The Day I Realized Beauty, Wellness, and Cancer Could Exist Together

By Kelly Rovetto, Founder of Re-Femme

There is a moment in every woman’s cancer journey when she looks in the mirror and barely recognizes herself. For me, that moment came early — long before my body adjusted, long before my heart processed what I was facing.

Cancer didn’t just threaten my life.
It threatened my identity.

It took my breasts.
It took my hair.
It took my lashes.
It drained my energy.
And slowly, quietly, it started stripping away pieces of my femininity.

I didn’t feel like myself.
I didn’t feel like a woman.
And when you don’t feel like a woman, you reach for anything that can remind you of who you were before the diagnosis.

The Moment Everything Shifted

One day, as I stood in my bathroom staring at my thinning hair and bare lashes, something inside me shifted. I realized:

Beauty, wellness, and cancer weren’t enemies.
They could coexist — and even support each other.

The world tells women in treatment things like:

• “Just focus on getting through it.”
• “Beauty shouldn’t matter right now.”
• “You’re strong — that’s what counts.”

But strength and beauty are not mutually exclusive.

You can want to survive and still want to feel beautiful doing it.
You can fight for your life and still long to feel like yourself.
You can be brave and devastated at the same time.

And that realization changed everything for me.

Beauty Wasn’t Vanity — It Was Survival

Putting on clean makeup wasn’t shallow.
Wearing a pair of gentle, chemo-safe lashes wasn’t superficial.
Using a soothing scalp serum wasn’t indulgent.

It was healing.
It was grounding.
It was reclaiming something cancer tried to take away.

There is power in looking in the mirror and seeing even a small spark of yourself staring back — especially when so much of you feels lost.

I realized beauty is not the opposite of cancer.
Sometimes, it’s the antidote to the parts of cancer that break your spirit.

Why the Re-Femme Registry Had to Exist

When I reached for those things — lashes that didn’t irritate my skin, makeup I knew was clean and safe, moisturizers gentle enough for chemo-changed skin — I realized something else:

No one was curating this for women like us.
No one was gathering the things that help us feel human again.
No one was saying, “You deserve to feel beautiful through this.”

So I created the Re-Femme Registry.

Not as a shopping list.
Not as a collection of random products.

But as a lifeline — a comfort — a way for women to hold onto pieces of themselves when cancer tries so hard to take them away.

Inside the registry you’ll find:

• Clean makeup for sensitive, treatment-affected skin
• Lashes for women who lose their lashes during chemo
• Beauty items that restore confidence and a sense of self
• Wellness essentials that soothe and support the body
• Small luxuries that bring softness back into your routine

Because beauty matters.
Because feeling like yourself matters.
Because femininity is not erased by cancer — even when it feels like it is.

You Can Get Through This — And Still Feel Beautiful

If you’re in the hardest season of your life right now, hear this:

Cancer does not get to decide who you are.
And it does not get to take away your femininity.

You are allowed to reach for beauty.
You are allowed to want softness during a hard season.
You are allowed to feel good — even when everything around you feels heavy.

The Re-Femme Registry exists because I lived this.
Because I needed this.
Because you deserve this, too.

You are still a woman.
You are still whole.
You are still beautiful — even on the days you can’t see it yet.

And I promise:
You will find yourself again.