Breast Cancer Awareness
Soon the Cure
Our annual breast cancer awareness campaign. It started with a song, and with a mother who asked her daughter to finally sing it.
How It Began
It Started With a Song
Dianna Hobbs wrote a song called “Soon” in 2008. It was a promise that things would get better. She never planned to release it, and for four years it sat.
In 2011 her mother, Annie Brinson, found a lump at home. She was 60. The diagnosis was triple negative breast cancer, an aggressive form that does not answer to the usual treatments. Two years earlier, Brinson had buried her own older sister, who died of breast cancer.
Brinson asked her daughter to release “Soon.” She said it was her favorite soothing melody. Hobbs put it out for her.
That year WUFO 1080 AM, Buffalo’s urban gospel station at the time, chose it as the theme song of its breast cancer awareness campaign. Hobbs said she had not expected it, and that it was the moment she understood why she had been given the song at all, “as a gift for others who need help getting through rough times.”
Brinson’s cancer was caught at Stage 1. She finished treatment and has stayed in remission.
Hobbs named the campaign after the song. It has run every October since.
“Although it wasn’t easy, I knew God would take care of me.” Annie Brinson
She leaned on her faith in God’s healing power, on devotionals including Sarah Young’s Jesus Calling, and on the songs that kept her steady. Hobbs is among the endorsers printed in that book.
Why We Keep Going
The Numbers Behind This Campaign
38%
Black women die of breast cancer at a rate 38 percent higher than white women, even though they are diagnosed with it slightly less often.
10–15%
Share of all breast cancers that are triple negative, the form Annie Brinson was diagnosed with. It is more common in Black women, it grows faster, and it carries fewer treatment options.
92%
Five-year relative survival for triple negative breast cancer when it is found before it has spread. Hers was found at Stage 1.
Sources: American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, April 2025 and American Cancer Society.
Every Year
What This Campaign Does
We press for early detection
Annie Brinson found her lump at Stage 1, and that is the reason she is still here. We say so every year, as plainly as we can.
We advocate for access
We push for awareness, advocacy, and access in communities of color, where women are diagnosed later and die more often.
We send care packages
We put together packages for women entering treatment, so that somebody they have never met shows up for them.
We pray and we stay
We give away faith-building resources and we pray with women before screening, during treatment, and long after.
What You Can Do Right Now
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends a mammogram every two years for women ages 40 to 74. If you have a family history or another risk, ask your doctor about starting earlier or screening more often. Read the recommendation.
Know how your own body normally looks and feels. Annie Brinson found her lump herself, at home, and that is why this story has the ending it has.
Give to This Work Request Prayer
Empowering Everyday Women Ministries, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Gifts are tax-deductible as allowed by law. Nothing on this page is medical advice. Talk with your doctor about your own screening.