Her head was shaved like a boot camp Marine and an 8-inch scar cut across the top. Her weight had ballooned from 145 pounds to 200. Dark hair sprouted like a mustache above her lip.
Heather Roberts will tell you she was no beauty queen while undergoing cancer treatments three years ago.
She’ll even tell you — using a description that reveals her humor — that she looked a bit like a “troll.”
Typical Heather.
Today’s Omaha World-Herald story made me pause. I want to meet her. I want to meet Heather.
I want to tell this 32-year-old Omaha woman – who is still fighting brain cancer – that she is beautiful, courageous and an inspiration.
Tears streamed down my face. I wiped them and read on.
On Wednesday, four years after her diagnosis, she will walk the runway during spring Omaha Fashion Week, along with 40 other cancer survivors. The Survivors Style Show will raise money for a Methodist Hospital program that helps cancer patients look their best.
The show aims to make a point: While cancer can change a woman’s appearance, she can still be beautiful, and her inner beauty, her spirit, remain.
For Heather that soul, that essence, is humor, optimism and compassion. None of those have faded, her family says, and never will.
Read more about Heather’s journey in “Survivors model will live,” written by World-Herald staff writer Michael O’Connor.
Click here to read short bios from other model survivors.
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Survivors Style Show details (Opening show of the spring Omaha Fashion Week)
What: Runway show featuring 40 cancer survivors wearing clothing and accessories from local boutiques.
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Where: Kaneko, 1111 Jones St., Omaha
Benefiting: Half the proceeds will benefit Inner Beauty: A Specialty Salon for Cancer Survivors at Methodist Estabrook Cancer Center. Inner Beauty opened last year and provides wig fitting, skin, hair and nail consultations and other services.
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WIN VIP TICKETS TO OMAHA FASHION WEEK’S SPRING SHOW
Tell us on our forums why you’re one fashionable mom (or dad – we don’t discriminate) and need a night out on the town. We have a pair of VIP tickets to the Thursday and Friday shows and a pair of second row seats for the big finale Saturday.
