Through the Lens 2026

Elizabeth DeConno

Fundraising on behalf of Ann's Place

$320.96

Raised

Donations

$10,000

Goal


Cancer has been part of my story long before it became my diagnosis. I witnessed my mother survive breast cancer—not once, but twice. Her first diagnosis came when I was just three years old, and she faced it again about a decade ago. Still, nothing could prepare me for hearing the words, “It’s malignant,” at 37 years old as a single mother of three. In that moment, time stood still.


I was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer and underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy and immunotherapy, a double mastectomy, radiation, physical therapy and more oral chemotherapy. As a Clinical Social Worker, I have always understood the power of connection, but living through cancer taught me something I could never have fully understood from the outside: there is no substitute for being surrounded by people who truly understand.


No one is prepared for the amount of work it takes to be that sick. Beyond the appointments, treatments, medications, and physical recovery, there is the invisible work of processing fear, managing uncertainty, supporting your family, and trying to continue showing up for the people who depend on you. Cancer does not impact only the person receiving the diagnosis—it changes the lives of partners, children, parents, friends, and caregivers.


Cancer survivors and thrivers desperately need organizations like Ann’s Place. They provide a safe place to land during some of the most difficult moments of a person’s life—a place where individuals and families can receive counseling, support, connection, and compassion at no cost.


Your donation is more than a contribution—it is an investment in hope, healing, and community. It helps ensure that no one facing cancer has to navigate the emotional weight of this journey alone.


Supporting Ann’s Place Through the Lens Project means so much to me personally. Thank you for standing alongside me and helping create a community where people touched by cancer are seen, supported, and reminded that they are never alone.


I would like to offer a poem that I wrote during my recovery...


At my last oncology appointment,
I was told the words I will never hear:
“You are cancer free.”
No liberation.
No clean slate.
No ribbon-cutting ceremony at the edge of survival.
I will always be a person with cancer,
even if the disease hides,
even if it sleeps,
even if my body walks through days that look almost ordinary.
That was all I was allowed to hope for.
Not freedom.
Just absence.
Not eternity.
Just the possibility of a little more time.
And so I joined the ranks—
a silent legion—
of people who carry only one prayer.
I pray we can grow old together.
I pray to be frail with wrinkles and gray hair.
I pray for spotted hands and brittle bones,
for the soft indignities of age,
for the miracle of becoming small again,
instead of vanishing too soon.
I was naïve, once.
I thought old age was a guarantee,
a finish line everyone crossed
if they only kept running long enough.
But now I know—
old age is not an expectation.
Old age is a miracle.
And I wonder—
do mothers in Gaza whisper the same prayer,
asking only that their children live long enough
to wrinkle,
to stoop,
to forget?
Does the man pulled back by Narcan
ever hope that one day,
Alzheimer’s will come for him,
because it means he outlived his overdose?
Does the trans child dare to believe
in a trans adulthood?
In birthdays with candles,
in mortgages,
in laugh lines carved deep by decades of joy?
Do cancer patients ever find peace,
ever step back into the skin of the young,
ever believe again
that youth is not fragile glass,
but something real,
something that will not shatter?
Is youth real?
Or is it only ever hindsight,
a photograph curling at the edges,
a fleeting fragrance
we didn’t know to breathe in deeply enough?
I stand in the in-between,
where sorrow makes a home in my marrow,
but hope still hums
in the hollow of my chest.
I pray.
I pray for age.
I pray for time.
I pray for a future
where wrinkles are the only scars left to count



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Our donors Most Recent

M

Mia

donated

$53.60

I love you mommy you are so strong and so inspiring, I wish to be just like you when I’m older. You have such a beautiful heart and I don’t understand how you always seem the good in people or just always look at the world in a positive way… I wish I had that.

V

Vinay

Liz you are an inspiration. There is a reason why people come into each other's lives. I am blessed to have you in my life.

M

Margaret

A huge thank you to Ann’s Place for the invaluable support and community you provide to individuals living with and surviving cancer and to their families.