DE QUEEN, Ark. – Only a few months after their wedding day, a local couple opens up about their battle with breast cancer.
“And every time she’d break down and cry and that takes a little piece of you every time,” says Kelsey Johnson. “It hurt to watch her go through that.”
Their fight isn’t just about the cancer. It’s about another war associated with it and how one action from Kelsey and Charlie Johnson and a photographer changed their lives and touched the hearts of more people than they could have ever imagined.
The pictures tell the story. A couple in love.
“I do know that I love her more than anything in the world,” Kelsey says.
“I can honestly say that I have loved him since I was a teenager,” adds Charlie.
Kelsey and Charlie posed in a field. Each flash of the camera reveals a little more of their story.
“I don’t know if the picture shows but I stare off into the sunset and I struggle — okay — I’m really struggling,” he says.
He reaches for his wife’s hair. The time had come.
“I was at work and it was just like all of a sudden. I just did this number and it was a handful,” she explains.
Charlie is battling breast cancer. But there’s another war to be waged and a message to share.
“Our hair. We get to fix it, we get to color it. It makes us feel pretty. And when it starts coming out in handfuls. It’s a lot to take in,” she continues.
Kelsey agonizes with shaving his wife’s head and struggles with his faith in God.
“That’s hard to believe that your wife has cancer. But at this point I’m arguing with him saying this isn’t fair, this needs to stop. I’ve done enough in my life – I could deserve it. She didn’t,” he says, then keeps cutting. “There’s a picture that shows part of her head shaven. That’s at the moment that I had to stop. I needed the break just to catch my breath.”
“I continued until I couldn’t no more and I asked the hairdresser to step in and fix it up because I was not doing a very good job and I was emotional at this point, ” adds Kelsey.
The outcome was worth every tear, with hundreds and thousands offering support.
On photographer Mandy Parks’ Facebook page…
“You see the responses from people. They say thank you I needed this today. I had to go to work today and my wig was so bothering me. And they were so afraid to go bald,” says Charlie.
“It touched some people in different ways, not just the cancer world but other people… and that’s a success,” Kelsey says.
It’s a success story of love and empowerment.
Kelsey told me he initially said no to the photo shoot but changed his mind because he knew it meant a lot to Charlie. But he said it’s still hard to look at the photos because he still gets emotional.
Mandy Parks Photography shot all those pictures at no charge.
