, ‘You have no breasts and you can’t get
pregnant. You can’t give birth. So, technically you are a man now.’ These breasts don’t
define me. This isn’t what makes me a woman.
COMM: In 2004, at just 26 years old, Shay was diagnosed with stage 3-breast cancer.
SHAY SHARPE: Nothing can prepare you for cancer, you know, even if you had a family history.
Breast cancer wasn’t on my radar because from all I know, you, you don’t, you can’t
get breast cancer until you are 40. In my mind, you can’t because you can’t get
a mammogram till you are 40. So how would you get breast cancer, you know, prior to
then? And at the time the stats were breast cancer was the number 1 killing cancer of
women of 15 to 55. I never knew that information. It’s like, ‘Why aren’t we, you know,
preaching this more to our young women?’
SHAY SHARPE: And then radiation, you know. Radiation is every day for several weeks.
I needed age-appropriate support and it wasn’t available.
COMM: In 2011, Shay founded her own non-profit cancer support charity, Shay Sharpe’s Pink Wishes.
SHAY SHARPE: I grant wishes to young women who have been diagnosed with terminal breast
cancer. We are educating, advocating, supporting, mentoring all the young women who, who feel
lost, who have questions, who needed that same age-appropriate support that I needed that wasn’t there.
COMM: 10 years after her first diagnosis, Shay’s cancer returned.
SHAY SHARPE: It was cancer again. Whilst the first time I went through numerous surgeries
to, you know, have implants and preserve what would look like breasts, you know. But after the
cancer came back, I had both breasts removed. It’s hard to embrace your femininity with
so much, so many negative comments and negative people and I was like, ‘You know, I am just
tired. These breasts don’t define me. This isn’t what makes me a woman.’
COMM: Through her organisation, Shay met Shanicka who also survived two rounds of cancer.
SHAY SHARPE: Shanicka just so happened, I found out lives a block away from me but we
met in New Orleans. Not even we met, I sat on a panel and she remembered me from New Orleans.
SHANICKA RICE: November of 2016 when my second recurrence happened because I was just so
traumatised and knowing that she had been through it and I see that, you know she had been doing
well. So I just felt like I needed to reach out to her and connect with her. Unfortunately,
we got close due to this nasty cancer thing but something good, you know, came out of it.
SHAY SHARPE: Even at the cancer, doing cancer, she is gorgeous. I am picking her up and we
are late because she is putting on makeup. I love that because it came back to embracing
that loving yourself at the breast cancer. I am going through this. Yes, I am going through
chemo. Yes, I am going through whatever. But she still wanted to be sexy for her husband.
She still wanted to be pretty for us. We were not supposed to have this. You know, this
wasn’t supposed to be our disease or whatever. And we don’t want to lay around just be
sick and old and ugly. We want to be cute even in the midst of all of this.
COMM: As she learnt to love her body again after her second round of breast cancer, Shay
started using modelling to help her embrace her scars and to inspire other survivors to do the same.
SHAY SHARPE: I have a plethora of topless photos online. Even in 2014, when I came up
with the decision to just remain flat. The night before my surgery I called a guy that
I would deal with off and on for years and I said, ‘Would you still sleep with me when
I have no boobs?’ He like, ‘Sure will.’ Like, I, he’s a guy and I just hung up.
And in that moment, you know, even we have just been silly, you know. I don’t think
he knew the, the pat on the back that was for me of, you know, ‘Hey, its okay. I am
comfortable being flat chested. I don’t mind it.’ You know, people say, ‘Well,
how do you find clothes to conceal it?’ There is no concealing it, you know. And it's’
just is, it’s just that and I am comfortable with it. I know if I would have never been
diagnosed with breast cancer, I would have never started Shay Sharpe’s Pink Wishes.
I would have never had the opportunity to, you know, bless these women and I feel like
that thing had to happen. I had no personal relation to it versus now it being my whole, my whole life.