Let’s get REAL about your health! For the 13th year in a row, we’re partnering with Bright Pink. In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and our partnership with Bright Pink, #AerieREAL Voices winner Kelsie Barnhart spoke with us about her own experience with breast cancer.

Happy October to you, my SPLENDEUR Sisters! For most of my life, this month has been marked by trips to Tanner’s (our local apple orchard / place of magical childhood nostalgia), celebrating my birthday midway through the month, and of course the visual entertainment of the changing leaves. But ever since my diagnosis of breast cancer in 2018, I am much more aware of October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. That is why I am so excited to have this third and final article in my blog series coinc

And then I woke up.

And as the bright lights were seeping through my drowsy eyelids and I was numb from neck to hips, I heard a voice say, “It did spread to your lymph node.” My surgeon left to go get my family and I was left realizing reality was in opposition to my desire.

Anger and tears consumed me in an instant. Waves of emotion, partially due to the anesthesia and partially due to months of hope unrealized, crashed into me. And in those waves, I became swallowed by the whale. The next t

“I’m so sorry to tell you this,” said the doctor sitting next to me on December 18, 2018, “but it is breast cancer.”

I was 27-years-old when I was diagnosed with a type of cancer much more commonly found in older women. While it would have been emotionally appropriate for me to be angry, I don’t remember feeling that way initially. I distinctly remember being desperate to understand why the Lord was allowing this to happen. I didn’t suddenly doubt His goodness or sovereignty, but my mind couldn