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𝚐𝚊𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚎 𝚠𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚒𝚗

@gabrielleweinstein

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Today marks halfway through chemo 🎉 A strange milestone of sorts. One thing I didn’t expect about cancer is how complex the treatment actually is. I think I assumed it would be a straight line.�
A diagnosis, a plan, a treatment, an end.
But it’s not that.

It’s layered. It shifts. It asks different things of you at different moments — physically, emotionally, mentally. Some days feel almost normal, and others… not even close.

There are so many moving parts. So many decisions. So much happening behind the scenes that no one really talks about. And let’s not forget ‘normal’ life

For me, right now, it looks something like this: six cycles of chemo every three weeks, tests in between, scans along the way. A whole team of people guiding different parts of it. And this is just phase one. After this comes surgery, then radiation, and then ongoing treatment beyond that.

And I can only speak for my own experience — I know every diagnosis and every treatment path is different — but I had no idea how all-encompassing this would be. Not just in terms of what’s happening in the body, but in how it quietly reshapes your days, your energy, your priorities… even your sense of self.

But it has also opened up so many things. Forced me to look at myself truly stripped bare.
A lesson in receiving.

I’ve always focused on giving, but there is something profoundly humbling about allowing yourself to receive too. To soften enough to let love in.

And through all of this, I’ve been overwhelmed by the care and support around me — not only from the people you would expect, but from unexpected places too.

There’s something very human about that. As I sat in the chemo unit today, I realized this is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

#gratitude #cancerjourney #onelifeonelove #healingjourney #bekindalways by @gabrielleweinstein

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5 months ago

A rumour is moving.
Across oceans.
Through time.
Gold does not announce itself.
It simply arrives.
Cape Town.
Soon.
Eternal Gold Collection. by @gabrielleweinstein

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7 months ago

Thank you so much to everyone who came through to our @naki_manuka_honey event last night at the incredible Woodstock Foundry.
The Eternal Gold Collection created by @gabrielleweinstein and @vrvodesigns is such a magnificent showcase of New Zealand and South African artistry and it was such an honour to be asked to assist in exhibiting this heirloom concept.

Thanks for the images @cloutandaboutmedia_ taken in VRVO by @gabrielleweinstein

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7 months ago

I finished 20 sessions of radiation yesterday.

Everyone told me radiation would be a “walk in the park” compared to chemo. In some ways it was, and in some ways it really wasn’t. It felt less like a walk in the park and more like a daily grind through Cape Town traffic.

I never wanted cancer to become a lifestyle or to let it define me. That becomes a little more difficult when you have to be at the hospital every day—except weekends and public holidays because, clearly, cancer is corporate—and sometimes at two different hospitals in one day for check-ups and other things.

I am still everything I was before, with the same burning ambition. Just now with the added spice of some actual burns.

From diagnosis to complete clinical remission took five months. Immense gratitude to modern medicine, my wonderful doctors, and my badass body and mind for the formidable force we became.

But on the same day I learnt I was in remission, I also learnt that microscopic cancer had remained in the tissue removed during surgery. Slight curveball. My treatment plan changed: another port and fourteen more cycles of treatment, stretching over almost another year.

So today I had surgery to insert my new magical portal to healing—as I prefer to think of it—so I can begin my “insurance policy” chemo next week.

There are no words for the gratitude I feel towards the doctors, nurses and incredible staff across the hospitals where I have been so fortunate to receive treatment.

I’m continually reminded why South Africa is the best place in the world: its people. I have been greeted with smiles, held with love and care, and made to feel safe and supported through every single step—and there have been many.

I will spend the rest of this precious life doing my best to give back in whatever ways I can.

#cancersurvivor #breastcancerwarrior #cancerjourney #cancerfree #onelifeonelove by @gabrielleweinstein

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18 days ago

I look remarkably like a dandelion at the moment. So, naturally, I made a wish.

I have spent much of my life making things happen. This year asked something entirely different of me. It asked me to surrender almost everything I thought I could control. To stop forcing. To allow myself to be carried. To trust what was unfolding, even when I could not yet see where it would lead.

It has been a bizarre year. One in which gratitude and grief have occupied the same body. A year that taught me that strength does not always look like fighting. Sometimes it is simply waking up and meeting the day you have been given.

Perhaps receiving is a practice too. Becoming open enough to recognise the love, the blessing and the quiet miracles already arriving.

Rosh Hashanah asks us to pause, to reflect and to return. I don’t think I am returning to the person I was before this year. Perhaps the return is to something deeper. Something quieter. A self beneath all the roles, the plans and the certainty.

I enter this new year still in treatment and profoundly grateful to be here.

