A week before my 20th birthday, I scrambled through the emergency exit window of a Boeing 727 that had crash landed at Kennedy Airport. Thirty seven years later, I survived another crash—breast cancer.

I was born into the baby boom generation. My parents, Tess and John Hogan, were a struggling young couple like so many others in post-war America. Dad worked the night shift at a tool factory because the pay was better. Mom got a job as a typist once her children were of school age. Grandma Rose took over running the household and supervising four children. She was the pivotal character in a short story I wrote based upon the jet crash. After walking away from the wrecked plane, it was Rose who embraced me when I made it home.

My childhood stage spread out in the shadow of Aqueduct race track and airport that was called Idlewild before becoming JFK. Stickball ruled the street, the brick bakery wall served as a handball court, and a basketball hoop hung from every garage. Girls played house on the stoop, chalked Potsy on the sidewalk, and jumped rope with clothesline cord. Teenage parties were held in backyards and we danced to music from a record player perched on the ledge of the kitchen window.

I always wanted to be a writer; stories rumbled around in my head all the time. There were plenty of colorful characters in our middle-class, multi-nationality neighborhood of Queens: the Elvis imitator, the cranky lady, a pro baseball player, factory workers, clerks, a fireman, a drunk, dog owners, alley cats, a family of redheads, and the man we were convinced was a secret agent.

Few owned a car; the subway was the ticket off the block. My first significant job was a secretary in Manhattan during which I participated in the 1960’s pants suit revolution. By the time I turned 30, I was married with two children and living in Connecticut. My husband Peter made it possible for me to be a stay at home mom until they were in college. When I resumed my business career, I chose the non-profit world to re-energize my skills.

Simultaneously, I joined a creative writing workshop. Most writers start out developing with essay or short story; I began with a novel. Over a span of years it was my way of learning plot and character development. It went through more than 30 rewrites, changed titles four times, and reached out far and wide to agents and publishers to be ignored and rejected.

Eventually I would come to understand why I needed to write more than I needed to publish. No bolt of lightning struck me, but rather a series of events opening my eyes to a different purpose and greater fulfillment. Writing had evolved to become a safe haven from the ups and downs of my life, a personal retreat filled with lovely words, graceful sentences, and stories built from memory, from my heart, and from pure imagination. However, my stories focused on everyone but me; my mother’s childhood, my parents’ enduring love, my aunt’s great cooking. I even wrote a story from the point of view of an aging horse.

At 50 I concluded that I had to focus on my strengths instead of sitting around waiting for an explanation of my life. I spent more time with my sister Patricia. We were finally old enough and smart enough to understand the wisdom of our grandmother and appreciate our mother for being a woman who chose to work outside the home, ignoring the snide remarks of nosy neighbors. I continued to search for my own voice, looking for memories and anecdotes to light the way. Yet the purpose of finding it was still unclear – until the second crash.

At the age of 57 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Swept up in the drama of an experience shared by too many women, I cloaked myself with courageous words and demeanor while silently vacillating between denial and anger. Robotically I faced the machines that peered inside me and the doctors who marked me before removing my breast. My emotions were in a jumble. I did not want to be called brave or amazing. I cringed as my world turned pink – pink roses, pink ribbons, pink bracelets. Four months into recovery, I had an epiphany and set out to reclaim my spirit. I would help other women by sharing insights learned from my surgery so that they could better prepare for the challenges of their own recovery.

I wrote The Woman to Woman Guide to Prepare for Mastectomy, gathered what I felt were necessary supplies for personal comfort and hygiene, put it all together and called it the Necessities Bag. Patients, surgeons and nurses responded enthusiastically. I formed a non-profit organization in order to make the Necessities Bag available to mastectomy patients free of charge. The outreach I envisioned for women in my own community has come to the attention of women nationwide and is helping thousands far beyond my backyard.

If breast cancer taught me one thing it is that women cannot exist without connecting to other women. I have, like my grandmother and my mother before me, embraced a woman’s role to share what they know if it will help another. Through the Necessities Bag, my voice found a purpose.