10/25/2019
Iām so excited because today is our first Feature Friday! It is even more special because we are going to be honoring someone who lost their battle to cancer 7 years ago today. Leah White was kind enough to share her motherās cancer story and I am grateful we can take time to remember her on this day. Below is what Leah has shared about her mom and it is written beautifully so please take a minute to read!
āMy mother, Kathleen Sinise White, was born in Illinois, and moved to Phoenix, Arizona when she was 12. After graduating high school, my mom joined the Navy. She was stationed at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola and served as a member of the VT-86 Sabrehawk Training Squadron. After being released from Active Duty service, she joined a Navy Reserve Unit, where she met my dad. They moved to Northern Virginia shortly after they were married and began a new chapter on the East Coast.
Growing up my mom loved to cook, listen to music, read, and shop for shoes and handbags, but most of all she loved our family. I feel very blessed to have had a mom who did all that she could to help me succeed. She spent many a night with me waiting in the lobby as I finished up a dance class, sewed more ribbons onto pointe shoes than I can count, and attended every stage rehearsal and performance I was in.
I was 15 at the time that my mom was diagnosed with cancer. My older sister Megan was 18 and had just moved to South Carolina to begin her freshman year at the College of Charleston. The original diagnosis was Ovarian Cancer, although it was later discovered that it was a much more rare and aggressive cancer, Primary Peritoneal (PPC). The entire time that my mom fought her cancer, the one thing she wished for the most was that her girls were not known as āthe ones whose mom had cancerā she did her best to keep our lives as normal as possible: cooked when she could, attended my ballet performances, and made sure the family stayed in line.
On October 25th, 2012, my mother lost her 13 month battle to PPC surrounded by friends and family at our home in Leesburg, Virginia. My father, sister and I were very fortunate to have such an amazing support system to lean on throughout that time, and I do not believe we would be where we are today without them. My mother never revealed to my sister or I how serious her illness was until the end, and maybe in some way we were lucky. We lived each day with her like it was any other, with no end in sight. At 16 years old it was hard to imagine what life would be like without your mother.
Through all of this though, I am extra thankful for how close my father, sister and I are, we lean on and support one another in our times of need and celebrate one another in our times of joy.
Cancer is something that you never think will affect your family, until it does. Many years prior to being diagnosed with PPC, my mom had fought and won her battle against Hodgkins Lymphoma. My mom was brave. My mom was a fighter. My mom was a lover. She was a wife, a mother, a sister and a friend to many, and I wish more than anything that she was here with us today.
This month will be 7 years since she left us, some days it feels like it was just yesterday. Years later, I still find myself and my family to be immersed in so much love by our friends and family who take the time to remember my mom for all that she was and not by the illness that took her. For that, I will be forever grateful.
I love my mom with all my heart, and I know she is watching over all of us each and every day, she is my angel.ā
