SCITUATE − Stacey Hugues was a gentle force − a quiet, calm source of strength with her steady resolve, brilliant blue eyes, warm smile and the ability to understand and accept people as they were.
"I never met anybody more themselves than her," Will "Bowie" Hugues, her husband of 16 years, said of his late wife, who died of breast cancer. "Everybody got what they needed from Stacey."
This was true at the Over the Moon prenatal yoga classes she gave for expectant mothers in Norwell. Her yoga and Pilates classes at the South Shore YMCA's Emilson branch in Hanover. The Wild Hearts yoga school, which she started online with Amber Gregory in 2021. Her role as a volunteer educator for Norwell Farms.
And the homesteading activities − raising chickens, growing and cooking much of her family's food − that she shared through postings on social media.
Students new to yoga found a warm, welcoming presence in her classes. Stacey often would approach them afterward with a knack for reaching out and encouraging others.
"She always made people feel like they were the only one that mattered," Una Armstrong said. A social worker, Armstrong knew she wanted to know Stacey better in her very first yoga class. "Stacey didn't see the differences in people."
For all her strengths and adaptability, one of the "big realizations" Stacey faced, she said in a video, is when she was diagnosed with an aggressive triple-negative breast cancer in 2018 was that she didn't "feel strong" coping with it. She was just 41.
Triple-negative breast cancer accounts for about 10% to 15% of all breast cancers, according to The American Cancer Society. The term triple-negative breast cancer refers to the fact that the cancer cells don’t have estrogen or progesterone receptors and also don’t make any or too much of the protein called HER2. The cells test "negative" on all three tests.
Stacey shared a range of emotions with people who knew her − shock, anxiety, fear, hope and, foremost, concern for her husband, Will, and their four children: Hannah, 15, Liam, 13; Jack, 11; and Chase, 9.
From all accounts, Stacey found her reserves of courage, perseverance, hope and love, which she expressed often. Since she died on April 10 at age 46, after a five-year struggle, the outpouring of love, grief, admiration and gratitude for who she was and all she did has had its own force.
"She got knocked down so many times and always got back up," Will Hugues said.
At a small family gathering a few days after her death, he spoke about his understanding of her character:
"She accepts everyone exactly as they are without judgment. That is what has drawn so many people to her. Living and parenting with her has taught me to be a better, more caring and more complete person. Her love is a constant inspiration for me to be a better version of myself."
Stacey's ability to accept others, Will said, "comes from a deep and fundamental understanding of herself. I’ve never met someone so confident in who they are and certain about what truly matters to them."
For Stacey, the most important thing in her life was her family. Her connections to her community were also sustaining, another source of hope.
Growing up in a military family
Stacey Cross, who grew up in a military family that moved regularly, had long impressed others with how much she could do well and happily. She was always pressing forward, asking, "What can I do better?" figuring out the most efficient way to even wash her children's clothes.
Stacey earned college degrees in nutrition and business. She was a registered dietitian in neonatal intensive care units in Boston and a clinical nutrition manager at several hospitals. She became a leading consultant for a nutrition web app, a top performing representative at Rodan + Fields skin care company. She was active in a book club, a tennis team and a garden club and treasurer of her children's school PTO.
When cancer treatments took her beautiful red hair, she bounced back and took up knitting, joined a group and knit colorful, loose-fitting hats for herself and 3-inch hearts with her daughter, Hannah, for their friends − one more way to connect and say thank you.
"Stacey had a way of pulling the best parts of you up to the surface and allowing them to shine."
Amber Gregory, yoga teacher and friend, about Stacey Hugues
Over five difficult years, she underwent chemotherapy, surgeries and immunotherapy and had cancer recur four times in different places.
"She did everything, just took it all," Will said. Making the best of what she had was part of who she was.
"I feel like the cancer is eating away my bones," she said early this year at a medical appointment. Her companion offered to go get a wheelchair. No, she said, and pressed on under her own power.
"When you go through cancer treatment, attitude makes all the difference," she said in a 2019 video interview made for Staystrong, the cancer support program offered by the South Shore YMCA and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
She chose to "look forward with confidence and see the world with equanimity."
