When Kim Harms was going through breast cancer treatment at age 40, she found strength in her faith, her family and friends, and in her talent for writing.
Formerly a journalist for the Nevada Journal, Harms reached out to breast cancer patients and survivors across the country, adding their stories to hers in her first published book in 2021, “Life Reconstructed: Navigating the World of Mastectomies and Breast Reconstruction.”
The Huxley mom of three boys, who works part-time at her community’s public library, decided on a bilateral mastectomy, which is the removal of both breasts, and reconstruction, a slow process that involved two surgeries over the course of about seven months.
In 2023, on the anniversary of her first diagnosis, Harms was in her oncologist’s office having a lump checked.
“I left there thinking I probably had cancer again. I could just tell they were suspicious of the lump,” she said.
Now 49, Harms has gone through 16 rounds of chemotherapy to knock out the cancer a second time. She had already completed a book proposal for her devotional prior to getting her second diagnosis.
“I think God allowed all of this to happen for a reason,” she said.
After going through cancer a second time, Harms has been through it all — a lumpectomy, mastectomy, reconstruction, hormone therapy, two kinds of chemotherapy, hair loss, radiation. All the experiences added to her capacity for empathy, she said.
“I know God orchestrated it all to work out. Like, ‘I’m letting you go through all these crappy things because it’s going to help you be able to encourage people in a different way,’” she said.
“Carried Through Cancer” will be released Sept. 30, and a book launch will be held Oct. 2 at Public House 421, 421 Main St., in Slater. The event will include a program at 7 p.m. and will also be a fundraiser for Can Do Cancer, a central Iowa-based nonprofit, and the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation. Live music will be performed by violinist Michelle O’Tool.
Still ‘in the cancer world,’ but feeling good
Harms’ brunette hair has grown back. Shoulder-length and wavy, it frames her face that is quick with a luminescent smile.
“I’m feeling really good now. And I love having hair again,” Harms said.
She still gets occasional treatments and is still “very much in the cancer world,” but her life has regained normalcy.
Her husband Corey has been a foundation of bedrock as Kim navigated her cancer treatments. Their sons Carter, 24, Owen, 22, and Lewis, a senior at Ballard, have been great emotional support for their mom as well, doing whatever they could to make her smile and laugh along the way.
One day after Harms lost her hair due to chemotherapy, the rest of her family put on wigs and posed for photos with her sporting her baldness, her head tipped back as she laughed.
‘Carried Through Cancer’ is a faith-based devotional
“My life’s been really hard the last several years,” Harms said, her voice trembling with emotion. “But God’s been so good. So good. I just want other people to see that. If I can give people a little bit of the hope I’ve found, that’s what I want.”
Her hope is that people will read her new book, “Carried Through Cancer,” and “find encouragement in a really hard place. My faith got me through cancer. A lot of people who are in places like that are looking for hope, and I want to give them hope.”
This is a “very different book” from Harms’ first one, which was for a niche market of women who are going through mastectomies and breast reconstruction, so it was specific to breast cancer and specific to that type of treatment.
Harms’ new book is filled with the stories of more than 50 different women across the country. Some women’s stories are featured in more than one chapter of the 70-day devotional.
Informally broken into weeks, the first five days of every week features the story of a cancer survivor, day six is a caregiver’s story and day seven is one of Harms’ personal experiences.
Unlike Harms’ first book, “Carried Through Cancer” is not only about breast cancer. The women interviewed are fighters and survivors of a vast array of different cancers.
“I wanted to open this up to anybody who’s been touched by cancer,” she said. “There were quite a few women from Iowa, but the people I interviewed were from all over the country.”
Seeing God’s purpose in the cancer journeys
Because it is a faith-based book, Harms talked to her sources about how they saw or felt God working within their cancer journeys.
“Sometimes it’s a very specific thing. One woman said it hit her in the shower. She just suddenly knew why God had put her on this path,” Harms said. “Others are very broad: ‘I can look at my cancer and these are the improvements in my life since then.’
“I’m really excited that I’m sharing so many people’s stories.”
Alex Greenfield, a retired Air Force Lt. Col. from Huxley, is one of the women Harms interviewed for her new book.
When Greenfield reads what Harms wrote in her section of the book, it makes her cry all over again.
“Kim writes so beautifully. She captures something that’s the emotional side, which is sometimes difficult for me,” Greenfield said. “She writes it beautifully, perfectly, exactly the way it was intended.
“And it’s tears of joy because she just nailed it. Reading it leads me to tears every single time.”
Ronna Faaborg covers business and the arts for the Ames Tribune. Reach her at rfaaborg@gannett.com.