A Uterine Cancer Survivor’s Journey
Strength, Dance, Storytelling — and the Meaning of the Moments In Between
There are conversations that inform.
And then there are conversations that stay with you.
Our recent conversation with Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith was the latter.
A Connection That Began with Dance
Deborah first connected with us not long after she arrived in Canada — when she reached out with her background in ballroom dance from South Africa.
There was something immediately recognizable in her presence.
Grounded. Thoughtful. Quietly strong.
What began as a connection through dance grew into something more — a friendship shaped not only by shared movement, but by shared experiences of life, family, and transition.
Two Families, One Moment
In the early years of that friendship, life brought both families to a similar place.
Robert’s mother was going through her own health challenges and ultimately succumbed to breast cancer.
And when our family needed something — when our father needed to be pulled outside of himself, outside of the grief — Deborah invited him, and ourselves, over for dinner.
It was a small thing, in the way that the most important things often are.
A meal. A table. People who cared.
That dinner is one of the reasons we understand, at a level beyond words, what community actually means.
Born with Club Feet. Third in South Africa.
Before she was a friend, before she was a teacher at danceScape, before any of what came after — Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith was a child in South Africa who was born with club feet.
Her feet curved inward. She wore casts. She was placed in ballet to correct them.
It worked.
She went to ballet school. And then, in her late teens, her mother finally allowed her to pursue ballroom — something she had wanted for years. She started at 18. By her early 30s, professionals were approaching her to turn professional.
She did.
In her first six months as a professional, she placed 7th in the country.
The following year, she and her partner placed 3rd in South Africa.
We share this not as a footnote.
We share it because it is the foundation of everything that followed — including how she responded when her body challenged her again, decades later.
If you have ever thought you started too late, or that your body was working against you, Deborah’s story begins long before the diagnosis.
It begins with a child in casts learning to dance.
When Life Shifts
About a year ago, Deborah was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
Like many, the early signs were subtle — fatigue, back pain, the kinds of symptoms that can be explained away in the flow of everyday life. She was working as a PSW (Personal Support Worker). She assumed she needed more sleep.
The diagnosis came on April 1st.
She thought, for a moment, it was a joke.
It wasn’t.
It was a shock — for her, for her husband Geoff, and for her children. She didn’t tell her children right away. They were writing exams. She didn’t want to disrupt them.
She waited three weeks.
Then one Sunday, she invited them for lunch. Got everything ready. Held herself together.
And finally brought them into the living room and said: “Guys, I can’t wait anymore. I have to tell you this.”
She told them she felt she must have done something to deserve it.
Her children corrected her immediately.
“You cannot think like that. If you think like that, you have to ask yourself — what did the nine-month-old baby do to get a diagnosis?”
The Turning Point: It Is Random
That moment — her children’s response — became one of the most important shifts in Deborah’s journey.
The instinct to assign cause, to find reason, to ask why — it is one of the most human responses to illness.
And it is also one of the most corrosive.
Her son Keaton, who is studying healthcare and women’s health, put it plainly:
“Mom, it’s random.”
Two words. And in them, something releases.
Not a loss of meaning. Not resignation.
A release of self-blame. A different relationship with uncertainty.
This is not a comfortable insight. But it may be one of the most liberating ones available to anyone walking through something they didn’t choose and couldn’t have prevented.
What Changes. What Matters.
Experiences like this have a way of reordering priorities.
Deborah spoke about family.
How Thursday night dinners became a standing ritual — and her sons made them a priority, and still do.
How relationships deepened.
How presence became more intentional.
And then she described something else — something that started as a small challenge and became something larger.
During the year of her treatment, she turned to her family and said: when Christmas comes, let’s each prepare something. A performance. Music, or whatever felt right. Individual, presented to each other.
She chose the ukulele.
She played. She sang.
She cried through the whole thing — so hard she could barely get through it.
And she was glad for every tear.
The following Christmas, they did it again. This time it became a jam session. Piano. Saxophone. Cello. Guitar. Voices. The girlfriends, the family, Geoff — all playing to their strengths, all in the same room.
They’ve done it twice more since then. Another session is coming.
This is not a metaphor for the Sakura Project.
This is the Sakura Project.
Moments created intentionally. Gathered while they can be gathered. Memory being made in real time, by people who decided that now matters more than someday.
Movement as Grounding
Through treatment and recovery, Deborah kept moving.
Not as performance.
Not as expectation.
Dancing. Walking — even when it meant simply walking around her house in the summer heat because going outside felt like too much.
Music.
Genealogy — falling down the rabbit hole of family history, which gave her mind somewhere to go, something to track, something to follow.
These weren’t escapes.
They were ways of staying present.
“Dancing is a wonderful thing,” she said simply.
She and Geoff would go to their local legion in Stoney Creek. Other dancers were there. The music played. And for those moments, the weight of everything else could be set down.
Creativity, Fear, and a Sasquatch
Deborah’s creative life extends well beyond the dance floor.
She has appeared in numerous film and television productions, with more coming — including DINOGEIST (available now on Tubi and Plex) and OUIJA SHARK 3 later this year.
And then there is the film she describes with particular delight.
She plays a character who teaches a Sasquatch how to do Tai Chi.
She had no Tai Chi experience.
She had watched some people practising in a park once. There was music over the scene, so no dialogue was required. She stood in front of someone in a Sasquatch costume and improvised instruction — “You’ve got to come on and bring out the other hand” — as though she had been teaching Tai Chi for years.
It is hilarious. It is also, in its own way, a perfect image.
You face what’s in front of you. You improvise. You find the rhythm. You keep going.
