Personal statementEmpty, confusion, uncertainty, suspense, but above all fear. These emotions hit me like a bolt of lightning, and they were definitely too much for an 11 year old to handle. Cancer, my mother said, her tone was almost gentle. I knew she was sick, but cancer? Breast cancer, actually, it took me a very long time to digest such a short sentence. I knew immediately that this was the last day I could cry. My mother didn't need a baby to cry; she already had to take care of my sisters, not to mention herself. That same afternoon, right after I hugged my mother and lied to me that everything would be okay, I knew I was a different person. But it was 5 years later that I realized I had changed, when my mother came back from the doctor and for the second time I heard that she had cancer. Sometimes it is difficult to understand life and its obstacles. I began to wonder why this was happening to my mother when she had always been strong and healthy. Then, out of some nauseating distress, I think, I was startled by flash images of people suffering unjustly around me....