Danielle Strickland has spent her life on the front lines. As a Salvation Army officer with deep roots in the UK and global church, she has planted churches, launched anti-human trafficking initiatives, and spoken at conferences from London to Sydney. She is the kind of person who runs toward injustice, not away from it. The kind of person who has stared down traffickers and systemic evil without blinking.
Then cancer came for her. And it brought fear with it.
The Diagnosis
The diagnosis was rare — low-grade mucinous neoplasm of the appendix. Fewer than a thousand people in the United States are diagnosed with this form of cancer each year. Rare sounds like it should be less frightening, but it is often more. Rare means fewer specialists. Fewer treatment protocols. Less certainty about what works.
Danielle was referred to a specialised treatment centre in San Diego for a procedure called HIPEC — a two-fold surgery where they remove affected tissues and then perform localised heated chemotherapy directly inside the abdomen. It is one of the most intense procedures in oncology. It requires a surgeon who has done it hundreds of times and a patient who is willing to endure what comes after.
The Fear
For a woman who had spent her career being strong for other people, cancer forced an unfamiliar vulnerability. The fear was not just about the disease. It was about the loss of control. The loss of agency. The inability to fight this the way she had fought everything else — with strategy, courage, and sheer force of will.
Cancer does not respond to willpower. It does not care about your CV. It does not respect the fact that you have changed the world. It just grows.
The fear of that — of being unable to do anything — was as painful as the diagnosis itself.
The Encounter
But Danielle Strickland had built something over decades of ministry that she did not fully appreciate until she needed it: community.
The moment her diagnosis became known, the global Christian community mobilised. A fundraiser was launched to cover the treatment costs. But more importantly, prayer was launched. From UK churches where she had spoken. From Salvation Army corps where she had served. From justice organisations she had founded. From friends and strangers and people who had read her books or heard her talks and felt compelled to carry her when she could not carry herself.
The fear began to give way. Not because of positive thinking. Not because the prognosis improved. Because love showed up. And love — real, practical, embodied love in the form of a thousand people praying — has a physical effect on fear. It shrinks it. It displaces it. It makes the room feel less dark.
The Treatment
Danielle underwent the HIPEC procedure. It was brutal. The recovery was long. The physical toll was everything the doctors had warned about and more.
But through it all, she was held. By her community. By her faith. By a God who had met her on the front lines of injustice and was now meeting her on the front lines of her own body's battle.
What This Means for You
If you are the kind of person who is always strong for others — the one who holds everyone else together — cancer has a way of exposing the limits of self-reliance. You cannot power through a tumour. You cannot strategise your way past a scan result.
But you can be loved. And sometimes the greatest act of courage is not fighting harder. It is letting other people fight for you.
Danielle Strickland built a community to fight trafficking. That same community fought her fear. If you have people around you — a church, a small group, a family, even one person who will pray — let them in. Fear does not survive surrounded by that much love.