My name is Mindi Ragsdale, and I’m an Army veteran, a wife, a mother of three, and now — a breast cancer survivor-in-progress.

In September 2024, I got the news no woman ever wants to hear: Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. Breast cancer. Words that cracked the world beneath my feet.

I’ve been through warzones, deployments, motherhood, and raising a medically fragile child. I’ve run on empty for days at a time and found strength I didn’t know I had. But nothing prepared me for the silence in that room when they said, “It IS cancer.”

By November 2024, I started Chemotherapy. I lost my hair, but not my fire. The nausea, the bone-deep fatigue — those were real. But so was the love around me. My husband held me during the worst nights. My family and friends words of encouragement and meals made with love helped me through.

In May 2025, I had a Double Mastectomy . It wasn’t just a surgery — it was a goodbye. A mourning for parts of me that had fed my babies, made me feel like a woman, made me me. But cancer doesn’t get to decide who I am.

Radiation began in July 2025, and with it came burns, exhaustion, and another round of hard days. And yet — I kept walking. I kept marching. Because that’s what I do. 

Next comes oral chemo for the next three years and hormone therapy for five. The finish line is far off. But I’m still in the race.

I walk today because I’m alive. I walk for the women still in the chemo chair, for the ones who caught it late,  for the women shaving their heads, for the veterans fighting a new kind of war inside their own bodies.

Cancer tried to take my strength and my spirit. But I am still here. 
I am still a mother.
Still a wife.
Still a warrior.
Still marching.