Thank you for coming to my page! I never thought I would need to create a gofundme, but God had other plans for me. In 2021, when my youngest daughter was 8 months old and still breast feeding, I was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer (crazily enough, 5 months after my sister was). It was scary, and chemo was awful, but I went through all the standard treatment and my sister and I both thought this was behind us forever.

However, in the spring of 2024 my breast cancer came back. It had metastasized to my liver and two lymph nodes in my abdomen and had become stage four cancer. It was the scariest moment of my life and I had never felt so hopeless. The standard survival rate for stage four breast cancer is about five years and I started thinking about how I might not see my two beautiful girls (Molly and Maddy) grow up and how I might not get to grow old with the love of my life, Devon.

We dove into treatment and I started a clinical trial that lasted about 5 months. When the trial wasn’t proving effective anymore, I was switched back to standard, stage four breast cancer treatment. At this point I knew I needed to do more. I researched, learned new healing modalities and began to radically change my diet, my mindset and my whole way of living. Thankfully, my amazing husband was supportively along for the ride (and the vegan meals). The most important thing I did was get baptized at our church in March of 2025. I knew I could no longer carry this heavy load on my own and that God would take my fear and provide me with peace, contentment and joy. Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”.

Following my intuition, I started working with integrative doctors who provided me with knowledge on healing my entire mind, body and soul and not just focusing on the tumors. The tumor measurements have fluctuated a bit over the past year but overall have remained pretty stable, thank the Lord. I believe in my heart that my tumors will shrink and I will go into remission, but it will take hard work. I will be traveling to the Block Center (outside of Chicago) every couple of months to get nutritional infusions and testing needed to understand the root cause of the cancer and decipher best treatment options for me moving forward. However, most of these hefty expenses are out-of-pocket and beyond what we can afford on our own. I feel it is time to fully accept social support and also put my story out there in case anyone else is struggling alone. I know what it’s like to pull myself out of a hole and if anyone else is down there, please know there is a way out. There is love and HOPE and light and I choose that over fear.

We are humbly asking for financial support with medical and travel expenses. We would also truly love your prayers and your visualizations of me in the future at my daughters’ graduations and weddings and eventually retiring from teaching and traveling and enjoying this beautiful world with my husband, our families and friends. So many family, friends, neighbors & colleagues have already done so much for us and we appreciate you from the bottom of our hearts.

With much love,

Emily Sternisha McTavish

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path” - Psalm 119:105