My wish for 5787 is that it will be lighter and brighter. Full of life. Health. Love. Creativity. Joy. Kindness. Ordinary days. The privilege of watching my children grow up. And many, many more years in which to become whoever I am becoming, alongside the people I love most.

Shanah tovah. May 5787 be gentle with us. And very, very alive.

#roshhashana #loveandkindness #cancerjourney #onelifeonelove by @gabrielleweinstein

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a month ago

Today is six months since I was diagnosed.

It also happens to be the 4th, and my fourth radiation session (out of twenty).

Six months feels both incredibly long and strangely like no time at all. I think I imagined I’d arrive at this point with something profound to say about it. Mostly, it just feels like… here we are.

From the beginning, I’ve tried very hard not to let cancer become a lifestyle. To keep working when I could, create things, parent, see friends, laugh, go out, be interested in things that have absolutely nothing to do with cancer.

But somewhere along the way I’ve also had to surrender to the process.

There is only so much you can rush a thing that has its own timeline.

So perhaps six months has taught me less about cancer and more about time.

Not to live too far ahead of myself. Not to spend today waiting for some future version of my life where all of this is over.

This is my life. Just this day. And I am incredibly grateful to be here.

It also feels like the right time to acknowledge the extraordinary love that has carried me through these six months. I have felt every bit of it. Thank you.

#cancerdiaries #radiationtherapy #onelifeonelove #breastcancerawarenessmonth #cancerjourney by @gabrielleweinstein

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a month ago

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be bald in the world as a woman.

I chose not to wear a wig. It just never felt like me. What I didn’t anticipate was how quickly something so private would become public.

People know.

Or think they know.

I notice the looks now. I can tell the difference between fear, pity, curiosity and empathy. But people also talk to me.

A stranger will tell me his wife died of cancer. Someone will stop me to say they’ll pray for me. Someone else will look at me with that particular softness that says they understand, or have been close enough to it to think they do.

These are often beautiful, human interactions. But they’re also strange.

Because sometimes I’m just buying groceries.

And suddenly I’m Cancer.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve started doing less.

At first you imagine that you’ll compensate somehow. Better clothes. More makeup. Earrings. Something to make yourself feel feminine or beautiful or sexy again.

But for me, the more I try, the worse it sometimes feels.

It feels forced. Like a mask.

There is something about being bald that strips all of that away. And when I try too hard to put it back, I become even more aware of what’s missing.

So I’ve stopped trying so hard.

Less makeup. Less performance. Less trying to convince myself — or anyone else — that I still look like the woman I was before.

I don’t feel particularly empowered by being bald. And I don’t always feel beautiful in it. Sexy is even harder.

But I am becoming interested in what exists underneath all the things we use to construct those ideas of ourselves.

Because when the armour comes off — not by choice, but because life removes it for you — you have to meet whatever is left.

And I think that’s where I am.

Not at an answer.

Just meeting her.

#cancerjourney #baldwoman #breastcancerwarrior #evolution by @gabrielleweinstein

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2 months ago

I’ve been meaning to write this post for days.

But every time I sat down, something stopped me.

Perhaps because every time I think I’ve made sense of this journey, it changes shape again.

Surgery is behind me now.

Another milestone that, for so long, felt impossibly far away.

Thankfully, it went well.

And there is so much to celebrate.

The surgery removed the remaining cancer that was found, and for that I am profoundly grateful.

But if there’s one thing this journey has taught me, it’s that very little is ever just one thing.

Good news and hard news somehow arrive together.

Relief and grief.

Hope and uncertainty.

You exhale… only to realise you’re already preparing for the next inhale.

The pathology showed an incredible response to chemotherapy, but not a complete one.

There were tiny areas of cancer still remaining.

Because of that, my treatment plan has changed.

After radiation, I’ll begin another course of treatment, and this chapter will continue for many more months.

When chemotherapy first finished, I thought I’d feel relief.

Instead, what arrived was grief.

Not because I wanted treatment to continue.

But because somewhere between blood tests, infusions and ordinary days, I’d quietly become someone else.

I think what has surprised me most is that the emotional side of all of this hasn’t followed the same timeline as the medical one.

I’ve realised this journey has very little to do with reaching milestones.

It has far more to do with learning to live in the space between them.

I wouldn’t have chosen this path.

But I can’t deny that it is changing me.

The things that once consumed me don’t hold the same weight anymore.

The things I used to overlook now feel impossibly precious.

Cancer isn’t a gift.

But the perspective it has given me might be.

So today, I’m allowing two things to be true at once.

There is enormous gratitude.

And there is enormous grief.

There is relief.

And there is still a long road ahead.

Perhaps that’s what this journey has been teaching me all along.

That life isn’t made up of one feeling.

It’s made up of all of them.

Often at exactly the same time.

#cancerjou by @gabrielleweinstein

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2 months ago

Gold, clay and honey walked into a room.

