From Surviving Cancer to Helping Children Thrive: Priyanka's Story

The Honest Chapter: A Guest Essay by Priyanka Pandya, Life Coach and Author

There are moments in life that divide everything into a before and an after. For Priyanka Pandya, that moment arrived with three words no one ever wants to hear.

You have cancer.

Priyanka was not just processing a diagnosis. She was a mother to two small girls. Keya was four years old. Shriyana was two. Overnight, the biggest question was not about treatment or timelines. It was a far harder one: how do you explain something this frightening to children who are too young to understand?

Like so many parents facing cancer, Priyanka wanted to protect them. From the fear, the uncertainty, the appointments and the changes that were about to become their new normal. What she quickly discovered was that children notice everything. They see the hospital visits, the tiredness, the shift in the air, the moments where a parent tries to hold it together and cannot quite manage it. They notice even when we are certain they do not.

What they needed was not protection from the truth. They needed honesty, reassurance, and a way to make sense of what was happening around them. That realisation became the foundation of everything that followed.

Priyanka wrote When Mummy Had Cancer in direct response to that experience. A children's book created to help families navigate one of the most difficult conversations they may ever have. Written not only for Keya and Shriyana, but for every child whose world has been turned upside down by a diagnosis in the family. The book that Priyanka could not find when she needed it most, so she created it instead.

It is the kind of quiet, extraordinary act of purpose that tends to emerge from the hardest seasons. The thing you make from the experience not because it is easy but because you understand, from the inside, exactly why it needs to exist.

Cancer changed Priyanka in ways she did not anticipate. There were days of fear and exhaustion, days where getting through the next appointment felt like its own achievement. There were also, alongside those moments, discoveries. About what she was capable of. About what resilience actually looks like when it is not a motivational poster but a lived, daily practice.

Resilience, she came to understand, is not about pretending everything is fine. It is about finding hope even when life feels genuinely uncertain. About accepting support when you need it. About celebrating small victories that nobody outside the experience would understand the significance of. About continuing to move forward, one step at a time, on the days when one step is the most anyone could reasonably ask.

Since completing treatment, Priyanka has channelled that understanding into something larger than herself. She has worked alongside Macmillan Cancer Support, raising awareness and supporting other families navigating the same terrain. Her story has appeared in national campaigns, displayed on billboards and bus stops across the UK. It has been shared internationally. She was invited to 10 Downing Street to mark International Women's Day, a moment that confirmed what she already knew: that sharing our stories, honestly and without performance, is one of the most powerful things any of us can do.

She has also raised thousands of pounds for cancer charities through a skydive, a 10K run, fitness challenges and community events. Every one of them a way of giving something back to the organisations that carried her when she needed carrying.

Before cancer, Priyanka spent fourteen years as a primary school teacher. She knew children. She understood how they learned, what they needed, how to hold a classroom full of small people with entirely different inner worlds and make every one of them feel seen.

After cancer, she realised her purpose had evolved. Children need academic support, yes. They also need something else. Confidence. Emotional resilience. Someone to sit with them in the difficult feelings and help them understand that those feelings are not who they are.

Today, as PriyankaPandya.LifeCoach, she works with children and families to build exactly that. Her coaching is shaped by fourteen years in education and by something no qualification could replicate: her own lived experience of navigating adversity while raising two small girls who were watching every move she made.

If you are currently facing cancer, whether your own diagnosis or someone you love, Priyanka wants you to know this.

You are stronger than you think. Your children do not need a perfect parent. They need a present one. It is okay to ask for help. Hope can exist alongside fear. Cancer may become part of your story, but it does not have to define the ending.

Priyanka looks at her daughters now and sees something she could not have planned or manufactured. Two girls who have witnessed resilience and courage and the importance of not giving up. Lessons no textbook teaches. An inheritance that came from the hardest chapter of all their lives.

Her journey has been filled with difficulty. It has also been filled with purpose, compassion, and the particular clarity that comes from understanding, at a cellular level, what actually matters.

If sharing her story helps one family feel less alone, every difficult step has been worth it.

Priyanka Pandya is a life coach, author and cancer survivor based in the UK. Her children's book When Mummy Had Cancer is available now. You can find her work at @priyankapandya.lifecoach

Modern Mothers — The Honest Chapter