These films sit within a tradition where fear and humour coexist — where absurdity becomes a vessel for something human. We don’t always eliminate what frightens us. Sometimes we step into a scene with it, find the beat, and keep moving.
The Weight Families Carry
Deborah also shared her work as a Personal Support Worker — caring for seniors, including those living with dementia.
One woman she cared for was 104 years old.
What she described is something many families will recognize, whether or not they have words for it.
“You’re watching the person get worse. The need is becoming more. But you’re watching the family crumble at the same time.”
She has sat with families at the moment when a decision can no longer be postponed — when someone needs to say, clearly and without ambiguity: it is time to make this change.
Not because she is interfering.
Because she can see what the family, from inside the situation, cannot yet see.
“The biggest mistake I see is that family members think the situation is going to get better. And it never does. And you have to accept the new reality going forward.”
This is the work that requires both empathy and clarity — the ability to hold a family’s grief while also being the one who names what is true.
It is not a small thing to be that person for someone.
This resonates deeply with our own experience of navigating our father’s final years — the gradual changes, the heart attack that accelerated everything, the decisions that arrived before we felt ready for them. The moments when we needed someone who could hold both the emotional truth and the practical one.
Often, it is not just the individual who needs support — it is the entire family, navigating the emotional weight of what is happening together.
Time, Healing, and What Makes It Whole
Deborah’s story reflects something we’ve been exploring through Robert’s research initiative of The Tang Papers.
Medical care can extend time.
But time alone is not what makes a life feel whole.
Treatment may restore years. But it is connection, movement, ritual, and shared experience that restore coherence within those years — that make the time mean something.
This is the thread running through the Tang Papers, our ongoing research program exploring why systems — including human lives — lose and regain coherence.
You can explore that work here: www.rober-tang.com
The research gives language to what Deborah lived: healing is not just a biological process — it is a relational one.
The Sakura Project — Impermanence as Invitation
Cherry blossoms are often understood as symbols of impermanence.
But they are equally an invitation.
To gather now. To reflect now. To cherish what is here while it is here.
Deborah’s story — the diagnosis, the dinners, the ukulele through tears, the jam sessions, the Sasquatch — is not a story about fragility.
It is a story about what people do when they recognize that time is not infinite.
They make dinners a priority. They pick up the ukulele. They step onto the dance floor. They say “I can’t wait anymore.”
That is the spirit the Sakura Project gathers around.
The danceScape Endowment Fund
Through the danceScape Endowment Fund, our intention is to make the kind of community Deborah experienced more accessible — not only to those who can afford it, but to individuals and families navigating transition, loss, and renewal.
Dance. Movement. Expression. Intergenerational connection.
Not as luxury.
As necessity.
Because while medicine may extend time, it is community that helps us live fully within it.
An Invitation
Deborah plans to join us at an upcoming Sakura gathering. 🌸
If her story resonates with you and you would like to connect with her directly:
📘 Facebook: Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith 📩 Email: Available upon request
When her Tai Chi and Sasquatch film is released, we’re also considering a community pop-up event — a chance to gather, watch together, and share in the kind of laughter that comes from someone who has been through something hard and decided to teach a Sasquatch Tai Chi anyway.
If you’d be interested in joining, let us know in the comments or send us a message.
Capturing Fleeting Conversations
What this conversation reinforced for us is something simple.
Stories matter.
Not only the polished ones. Not only the ones with clear resolutions.
The real ones. The ones where someone cries through the ukulele. Where a family gathers on a Sunday because waiting three more weeks isn’t possible. Where a diagnosis arrives on April Fool’s Day and isn’t a joke.
Through the Sakura Project and the Endowment Fund, we are actively seeking to connect with members of the danceScape community — and individuals across other communities — who carry stories worth capturing.
Stories of transition. Resilience. Creativity. Connection.
Captured while they can be. Shared while they mean something. Offered in the hope that they land for someone who needs them.
What helps people cope with a serious diagnosis beyond medical treatment? Connection, movement, and community play a critical role — helping restore meaning, stability, and a sense of coherence during uncertain times. Deborah’s experience reflects what research increasingly supports: that healing is not only biological. It is relational.
A Final Reflection
Deborah’s story is not just about survival.
It is about how we respond to uncertainty. How we reconnect with what matters. How we support others through their hardest moments. And how we continue to create — even in the presence of fear.
She was born with club feet and danced her way to third in South Africa.
She walked around her house in the summer heat and called it recovery.
She played ukulele and cried in front of her family and did it again the following year.
She stood in front of a Sasquatch and found the rhythm.
And at the end of our conversation, Robert looked at her and said:
“Shall we dance?”
Deborah Responds:
Yes.
Let’s dance.
🎥 Full interview available on YouTube — including Deborah’s reflections on caregiving, family, creativity, and her journey through uterine cancer.
🌸 We look forward to gathering together at the Sakura Project, Cherry Trees at Spencer Smith Park, Burlington, ON, Saturday, May 2, 10:30 – 11:15 am.
If Deborah’s story resonates with you, our upcoming Open House on May 14 is one way to experience the kind of community that supports people through life’s transitions — not just in dance, but in connection, movement, and shared experience. No experience needed. No partner required. Just come in and try. 👉 Reserve your spot
About danceScape danceScape is a ballroom and Latin dance studio serving Burlington, Hamilton, Oakville, Waterdown, Dundas, Stoney Creek, and Grimsby. The danceScape Endowment Fund supports access to arts, movement, and cultural programming for individuals and families navigating life transitions.
www.dancescape.com | www.dancescape.org | Research: www.robert-tang.com