A look inside the launch of The Eternal Gold Collection, bringing together VRVO jewellery, Naki Mānuka Honey and handcrafted ceramic vessels by Gabrielle Weinstein.

An evening of objects made by hand, things worth tasting slowly, and very good company.

Thank you to everyone who joined us.

Choose your vice: gold, clay or honey?

@vrvodesigns x @naki_manuka_honey x @gabrielleweinstein

#VRVO #EternalGoldCollection #CapeTownDesign #CeramicArt #ManukaHoney taken in VRVO by @gabrielleweinstein

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3 months ago

Yesterday, I heard the words we’d all been hoping for.

“Your scan is clear.”

On Thursday, I sat in the chemo chair for the sixth and final time.

It’s hard to put into words what a moment like that feels like.

Relief.

Gratitude.

Disbelief.

Hope.

This chapter began with so much uncertainty. I couldn’t imagine what six rounds of chemotherapy would ask of me, or who I’d be by the time I reached the end of them.

Now, somehow, here I am.

One of the most unexpected things this experience has taught me is just how adaptable we are as human beings. Even in the hardest seasons, we find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other. One blood test. One infusion. One recovery. One ordinary day at a time.

On the morning I went to meet my surgeon and receive the results, something else happened.

As I was driving through the middle of the city, I looked up and saw a hawk perched on a lamp post.

I drove past it, then realised no one was behind me, so I reversed, parked, got out and stood with it for a while before it eventually flew away.

Over the past few months, this bird has appeared at moments that have felt strangely significant to me.

Was it a sign?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

But in that moment, it gave me a deep sense of peace.

There is still more to come.

Surgery.

Radiation.

Targeted treatment.

Recovery.

The journey isn’t over yet.

But chemotherapy is.

And for today, that feels like a mountain worth stopping to look back at.

To everyone who has walked this road with me—through your messages, prayers, encouragement and quiet kindness—thank you..

I’m deeply grateful.

One chapter closes.

Another begins.

#cancerfreefuture #cancerjourney #onelifeonelove #powerofpositivethinking #mindsetshifts by @gabrielleweinstein

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3 months ago

There is something strange about living your life three weeks at a time.

You begin measuring time differently.

Not by months or seasons, but by blood tests. MRI appointments. Infusions. Recovery days. The day you start feeling like yourself again. And then, before you know it, it begins all over.

Somewhere along the way, your world becomes both incredibly small and impossibly vast.

Small because your next appointment can feel like the only thing that exists.

Vast because, somehow, your capacity to feel everything expands.

The fear is sharper.

But so is the joy.

Not because life suddenly becomes more beautiful, but because what was once ordinary no longer feels ordinary.

The things that once filled the spaces between life quietly become life itself.

I’ve realised that joy and fear don’t take turns.

They coexist.

Some days one is louder than the other.

But they are almost always there together.

Maybe this isn’t unique to illness.

Maybe all of us are living inside joy and fear at the same time.

Most of us just don’t notice it until something forces us to.

I hope I never forget what this season has taught me about paying attention.

That even in the midst of uncertainty, life doesn’t pause.

It keeps quietly unfolding.

And it keeps asking us to notice it.

#cancerjourney #lovelife #breastcancerwarrior #onelifeonelove #cancerdiaries by @gabrielleweinstein

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3 months ago

One of the unexpected gifts of this chapter has been words.

Messages. Poems. Prayers. Notes from friends, strangers and women who have walked beside me in ways they may never fully understand.

Some words arrived exactly when I needed them. Others carried uncanny synchronicities that made me pause and wonder.

Fittingly, the extract below comes from a piece called Lotus by the wonderful, talented @mantra_healing

As it happens, one of my first tattoos was a large lotus flower. Another small part of a story I didn’t know I was writing on my body.

“When people speak of the lotus flower, they often begin with its beauty. But the real story of the lotus begins somewhere very different.

The lotus does not grow in clear water. It begins its life deep in thick, dark mud.

For centuries it has symbolised transformation through adversity — the journey from darkness to light, from struggle to renewal.

Breast cancer is not a metaphor. Chemo is not poetic. It is real, physical, exhausting work. There is fear, fatigue, uncertainty, and days when the water feels very dark.

But the lotus reminds us of something ancient and enduring:

Life has an instinct toward the light.

The lotus does not rush its journey. It does not pretend the mud is not there. It simply keeps rising, day by day, toward the surface.

Perhaps that is why the lotus has endured as a symbol of resilience, rebirth and the quiet power of life insisting on continuing anyway.

And still, it rises.”

#cancerjourney #healingjourney #lifeisforliving #capetownphotographer onelifeonelove by @gabrielleweinstein

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4 months ago