When Cynthia B. Smalls was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016, she was handed information, pamphlets, resources, and links. What she wasn’t handed was anything that looked like her. As a Black woman navigating a frightening diagnosis, that invisibility compounded everything else.
That gap became her calling. Cynthia founded the blog Melanin & Pink Ribbons, wrote Push the Button, a seven-step self-help guide that uses her survivorship experience as a framework for navigating any of life’s curveballs, and followed it with a positive affirmation journal built specifically for breast cancer fighters and survivors. The book she needed as a patient and couldn’t find, she wrote herself.
“If there’s a book that you want and you can’t find it, write it.”
Cynthia is one of those guests who arrives with a quiet clarity. She knows why she writes, who she’s writing for, and what she wants those readers to feel when they close the book. That purposefulness comes through in everything she shared.
A few things from this conversation that stayed with me:
Writing a book based on lived experience means revisiting things you thought you had already dealt with. Cynthia described the surprise of discovering feelings still attached to memories she believed were behind her. That’s the work, and also the gift, of writing from the inside out.
Completing the manuscript felt cathartic. Not because it erased the experience, but because it allowed her to say: I climbed that mountain. Now I can help someone else with theirs.
Her advice to new writers is bracingly simple: just do it. And then tell people. Your circle knows things you don’t know, knows people you haven’t met, and holds resources you didn’t know you needed.
She recently published a therapeutic coloring book for children whose mothers are in treatment for breast cancer, because, as she put it, nobody fights alone. The people in your house go through it with you.
“Receiving help is not a sign of weakness. It’s actually a sign of strength.”
Cynthia also spoke frankly about the importance of self-advocacy in medical settings, bringing someone who can speak for you when you’re too overwhelmed to speak for yourself, and the value of early detection above all else. October gets the pink ribbons, but breast cancer does not keep a calendar.
You’ll find links to all of Cynthia’s books and her blog in the resources below. She’s building something that matters, and she built it from scratch, in survivorship, one book at a time.
Until next week,
Jolene
Author Resources
Melanin & Pink Ribbons Blog: melaninpinkribbons.com
Push the Button: amzn.to/3RqCUpN
Positive Affirmation Journal for Breast Cancer Fighters & Survivors: amzn.to/4v3UApB
Love, Strength & Crayons (Coloring Book): amzn.to/3RprBOC
The Self Love Journal: amzn.to/43bw9ed
Amazon Author Page: Cynthia B. Smalls
Instagram: @author_cynthia_smalls
