TOLEDO, Ohio — The 2024 Susan G. Komen Northwest Ohio Race for the Cure is in celebration of Emily Zarecki. One of the darkest moments in Emily's life became a source of unlikely strength when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020.
Zarecki's husband, Steve, took his own life after a long battle with his mental health in 2009 and she was left to care for their three young children: an 8-year-old son and 4-year-old twin daughters. She said caring for them was her priority.
"I even think I put my own grief on the back burner because I was so focused on them and making sure they were okay," she said.
Zarecki had to make sure their needs were met more than her own as a grieving widow.
"Sometimes it was moment by moment or day by day but to figure out how to just keep moving forward," she said.
Eleven years later and remarried, Zarecki called on the same strength she used to get through the other hardships in her life when she got another devastating call.
"I interrupted her (the doctor) and said, 'Did you just say I have cancer?' And she said, 'Yes,'" Zarecki recalled.
Similar to when Steve died, life was great for Zarecki one minute, but a few simple words later, life was changed.
"It was that feeling again, like the world stopped," she said.
The shock, fear and anxiety were there, and Zarecki was scared. But this time, she knew she could get through difficult times.
"Mine happened to be the death of my husband and then breast cancer, but there are so many things that are challenges and they're hard, but they are those unlikely sources of strength that you draw upon," she said.
Her fight with breast cancer was long: one full year of treatment including chemo, surgery and immunotherapy.
Zarecki didn't just beat breast cancer for herself, she's still fighting it for all women in Washington on behalf of Susan G. Komen.
"As an advocacy ambassador, I am part of regular calls to understand what's going on at our state level, but also at the national level," she said.
She's advocating for bills to lower costs for treatments, reduce ineffective treatments and bring screening tools to the uninsured and underinsured.
"I thought if I didn't have insurance, it would bankrupt me and I was just really shocked by that," she said.
It's been 15 years since Zarecki survived Steve's death and four years since she survived breast cancer. In the difficult parts of life, she's found silver linings.
"Facing something that you just didn't think you'd be able to survive or didn't see how you'd come to the other side of it and have that perspective and being able to now live life with that constant reminder and to be able to just look at things in a new way," she said.
We all have scars, and usually, we try to hide them. But Zarecki says her book, "Golden Scars," is about finding beauty in the brokenness.
The Japanese art form of Kintsugi, the practice of repairing broken pottery with gold to make the item beautiful again, inspired her.
"You can see the damage that happened to the item, but it was repaired with something so beautiful, and you can see the gold, you can see the cracks, but yet it makes that object even more beautiful," Zarecki said. "Knowing you've got to move forward and find the strength to move forward and realize that as you're rebuilding your life, you're finding beauty in that brokenness."
MORE FROM WTOL 11: Over the Edge fundraiser for The Victory Center raises more than $200K