People would tell her, "You're so strong" when she didn't really feel strong. "But when someone tells you that, you start to think that," she said in the video. "The more people that surrounded me with love and with good thoughts, the stronger I started to think that I was. And we got stronger as a family together."
Support came from many places in her life.
"You are SO strong and such a fighter, Stacey! I remember your spin class at James Madison University. Stay brave and keep fighting!" Neena Engman, a college friend, wrote on a fundraising page Stacey's friends created to help the Hugues family.
'I just wanted to see what she was going to do next'
Stacey and Will were both 28 when they met in 2005 through an online dating service in New Jersey.
"We just clicked from the beginning," Will said. "We worked well together and filled the gaps in each other."
They were engaged eight months later and married in 2006. He was intrigued by how she could do so many different things, from kickboxing and step aerobics to rock climbing.
"She was so interesting," Will said. "We had so much fun together and I just wanted to see what she was going to do next."
They soon began the family both had been wanting. He marveled at how "she was so emotionally plugged into our children." When they moved to Massachusetts in 2010, she wanted to spend less time on her business ventures and more time at home with their children. She became a homesteader. She and Will created a large backyard garden; she gave yoga classes in their three-season room and was always busy planting seedlings, cooking and canning.
Tears well up when close friends talk about their loss − how she could listen so well and "leaves a legacy of creating pockets of time for others," as Karen Diaz said.
"Let us commit to making connections, helping our friends and neighbors and embracing our community," Nicole Brandolini asked at Stacey's celebration of life.
"She was the type of person you wanted to do your best for," said Beth Ciovacco, 42, who met her in 2011 in Stacey's prenatal yoga classes. "Her go-getter energy, bright smile, work ethic, creative flair, enthusiasm left a lasting impression on all she touched. She always had a crowd around her."
Holding on to hope and perseverance
"We had made a pact that we would go through this together and beat it," said Amber Gregory, 47, who had also been treated for an aggressive Stage 3 triple-negative breast cancer. "Stacey always had hope and she had such perseverance, and I feel I should have prepared myself more for this."
A month after Stacey's death, Amber had just had a particularly hard night, dreaming that Stacey and her family were there, then waking up to the new reality.
"I still catch myself starting to go call her. Stacey was always the voice of reason," she said. "I miss Stacey every day. Anything that will help keep her memory alive is a priority for me."
"I am upset," Amber said. "I believe in positivity, but I am sick and tried of this story of people dying young of breast cancer."
Will Hugues shares that frustration and anger. He said research money for breast cancer have been poured into detection, which is important but leaves fewer resources for truly combating rarer cancers like triple-negative breast cancer.
After Stacey was diagnosed, her friend Laurie Schneider, 53, who had also been treated for breast cancer, started a meal train page on the care calendar app Lotsa Helping Hands. Friends could sign up to coordinate providing meals and other help for the Hugues family. More than 150 meals were provided.
"It's not fair," Schneider said of the loss. "Stacey touched so many people."
At the start of her treatments, Stacey said in her Staystrong video, "The most difficult moment was accepting help. I'm really independent and to allow people to bring me meals when I like to do the cooking and to allow some people to take me places, when I like to be the one to take them places" was a struggle.
Deciding to focus on the memories
On Dec. 9, 2022, Stacey wrote a love letter to Will, their family and friends on her MyCancerCircle Page:
"Almost exactly two years ago, I was in the hospital receiving some pretty bad news. After I bounced back a bit, we decided to purposefully focus on making memories. We are grateful for every day."
In the first months of 2023, she reported more brain, lung and bone tumors and significant bone pain, and referred to possible radiation and a drug trial: "Feels a bit like groundhog day, but let's hope this chemo is the one!"
As Paul Gorman, president of the South Shore YMCA, wrote after she died, "She never let her illness define her, and her resilience was an inspiration to all who knew her."
Stacey's last posting on MyCancerCircle was March 17.
In the last few weeks, she remained a steady presence. She made each of her children their own memory book. Shortly before she died in the hospital, with Will and their four children around her, she stirred, opened her eyes and in a clear, ascending voice said, "I love you. I love you. I love you."
"In the end, she died as she lived, surrounded by our love and strengthened by the love she felt for all of us," Will said at the celebration of Stacey Hugues' life.
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