My mom, Teresa Arthur, passed away on July 2nd, at the age of 73.

I think this picture captures her zest for life so accurately - she was a force to be reckoned with, unafraid of most things, led by joy - she lit up a room when she walked into it.

She is the reason Overlooked exists, and was Overlooked’s biggest fan.

In tribute to her, what you'll hear on the podcast feed this week is the very first episode of the show, which focuses on a moment that she and I shared in a hospital room, where it became painfully clear to me what the stakes were in dealing with this disease.

It was the first time I really experienced a visceral fear of cancer.

Two weeks ago, that fear was realized, when she passed away, eight years after the initial diagnosis of ovarian cancer.

As her daughter, and as a journalist, Mom's diagnosis raised all kinds of questions. First, about her disease. Then about ovarian cancer more broadly - and then on to the ovaries themselves, and why we know relatively little about these organs. After that first season, I continued to make Overlooked to try and answer those questions, and moved on even further to other women's health conditions.

Overlooked's tagline is women’s health can’t wait. It's based on the idea that what we don’t know about women’s health can kill us, so there must be urgency around research, more funding, and the basic and powerful act of just taking women's health seriously. I know we're slowly moving the needle around conditions like ovarian cancer and endometriosis, but we’ve still got a long, long way to go.

After that initial diagnosis eight years ago, my mom had multiple recurrences of the disease. If you listen to the full first season, you’ll hear an episode about the shock of that first recurrence and what happened next. Mom put up an extraordinary fight, and beat the odds for survival. It took a toll on her, despite her strength and outlook on life. Last year, we also talked about survivorship - what it means to live with cancer as a constant. At last count, she had something like 40 sessions of chemotherapy through the time she had been living with ovarian cancer.

Throughout this time, she was a fierce advocate for ovarian cancer patients like herself. She put her science background to use and became a patient partner in research too.

She was a high school chemistry teacher and a poet, a grandmother to seven kids, a dedicated foodie, a talented seamstress - and so much more.

If you'd like to read more about her life, her obituary is here.​

Wishing you the best of health,

Golda

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