After weeks of helping care for my elderly parents, I have been carrying a kind of tiredness that sinks right down into your bones. And yet, this morning, in the very early hours, I found myself wide awake. Melbourne was putting on quite a show outside, with lightning flashing across the sky as a fast-moving rainband rolled through, bringing bursts of heavy rain and the occasional thunderstorm. The bright flashes behind my curtains made sleep feel impossible, but truthfully, it was not only the storm keeping me awake. My mind had already wandered back to another day. A day I never forget. A day that still lives so clearly inside me, even now, thirteen years later. The day I was told I had breast cancer.

It feels strange looking back on that time now, because from where I stand today, I realise how young I really was. At 44, I did not think of myself as young. I felt grown, responsible, needed by everyone around me, and busy carrying life the best I could. But time changes how we see things, does it not. Now I look back at that woman and I can see her differently. I can see how vulnerable she really was, even though she was doing her best to stay strong.

I can still picture exactly where I was when I got the call. I was parked outside a daycare centre in Berwick, waiting in the car while my daughter took my three-year-old grandson inside. It was such an ordinary moment, the kind of everyday moment you never imagine could divide your life into before and after. Then my family doctor rang. I still remember the hesitation in his voice as he asked me if I was alone. He wanted to know if there was someone nearby with me before he said the words. And then he told me. Breast cancer. Just like that, in one phone call, my whole world shifted.

There are moments in life when everything changes in an instant, and that was one of them. One minute you are sitting in a car on a normal day, and the next minute nothing feels normal anymore. I remember the shock, the fear, the unreal feeling of hearing something so enormous while the rest of the world just kept moving. Cars still drove by. People still went about their morning. Children still got dropped off at daycare. Yet inside me, everything had changed.

What made that season even harder was that only six months earlier, I had separated from my first husband. I was suddenly a single mum with a 14-year-old son, trying to steady myself in a life that already felt uncertain and painful. When I think back on those days now, I can honestly say they were some of the darkest of my life. There was so much heartache, so much fear, and so much I did not know. At times it felt as though the ground had disappeared beneath me.

And yet, here I am.

That is not something I take lightly.

Thirteen years later, I sit here in the quiet early hours and feel such deep gratitude that my cancer was found when it was. Early detection gave me more time. More life. More ordinary days that at the time probably did not seem extraordinary, but now I know they were gifts all along. That little blue-eyed grandson who was only three that day has grown into a tall, handsome 15-year-old young man. My 14-year-old son from that time is about to turn 28 in just a few weeks. Life has kept moving, as life does, and in the years since that phone call in January 2011, I have walked through both deep valleys and beautiful mountaintop moments.

There have been more hard days than I would have chosen. Days of worry, grief, exhaustion and pain. But there have also been so many beautiful days. So many moments of joy that I might never have known if things had turned out differently. I have watched my children grow into adults I am deeply proud of. I have welcomed two more grandchildren into my life. I have laughed, loved, cried, prayed, and kept going. The dark days did come, but slowly, steadily, the sunny days began to outnumber them.

Through it all, I can see the goodness of God. Not because life has been easy, because it has not, but because He has been with me in it all. In the fear. In the waiting. In the heartbreak. In the healing. He has never left me. When I felt weak, He gave me strength for the next step. When I felt alone, He reminded me I was not. When the road felt too long, He stayed beside me.

So this morning, while much of Australia still sleeps and the storm rolls across Melbourne, I sit quietly with all of this in my heart. Thirteen years. Thirteen precious years I am so thankful for. Years I have been given to keep loving my family, to keep watching my children and grandchildren grow, to keep living this one precious life.

Every day feels more precious to me now. Not always easy, not always light, but precious all the same. This day, my pink ribbon day, is not only a remembrance of diagnosis and fear. It is also a reminder of survival, of grace, of resilience, and of just how much can be held in thirteen years. So much pain, yes. But also so much beauty. So much life. And for that, I am deeply, deeply thankful.