Tanglewood resident honoree for popular awareness race

(Kathy Piper is a longtime resident of the Tanglewood community and married to Smith County native Phillip Piper of Powell and Meadows Insurance.)

A woman of faith, grandmother of six, and cancer survivor, Kathy Piper uses her story to encourage others any chance she gets. 

In 2022, Kathy discovered a lump on her stomach. While at the doctor to get a Covid test, she asked the doctor to look at the lump. What was first thought to be a benign cyst turned out to be a volleyball-sized tumor weighing 2.5 pounds.

Kathy was soon diagnosed with a fast-growing, aggressive form of ovarian cancer, “That prognosis was earth-shattering,” she said. She realized her life was about to change forever.

Kathy went through surgery two weeks after the diagnosis and then received six rounds of chemotherapy treatments, experiencing horrible side effects from the chemo. Not only was Kathy physically fighting cancer, internally she was battling with something harder to see from the outside looking in. “No one talks about what you go through emotionally. I was so angry and did not understand why the life I loved so much was crashing down around me.” Kathy bravely shared the truth that so many people feel, but do not always share. 

She continued, “God gave us emotions. All of them. The anger, the fear, the confusion and the questions that are difficult to find answers to. We should not feel guilty about having them or feeling them. They are real and an integral part of our humanity. What God wants us to do with these emotions is to lay them at His feet and let Him turn them into something good!” 

Because she wrestled with her emotions, she now strives to live a life to encourage others who are going through a similar process.

Even as she wrestled with her emotions, Kathy relied solely on her faith in God through the whole process. Kathy explained, “There would have been no process if I didn’t have my faith.” 

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