I was in year 12 at the time and familiar with hopping off the school bus to be collected by Mum and driven the remaining 20 minutes home to farm life in Carabost - it had been the same dance for nine years.

But on that day, Dad was driving, and she was sitting in the passenger seat, pale. Something was wrong.

"Stage three breast cancer," her voice cracked. I don't remember much that was said after that.

It has been almost five years since that morbid drive home, and yet, while I always considered my mother to be a strong role model, how she handled the events that followed set a standard of strength like none other.

The advice from the surgeon was simple, "take it easy," as Mum was discharged from the hospital the morning following her mastectomy in early June.

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That evening she caught everyone off guard - my dad, sister and I - when she marched through the living room with four logs of wood, determined to stoke the fire herself.

That determination, to carry on completing what she saw as "motherly" duties at the same capacity she did prior to her diagnosis, is something I will never truly understand.

"For me to be up and around, still doing what I needed to do for my family, was helping me to be strong and to get through my recovery," she said.

"It was also a good mindset for me to show you girls that just because something can hit you like a rock like being diagnosed with any type of cancer, that you are both strong and you've both got my will to do the same thing if it ever came around."

This is not to say I never saw Mum break down, because I did, and I can't assume how many times that may have happened behind closed doors.

But never did she let the cancer control her narrative, not even when chemotherapy had come to claim her hair.

One day she came into the kitchen with Dad's clippers and handed them to me. "Just shave it off," she said.

"I just didn't want to go through that transition of just having it just fall out," she said.

"It was just a matter of taking that next step myself."

It was in September 2018 when Mum finished her treatment, after more than a year of enduring several types of chemotherapy treatment at the Riverina Cancer Clinic.

But looking back, what I initially thought would be remembered as a tragic event has not only proven my mother to be the strongest woman in my life, but has set the standard of the woman I someday wish to be.

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