Katherine Marchbanks: Choosing Yourself Anyway

A Surthrivor story about strength, boundaries, and finding your way back.

There’s a certain kind of bravery that isn’t loud.

It doesn’t come with a perfect “before and after,” or a neat little bow at the end. It’s the quiet courage of showing up again and again… through appointments, uncertainty, side effects, and the emotions no one prepares you for.

This month, we’re honoring Katherine Marchbanks.

Katherine was diagnosed with a rare breast cancer called mucinous carcinoma in November 2024, just shy of 52, an age when life still feels like it’s moving forward at full speed. But overnight, her days became a new language: margins, treatments, scans, decisions, and the weight of the unknown.

“I was diagnosed… in November 2024,” Katherine shares. “I had the first surgery on December 26th… and in March I started radiation treatments.”

Her first surgery didn’t come back with clear margins, so she faced a second surgery in February—delayed by severe weather and the kind of logistical hurdles that feel extra heavy when you’re already carrying so much.

Then came radiation. Twenty-one treatments, ending April 17. And right after that, another major decision: hormone therapy, recommended for five years to reduce recurrence risk.

Katherine approached every step the way strong women often do: with research, careful thought, and a clear commitment to doing what was right for her.

The part no one warns you about

Cancer is hard. Treatment is hard. But sometimes the sharpest pain comes from what happens around you, not just in the clinic.

“It has not been easy,” Katherine says, “especially since the one person I thought I could count on for support abandoned me just a few days prior to my first radiation treatment…”

During that time, she was told he had no choice. Later, she learned he’d requested to be gone.

“You see, he had intentions of leaving and divorcing me right about the time I got my diagnosis… but he never told me,” she shares. “I think finding out he did that… hurt more than if he had just left.”

It’s a sentence that lands in your chest because it’s so honest.

Because it’s what many women experience in different forms: not just the diagnosis, but the disorientation of realizing who is—and isn’t—able to show up.

And then Katherine did something powerful: she told the truth, asked herself the hard questions, and chose growth over denial.

Rebuilding, not pretending

After radiation, Katherine and her husband entered counseling and began doing the daily work of rebuilding their relationship, regrowing friendship and intimacy by making it a priority again. They also made difficult but necessary choices: removing a couple of toxic people from their lives.

“We had to cut a couple of toxic people out of our lives,” she says, “but that is what we have to do in life sometimes… Not everyone is out to cheer you on and see you succeed.”

Her takeaway is clear, and it’s something every woman deserves to hear:

“When someone shows you they are ‘not on your side’… don’t worry about their feelings and just learn from it and move on without them.”

Not cold. Not cruel. Just clean.

The “back to myself” plan

In the middle of all this, Katherine also made a decision that sounds simple, but is anything but: she returned to joy.

She leaned into what grounds her: flower gardening, time with her “farm” animals, improving their little homes, and being present with family. She created a weekly dinner commitment with her son and his family because relationships… real ones… need feeding, too.

“I have helped myself by diving back into things I enjoy,” she shares. “As I said, you have to look out for yourself and make sure you don’t lose sight of the things that bring you joy.”

And she didn’t stop there.

Before diagnosis, Katherine had started to not recognize herself in the mirror, for several reasons.

After treatment, she began building a healthier rhythm: changing her diet, making movement part of her everyday life, and using gardening and farm life as her daily activity (especially because her job keeps her seated at a desk for eight hours).

“I have already lost 22lbs since finishing radiation treatments,” she says.

Not as a punishment. As a reclaiming.

Katherine also weighed the pros and cons of hormone therapy for her personal situation and made her own decision… choosing to focus on lifestyle changes and wellbeing in ways that felt aligned for her.