When considering a world without her in it, Leah Strongman naturally, and revealingly, speaks from the perspective of her children; the times when they’ll need her, and she won’t be there.
Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei.
It’s indicative of the selfless devotion we presume of all mothers, and which most gladly give. But it shouldn’t be like this.
Leah, 28 (Ngāti Hau, Ngāpuhi, Rakaipaaka, Ngāti Kahungunu), is dying of stage 4 breast cancer, measuring the time she has left in the moments she can amass with her two young children, Maia, 6, and Ezra, 4.
She also has a message for other mothers, particularly Māori and Pacific Island women over-represented in cancer statistics, to not let their own health fall down the to-do list of everyday life.
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Leah Strongman, 28, with her children Ezra, 4, and Maia, 6. Leah is desperate to live long enough to see them walk into school together. “If I could just make it to be able to see that, I feel like I’ve been there for a big moment, for both of them.”
“The way I think about it. Us mothers, these women, we take on so much,” said Leah, at her home in Palmerston North.
“I’m not saying men don’t, but as mothers we take on so much, and we forget about our wellbeing. The admin of family life. And often our health is put last. We put our children first, our family and others.”
Two years ago Leah had her hands full looking after two preschoolers and dismissed the small lump on her breast as just one of those things.
It was only a chance mention to her doctor on an unrelated GP visit three months later that turned her world upside down.
Though there was a family history – her nana had breast cancer twice, in her 40s and 70s – Leah said her awareness of the disease was slim. And, after all, she was only 26.
“I grew up always knowing my nana had her breasts removed. That was my exposure and that was it. I had it in my mind this was not something that happened to women as young as I was.
“So much so, when I did find the lump I didn’t do anything about it. I hadn’t done anything about it for three months prior to my diagnosis. And it was just by chance I was at the GP, and said ‘by the way, I’ve got this’. And then they looked at me, and they were like, ‘let’s focus on that’.”
Warwick Smith/Stuff
Leah Strongman, 28, with her mother Donna, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer two years ago, after life got in the way of getting a lump on her breast checked. She is encouraging other women to ensure they prioritise their health.
Leah was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. She went through six rounds of chemotherapy, had both breasts and all the lymph nodes in her right armpit removed, and 15 rounds of radiotherapy.
There was a respite. But towards the end of 2021, Leah developed a cough that wouldn’t go away. In July 2022 she was told the breast cancer had metastasized to her lungs. It brought a terminal diagnosis, and she was told most women in her position didn’t make it to 12 months.
Leah commenced another 10 rounds of chemotherapy in March in the hope she would get to see Ezra celebrate his Batman-themed fifth birthday in April and walk hand-in-hand with his sister through the gates of Riverdale School for the first time.
Leah now knows the sobering figures off by heart; that about 3300 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year, and that more than 600 will die. Six percent of the 3300 are women under 40.
Of the nine women diagnosed each day, one will be Māori, and Māori and Pacific women are at greater risk of dying from breast cancer.
While breast cancer is less common for women in their 20s and 30s, the disease is often more aggressive in these age groups.
“The social cost is just insane. To imagine there are other women who are going through the same thing as me.
“If I can bring awareness to this whole situation of women who have breast related concerns, not to leave it, to get it checked, not to be shy or assume that it’s nothing, in the way that I did.”
Warwick Smith/Stuff
Tears, laughter and back again. Remarkably, Leah’s mother Donna was also diagnosed with breast cancer, nine months after her daughter. She feels guilty that her cancer was far less aggressive and easily treated.
Understandably, tears come easily for Leah, particularly when questions tilt to her children. But now and then her face opens into a brilliant smile, usually sparked by banter with her mother Donna, 62, who moved from Foxton to down the street when the cancer returned.
She pokes fun at Leah’s fandom for operatic trio Sol3 Mio – “when she’s not sick, she travels to where ever they are”.
In reply, Leah emphasised “mum” like any other child embarrassed by their parent.
Leah spends most of her time in bed, feeling like “a car that’s piked out”. She feels useless when sitting still, and finds it hard to watch the house “turn to chaos”, to let go of the control, to let go of the home she’s used to running with a mother’s instinct.
She is not religious, but does consider herself spiritual. She loves nature, her friends, and all kinds of music. She has instructed the kids’ father, “the logical one”, Hayden Johnston, that there must be music in their lives.
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Leah with son Ezra, who begins school in April. She says the family have had support from hospice and Massey University’s psychology department for talking to the children about her illness. They have been encouraged to use plain, simple language such as dying, death and cancer.
Stuff proposed to Leah, that in a decade’s time, when Maia and Ezra were teenagers, they may google their mum’s name, and this article might appear. What would she want them to read?
“I just want them to know that I love them. That every decision I’ve made so far, since they were born, and since I was diagnosed, was always with them at the forefront of my mind.
“So every decision I’ve made has always been about being there as long as I can for them.
“Because the hardest part of all of this is knowing they’re going to go through those inevitable hard moments you come across in life, and I’m not going to be there to support them.”
A Givealittle fundraiser has been set up to support Leah Strongman to make memories with her family while she’s still here, and savings to support Hayden Johnston to provide for their kids and navigate life without their mother.
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