“I Was So Scared”Mum’s Heartbreaking Cancer Journey

For Rhiannon Thomas, losing her hair was one of the most emotionally difficult moments of an already devastating breast cancer journey.

The 36-year-old teaching assistant had undergone a mastectomy and was receiving chemotherapy when her hair began to fall out. Yet what initially felt like another painful reminder of her illness eventually became part of a journey towards renewed confidence.

Rhiannon, a mother of two daughters aged 14 and nine, was diagnosed with breast cancer after discovering a lump while showering in November last year.

Her first thoughts were about her children.

“I had an absolute breakdown,” she said.

“Like, how do you tell your children? I was so scared to just tell them.”

Since her diagnosis, Rhiannon has undergone a mastectomy and chemotherapy and is currently receiving radiotherapy.

When chemotherapy caused her hair to fall out, she decided to shave her head. Rather than allowing the moment to become solely defined by sadness, she tried to turn it into something positive for her family.

She invited her youngest daughter to pretend to be a hairdresser, allowing her to cut her hair with scissors before Rhiannon used a shaver to finish the job.

“I was like, ‘just cut whatever you want because it’s going anyway’,” she said.

“I wanted to make something hard joyful for my children and for myself because I didn’t want them to see me upset, and my daughter loved it.”

The family captured the moment on a phone at their home in Abertridwr, near Caerphilly, with footage showing them laughing as her daughter experimented with the scissors.

Behind that laughter, however, Rhiannon was struggling to come to terms with how dramatically her appearance had changed.

“I remember looking in the mirror and like just crying because it’s just, you know, we don’t recognise yourself,” she said.

She was also deeply affected by the reaction of her parents when they first saw her after she had shaved her head.

For a time, Rhiannon relied on a head wrap whenever she went outside.

That began to change after she joined a photography project celebrating women who have experienced hair loss during breast cancer treatment.

Rhiannon became one of the Welsh women taking part in the Pink Ribbon Foundation’s BOLD Wales campaign, an initiative centred on courage, confidence and the experiences of women who have lost their hair through cancer treatment.

The project brought her together with Sam Gronow-Walters, a 44-year-old mental health nurse and mother of two.

Sam's experience of breast cancer has been markedly different but similarly shaped by the emotional and physical consequences of treatment.

She was initially diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer five years ago. Her treatment included intravenous chemotherapy, a lumpectomy, radiotherapy and later oral chemotherapy.

Seven months after her initial treatment, Sam discovered another lump. Tests showed that the cancer had returned.

She subsequently underwent a mastectomy and was told she was cancer-free.

In 2024, she learned that the cancer had spread to her lung. Last July, tests showed it had also spread to her liver and lymph nodes.

Sam now lives with incurable cancer.

Despite the uncertainty, she says her children remain a powerful source of motivation.

“You’ve got to keep going,” said Sam, who lives in St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan.

“You’ve just got to do whatever you can because I want to see my kids grow up.”

When Sam also faced losing her hair, she thought about how the change might affect her children.

Her son, who was 13 at the time, suggested she keep a section of hair at the front of her head, inspired by Brazilian footballer Ronaldo's distinctive hairstyle during the 2002 World Cup.

Sam agreed.

“To me, that’s quite a happy memory, so he’ll see that even when I’m poorly I can still have fun, can still smile and I can still make my children happy and laugh,” she said.

She later asked her son whether he minded her going to school without a hat.

“I used to ask my son when I took him to school, ‘do you mind if I don’t wear a hat?’” she recalled.

“He was like, ‘why would I care?’”

For both women, the experience of hair loss was about far more than appearance. It became a visible part of an illness that had already altered almost every aspect of their lives.

That is where the BOLD Wales project provided something neither had expected: a sense of belonging.

Rhiannon and Sam met after signing up to take part in the campaign. They joined nine other Welsh women for a photography session in Cardiff with Dutch photographer Caroline Sikkenk.

The resulting photographs are due to be displayed at London's Piccadilly Lights next month.

For Rhiannon, the project offered something particularly important because she had never previously spoken to another woman who had lost her hair during cancer treatment.

“I just felt really safe and not judged,” she said.

The women had been nervous before being photographed, but the day developed into an experience they both described as joyful.

“It was like we’d all known each other before meeting that day, and we still keep in touch now,” Sam said.

The photographs also became a turning point for the two mothers.

When Rhiannon first saw her portrait, she was struck by the difference between how she had viewed herself and what the camera revealed.

“For the first time I feel I look pretty, I look confident and strong,” she said.

“It’s surprising the strength you find when you go through such a hard time.”

Sam initially struggled to recognise herself in her photograph.

“I was like, ‘wow, that’s not me’,” she said.

“I was quite proud to show them to my family to say, ‘oh, this is me’.”

The campaign's roots stretch back to 2022, when Lisa Allen from the Pink Ribbon Foundation met Sikkenk at a breast cancer conference.

Sikkenk had already spent years photographing women who had experienced hair loss through illness.

“What struck us about her photographs was that these women weren’t being shown as patients,” Lisa said. “They were strong, beautiful and completely themselves.”

The first BOLD shoot took place in 2023.

What developed afterwards was something the organisers had not originally anticipated: a lasting community among the women involved.

“We set up a WhatsApp group beforehand, so by the time the women arrive they already feel they’re going through it together,” Lisa said.

“The friendships and support that grow around it last long after the photograph is taken.”

For Rhiannon, that support has helped change the way she sees herself.

“I feel like my confidence and my positivity just got stronger from the photo shoot,” she said.

“I walked out of there just so confident and I felt so free and just like I don’t have to hide.”

The head wraps have now largely disappeared from her everyday life, with Rhiannon describing showing her shaved head as “the new normal”.

For Sam, the experience has brought a different kind of acceptance.

“This is me now - I wouldn’t have long hair again,” she said.

“Hair loss doesn’t define who I am. It’s just a symbol that I’m getting through this and I am strong.”

As the BOLD Wales photographs prepare to reach a much larger audience at Piccadilly Lights, the stories behind the portraits offer a reminder that cancer treatment can affect far more than the body.

For Rhiannon and Sam, being photographed did not change the reality of their diagnoses. It changed something about how they faced that reality — replacing, at least in part, the instinct to hide with the confidence to be seen.

Daily Dazzling Dawn will continue to follow the campaign and the stories of the women involved as the photographs are displayed publicly.