The Mother's Day I Knew Something Was Wrong — And What It Taught Me About Choosing Joy
Originally shared in the First Saturdays newsletter, May 2026.
This image is from Mother's Day 2023, I was six months postpartum and quietly terrified.
I'd had some testing. Nothing confirmed yet — but I knew the thing that the doctor's weren't ready to say out loud just yet.
I sat at that table, watching my kids, watching my husband, and I cried. Quietly, the way you do when you're trying to hold it together in front of the people you love most.
He looked at me and said: let's just enjoy this day.
One week later: breast cancer diagnosis.
What That Day Taught Me
I think about that Mother's Day often — not with grief, but with something closer to gratitude. Because my husband was right. Not in a way that meant ignoring what was coming. But in a way that understood something I've since built an entire brand around:
Joy and fear can sit at the same table. You don't have to choose one to honor the other.
That capacity — to be present with the people you love, even when you're holding something heavy — carried me through treatment. Through the surgeon's belated apology. Through the silence that follows a diagnosis that nobody in your circle has had at 30-something, six months after having a baby.
It also taught me something about Black women's health that I couldn't unknow.
The Thing Nobody Talks About
Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer at a younger age. We're more likely to be dismissed when we raise concerns. We're more likely to face delays in diagnosis — like the year I spent being told I was too young to worry about it.
And we're more likely to face all of this without a community that's had the same experience. The support groups I found were full of women decades older than me. The resources assumed I had time, stability, a certain kind of access. None of them were built for a young Black mother six months postpartum who was trying to hold it together at a restaurant while her kids colored at the table.
That absence is why Spectrum Glassware exists.
Why These Glasses Look the Way They Do
When I designed the Zuzu Champagne Flutes, I was thinking about that table. About the gradient of Black women's skin tones. About breast cancer awareness rendered not in clinical pink ribbons, but in something beautiful enough to want to hold.
The color is intentional. Every set of Spectrum glassware is designed to sit in the hands of Black women and say: you are seen here. Not as a patient. Not as a statistic. As a woman who deserves beauty, celebration, and the kind of community that protects her while she celebrates.
A portion of every purchase supports organizations working to change outcomes for Black women's health.
For the Mothers Holding Something Heavy
If you're reading this and you're in that place — the one where you know something but can't say it yet, or where you're trying to hold joy and fear at the same time — I want you to know that both things can be true.
You can cry quietly in a restaurant and still have a beautiful day.
You can be terrified and still be present.
You can be in the middle of something hard and still deserve a table worth gathering at.
That's what I was building toward when I started Spectrum. Not just a product. A reason to gather — on purpose, with intention, in full knowledge that time is something we protect.
Give her a glass that sees her.
Cheers to more life.
— Ariel
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The Zuzu Champagne Flutes are available now at spectrumglass.shop. Handblown, lead-free, in the blush-to-brown gradients that honor the full spectrum of Black women's beauty. A portion of every purchase supports Black women's health.
[Shop the Zuzu Champagne Flutes]