By Michelle Moreno-Apolo 
Growing up, I was a reluctant Catholic.
My mother would drag us to church, and I’d go through the motions—fingers moving across rosary beads without really feeling the prayers. But she never stopped. Sunday Mass, daily prayers, devotions to the Blessed Mother. She was relentless in her faith, not because she was trying to force it on us, but because she genuinely believed we would need it someday.
She was right.
My mother died of stage 4 colon cancer in 2012. My brother and I watched her suffer, saw how her body betrayed her, watched as treatments failed. And here’s what we never saw: We never saw her complain. Not once. We never heard her ask God, “Why me?” after a lifetime of hardships that would have broken most people.
She just kept praying.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand it. How could someone face death with such peace? How could faith remain steadfast when everything else was falling apart?
Then came November 8, 2022, and these four words: “You have breast cancer.”
Suddenly, 10 years later, every memory of my mother’s cancer journey came flooding back.
My mother was the strongest, fiercest, smartest woman you’ll ever know. She gave us tough love because she knew she was raising children who would face a harsh world. She never coddled us. But she also made sure we understood something essential: We needed to be anchored in faith. We needed to be God-loving and God-fearing, not because God demanded it, but because we would need Him when life got hard.
I realize now she wasn’t just teaching us about faith. She was showing us what it looked like to live it when everything falls apart.
When my own diagnosis came, I stood in front of God with all the questions I never heard my mother ask: Why, God? Why pile another hardship on top of all the others I’ve already endured? I’ve been faithful. Where are you in this?
I thought about all the people I knew who seemed to skate through life, while I have this to deal with. The unfairness of it all felt suffocating.
But then something shifted.
Somewhere in the middle of treatment, between chemo sessions and before surgery, during long nights when fear threatened to consume me, my prayer changed.
It moved from desperate pleading to utter surrender.
Lord, I surrender.
And with those words came a peace I couldn’t fully explain. A deep knowing that whatever happened, I was held and loved by the King of the Universe. That my life had been designed before I was born, and this cancer wasn’t a mistake or a punishment. It was part of my story for reasons I might never fully understand.
That’s when I finally understood my mother.
She was at peace during her cancer because she had placed her trust completely in God. She knew that her suffering wasn’t meaningless. She couldn’t have known then that her courage and deep faith would become my roadmap and blueprint 10 years later. But God knew.
She was meant to go through it so I could watch. So I could learn. So that when my turn came, I wouldn’t be starting from scratch. I’d have my memory of her journey to guide me.
During my treatment, I found myself doing exactly what I’d watched her do: I prayed fervently. I surrendered. I trusted God with my whole heart.
I asked her to pray for me from heaven, to give me the same strength that carried her throughout her life. I prayed to become the kind of strong, independent, fierce woman she was—the kind who doesn’t crumble when life gets hard, but instead falls to her knees in prayer and then stands back up, ready to fight.
My three sons were only 6, 4, and 2 when my mother passed away. They barely remember her. She lived in the Philippines, and they only met her once for a few weeks. They don’t have years of memories with her like I do.
But they’re watching me now, the way I watched her.
They’re seeing how I live my faith not just on Sundays, but through chemo and surgery and radiation. They’re learning that being anchored in faith doesn’t mean life won’t knock you down. It means you know who to lean on when it does.
I always tell my boys about being raised by a very strong, faithful woman. I hope when they’re grown and have families of their own, they’ll remember me the same way I lovingly remember my mom. I hope they’ll talk about the lessons she taught me that endured even after she died, the same lessons I’m now passing on to them.
Because that’s what mothers do. We plant seeds of faith that we might never see fully bloom. My mother had no idea that her faithful witness during terminal illness would become the very thing that saved me a decade later. She just lived her faith, trusted God, and prayed that we were watching.
I was watching, Mom. And 10 years after you left, you’re still teaching me.
You were right to drag that reluctant Catholic girl to church all those years. You were right to pray relentlessly even when I didn’t understand why it mattered. You were right to model faith that didn’t waver even when your body was failing.
Because when my own crisis came, I reached for exactly what you planted in me. Your faith became mine. Your strength became mine. Your peace in suffering became mine.
And now, I’m planting those same seeds in my sons, trusting that someday, maybe when they face their own storms, they’ll remember what you taught me: Faith isn’t about the absence of struggle. It’s about who you lean on when the struggle comes.
Thank you for teaching me to lean on God, Mom. I’m still leaning on what you gave me.
And I always will.
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