With my hands shaking and my heart fluttering, I composed my thoughts.

Breathe…

Calm yourself…

A giant camera lens stared at me, waiting for me to talk. 

My husband, Joel, had convinced me to do this. He said the world needs to hear my story and needs to see that no matter what they’re facing, they can still have hope and joy.

I believed him but I didn’t do this kind of thing!  Like, ever.

But it’s not about you, I thought. I need to do this for them.  I can do this…

With the camera still staring at me and rolling, I spoke from the heart:

I’ve decided to step outside my comfort zone because when I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I felt so alone, and I didn’t know how I was going to get through it. And I don’t want anybody to ever have to feel that way. Not just with cancer, but anything that their going through. The thought of people going through it alone, it should never be that way. And I want everyone to know that there is hope and that with hope, you can get through anything.

Those words open our film, A Brave Hope.  Here’s the film’s storyline: A Brave Hope is an inspirational story about an ordinary person overcoming extraordinary circumstances, and she did so by relying on faith, hope, and love.  Rebekah Hughes learned to find joy and purpose despite the pain caused by the family turmoil of divorce, domestic violence, mental illness, addiction, abandonment, and cancer. 

Let me back this story up 12 years.  I was 23-years-old, living in Southern Oregon, and narrowing down my choices for college. I wanted to study nursing and my goal was to become an oncology nurse.  I don’t really know why, I think God just put that on my heart.

Some years before, I had traveled the world and lived stints in Mexico, Germany, and Ireland. But I felt it was time to buckle down and prepare for a career.  However, my grand plans shattered when I got diagnosed with stage one breast cancer. 

Life got put on hold.

Within a year-and-a-half, I had a double mastectomy, reconstruction surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and even open-heart surgery due to a congenital defect only detected because I had to get echo-cardiograms for my cancer treatment. In a weird way, cancer had saved my life.

After what felt like a whirlwind of trauma and treatments, my doctors declared me “cancer-free.”  I wanted to start living again and so I decided to try to start a new life chapter. I packed my little red Geo Metro and moved down to Southern California. 

Soon after, I met Joel and we fell madly in love.  We married about a year later. 

Oh, life looked so bright! We were filled with big bright plans and goals. The future was ours!

Then we smashed head first into a stone wall.

Just eight months into our new wedded bliss, I was re-diagnosed with stage four breast cancer.  The cancer had spread to my kidneys, lungs, liver, spine, and at least nine tumors in my brain. After looking at my scans, one oncologist predicted four to six months to live, and that was with treatment. 

I was 26 years old. 

Those big bright plans?  They shattered into a thousand pieces and our future went black. 

That first year tormented us with fear–no terror–anger, confusion, overwhelm, and sorrow.  But something in me, something primal, rose up and said, “NO!”  This can’t be my end. I know God has more for me than this.  I chose to fight.  I chose to live. 

I got admitted as a patient at the City of Hope cancer center in Southern California. They attacked my cancer aggressively with 15-rounds of full brain radiation and a barrage of chemotherapy. It began working and within a year I was put in what they call a “near-complete remission”!  Because it’s stage four cancer (i.e. no cure), they can’t say a complete remission.  But obviously, we were thrilled.

In time, we learned to stand again. Then we learned to walk and then run. 

But life is quite different now.  In many ways, cancer has helped us. It’s changed us into different people, people we’d likely not be had this tragedy not invaded our lives.  I’m not saying I’m thankful for the cancer or I’m glad I got it. I still pray for complete deliverance every day.  But it’s here.  This is life now and Joel and I are learning how to mine out all the hidden blessings that are there if you have eyes to see.  

One of those hidden blessings is how something like cancer forces you to re-evaluate your priorities in life and to really see what matters most, which is love.  It’s people.  It’s our relationships with God and others.  We can choose to allow our tragedies and pain to drive the car of our lives or we can use our pain to help others and create a story of redemption.

Joel and I believe that our pain is not for nothing.  We believe that our little story is part of a much, much bigger story, a Grand Story God is unfolding.  We can let our pain control our story and write us in as helpless victims or we can choose to use our pain as fuel and we can write ourselves into the story as heroes on a mission.

This type of thinking led Joel and me to start Rebekah’s Hope, which exists to help cancer fighters find hope through our authentic, hope-filled media.

It took time for our thinking on these issues to mature and formulate as it is today.  It’s taken a lot of standing, falling, crawling, standing, walking, falling, standing… well, you get the idea. 

Rebekah’s Hope really began with Joel’s first book, HELP! Someone I Love Has Cancer. Then he wrote his second book for spouses and caregivers, In Your Corner.  This was about 2018 and it’s when the idea to film a documentary on my story came about. Joel said he wanted to show the world that an ordinary person (uh, that’d be me) can learn to live an extraordinary story no matter what they’re facing.  He wanted to show the world that there is always hope.

Now, here’s what you need to know about me.  I’m the last person to speak up and pine for the spotlight.  I’ve always been super shy and quiet, so doing a feature film with me as the “star” was about as appealing as pulling my fingernails off with a pair of pliers.  But this new purpose in life–to help others–compelled me to move forward despite my internal dread. 

This is why my opening words in the film are “I’ve decided to step outside my comfort zone…” because I really was!  

We partnered with a talented filmmaker named Benjamin Koppin, and for the next two years, we filmed A Brave Hope.  We finished in 2019 and entered it into 23 film festivals around the country.  We got a bunch of Official Selections and we even won first place in seven festivals. We released the film to the public in 2021 and it’s had amazing reviews!

Since founding Rebekah’s Hope back in 2015, Joel’s gone on to write four more books aimed at helping people find hope through hard times.  We launched an extensive clothing line with over 50 anti-cancer, hope-filled shirts, hats, and home accessories.  We offer online courses on writing and we even created a totally unique series of cancer care packages that we call HOPEBoxes.  We call our lineup, Badass Camp. 

But we want to do more.  We want to connect one-on-one with those walking the cancer journey, and we want to help them learn to stand, walk, and run too. 

So we recently launched Beauty for Ashes. 

BFA is our cancer coaching and counseling program.  It’s a three-month cancer-related coaching and counseling program with both Joel and me.  We meet twice a month via Zoom or Google Meets (6x sessions total). Each meeting is 45-60 minutes long. We follow a game plan dealing with Grief, Acceptance, Emotions, Beliefs, and Purpose. But your personal needs are the top priority so this outline is highly flexible.

The goal of BFA is not just to help someone get through cancer in one piece as they were before cancer, but rather our shared goal is to use this as an opportunity to help them grow and transform into a hope-filled, badass fighters. Think of BFA as your therapist's office and as a life Bootcamp.

We do charge a very discounted fee for our time and resources.  But Beauty for Ashes is less than half what you would pay for a therapist or even a lay counselor, which usually books at $100+ an hour. And probably 99% of those people don’t have cancer and don’t fully understand the unique struggles associated with cancer and caregiving.  I’ve been fighting cancer for 12 years now, both stages 1 and 4.  Joel says I’ve earned several black belts in cancer combat. 

Who is BFA for?  If you have cancer or are loving someone with cancer AND you’re struggling to keep fear, anger, anxiety, depression, or despair under control then we think we can be a great help.  If you just feel lost and confused about life, and fearful of an unknown future in relation to cancer, we believe Beauty for Ashes can definitely help you. 

Still not sure or if you have other questions, you can book a FREE 20-minute consultation call.  Let’s talk!  We’d love to hear from you and see if we can help you (or a loved one). 

Click here to learn more about Beauty for Ashes.  See our program, our background qualifications, pricing, and commonly asked questions.  

With Love, 

Rebekah and Joel