Shironda Goree: Carrying Her Mother’s Legacy Forward

— By Megan Brown, Marketing & Communications Support

December 19, 2025

In her job as a healthcare financial navigator, Shironda Goree works directly with cancer patients, helping them understand insurance options, financial responsibilities, and access to care. It’s work that’s deeply personal.

“It’s very rewarding,” Shironda says, “because I have my own experience, I’m able to help guide them.” Long before she received her own breast cancer diagnosis, cancer had already shaped the course of her life.

Learning Cancer’s Reality

Shironda’s first exposure to breast cancer came through her mother, who was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer at age 48. At the time, Shironda was 23. “I didn’t know anybody that had breast cancer, not extended family, not a friend’s mom. It was just my mom.”

Her mother lived only eight months after diagnosis. “She was my best friend,” Shironda says. “I was in complete denial that she was going to go.”

Her mother participated in clinical trials involving Tamoxifen. “It was ironic,” she reflects. “The same drug my mom was on, years later, I was on it.”

Receiving Her Own Diagnosis

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Shironda, like many others, delayed her mammogram, and in the meantime her body began sending warning signs. “I knew something was off,” she says. “I was exhausted all the time. I was sleeping in my car on my breaks.”

When a colleague mentioned an abnormal mammogram, it prompted Shironda to schedule hers. The next day, she received a voicemail asking her to call back right away. A radiologist got on the phone. “She told me, ‘I believe you have breast cancer,’” Shironda recalls. “I was at work, standing in the hallway, just bawling.” Her thoughts went straight to her mother.

Everything that followed happened rapidly. Initially diagnosed with Stage 1 invasive ductal carcinoma, Shironda sought a second opinion at Mayo Clinic and her cancer was upstaged to Stage 2. She didn’t hesitate when it came time to begin treatment. “I told them, ‘Let’s rock and roll. Let’s get this out of me,’” she says. “I kept thinking about how fast things went for my mom.”

Complications, Recovery, and Unwavering Support

In June 2021, Shironda underwent a bilateral mastectomy. The surgeries didn’t end there. Shironda experienced severe complications, including hematomas, infections, necrosis, and massive blood loss. “At one point, I lost nearly half the blood in my body. I was dying,” she remembers.

Because it was during COVID, only one person could be with her in the hospital. Shironda has two fathers: her biological dad in Miami and her dad in Milwaukee from when her mom remarried. The latter was with her in the hospital and from home, her 18-year-old daughter became her motivator. “She didn’t let me sit and cry,” Shironda says. “She’d say, ‘Mommy, we don’t have time for that. You have to get better.’”

Between her daughter and fathers, Shironda found the strength to recover from 11 surgeries, rebuild her mobility through cancer rehabilitation, and move forward.

Finding ABCD and Becoming a Mentor

Shironda first learned about ABCD at the Sista Strut walk years before her diagnosis. Once she was diagnosed, she contacted ABCD for support and while the Mentor she was matched with wasn’t quite the right fit, the concept of peer support stayed with her. “I felt like my experience could help somebody else,” she says.

Since becoming a Mentor in September 2024, Shironda has supported four Participants, offering empathy and guidance on topics from surgery preparation and recovery to dating after mastectomy, navigating body changes, and advocating for quality care.

“I’ve been the patient, the daughter, the confidant and friend, the caretaker, the professional, and the advocate,” she says. “I’m able to extend my knowledge in different avenues and facets to help people. When you have cancer, there’s so many things you don’t need to be worrying about.”

She recalls one conversation she had with a Participant who was dating after breast cancer. “I told her, make sure you’re serious about the person first and then when you’re comfortable, let them know. She was struggling with the same thing I was.”

Turning Loss into Purpose

Today, Shironda is deeply involved in breast cancer advocacy. She volunteers, fundraises, speaks on panels, travels to Washington, DC, and proudly participates in ABCD events like the annual Catwalk for a Cause hosted by the Institute of Beauty and Wellness.

“I want people to have their mothers, grandmothers, and sisters as long as they can,” she says. “That’s been my driving force to get awareness out there, educate people, and be a resource or a support system advocate.”

Recently, Shironda celebrated another milestone: finishing Tamoxifen and closing a chapter that began with her mother taking the drug decades earlier. When she attended a conference and learned that survival rates for inflammatory breast cancer had improved, she felt a wave of pride. “I was so happy to learn that people are living longer now. I know my mom was part of that.”

Through ABCD, Shironda continues to transform loss into purpose, ensuring no one faces breast cancer alone and that shared experience becomes a source of hope. “It’s great to have ABCD where we’re able to talk to other women going through it across country. I’ve usually had someone out of state, and it’s fantastic we’re able to connect with anyone who needs some guidance or somebody to talk to, because we all need that sometimes.”

Shironda was diagnosed in 2021 with Stage 2 ER+ PR+ HER2- invasive ductal carcinoma. Her treatment included a bilateral mastectomy and hormone therapy medication (Tamoxifen).