"We Don’t Wear Pink, We Wear A Black Heart For Jess": Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness And The Story Of Love & Light From Jon And Jess Beard

It has been nearly 16 years since Jon Beard hung up his Terps lacrosse jersey, but little did he know the heart and grit it took to one day walk on that team would be the same sources of strength he would need to face the hardest times of his life with the person he loved more than anything. 

Growing up on his family farm with both parents and two uncles as Maryland alumni, Jon always envisioned himself as a member of the Maryland men’s lacrosse program. 

“Since I was a little hatchling, I always loved Maryland and dreamed of one day playing lacrosse there,” Jon said. “I wasn’t the biggest kid, but I made up for it with extremely fast farm feet and a relentless heart. My teammates in high school told me I was too small to play at Maryland, but that just made me want it more.”

Fortunately for Jon, a man by the name of Brian Duncan noticed his heart and gave him the chance to quarterback his offense at Essex Community College—a place where he could stay on the path to follow his dream to Maryland. Together, Jon and coach Brian Duncan went on to a 19-0 season, the 2004 NJCAA national title and the 2005 Offensive Player of the Year award for Jon. 

After two years there, Jon was accomplished enough to follow his dream and was invited to earn a roster spot on Maryland’s team. 

“A lot of what I put in going through this with Jess was that same type of heart, that type of persistence (from working his way to Maryland),” Jon said. “One of the things that we were so attracted to each other about was our passion, heart and our willingness to overcome adversity.”

As Jon recalls, his heart truly became alive in 2014 when an angel walked into his work and his life.

“When I first saw Jess, she was absolutely glowing. She was beautiful and she had a fierce look in her eyes that shot right through my soul.”

Jess was no stranger to the athlete mentality herself. At Northeast High School in Pasadena, she was a captain for the soccer and swim team and was an All-American High School Lacrosse player. 

Recently, her former teammate and current Northeast soccer coach Kaley Walker gave a touching tribute to Jess.

“She suited up for games like she was suiting up for battle,” Walker said. “From the time the clock started to count backwards to the ending buzzer, that girl never gave up. She never stopped. The amount of pride she put in her play radiated to her teammates. She was a warrior.” 

Jon put up many attempts to impress her, but was met with nothing more than cold glares. Eventually, he learned the key to Jess’ heart was her dog Monkey, so he struck up a conversation about her beloved companion. From there, he was in. The two soon began dating and were inseparable ever since.

“I felt like our souls just needed each other,” Jon said. 

On April 18, 2015, Jon’s 30th birthday, he proposed. The couple tied the knot in October of 2016 in a beautiful wedding on Jon’s family farm in Davidsonville and lived in bliss as newlyweds.

Just over a year into marriage, on Dec. 1, 2017, when most couples are planning their futures with a house with a white picket fence and 2.5 kids, Jon and Jess were hearing the worst news of their young lives. Jess had been diagnosed with Stage II Triple Negative Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. 

She had breast cancer. She had the pink cancer, the color she always detested. 

The couple’s lives were turned upside down, but instead of feeling sorry for themselves, their relentless hearts and warrior mentality helped them face unimaginable challenges together. Jess approached the diagnosis like she did with everything else in her life, with her head held high and with a toughness unlike any other. 

“2018 was the hardest year for us but we kinda had that athlete mentality where we just had to grind through this and we could see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Jon said.

Jess underwent chemotherapy and got a mastectomy and, by the end of the year, was declared cancer-negative. Early in 2019, she decided to get a second mastectomy so she wouldn’t have to worry.

“We thought that was the last thing she was going to have to do and that we beat cancer,” Jon said. 

A month later, Jess went to the doctor for a stomach issue and found out that her breast cancer had metastasized and spread to her liver. Once again, everything changed for the Beards.

“In Stage II, every treatment you do they talk about the percentage of it coming back, that’s how you make your decisions,” Jon said. “And now with metastatic, the numbers completely flip. There is like less than a 15 percent chance you survive five years. That’s a really scary thing.”

“Her full-time job became fighting cancer while I worked a full-time job at Accu-Tech,” he added.

There is no cure for metastatic breast cancer yet. The only course of action is to go on one treatment until it stops working, then try another, and keep repeating the process. The treatments aren’t a cure, but rather a way to mitigate symptoms and to extend lives. 

In Jess’ case, she was on six different types of chemotherapy before she was put on Trodelvy, a newer treatment specifically for people with triple negative breast cancer, for nearly two years. She was the first person in Anne Arundel county to receive it. In total, she underwent seven different forms of chemotherapy, 97 total chemo infusions plus six weeks of oral chemotherapy. To combat the side effects, she would take five shots of Granix in addition to weekly acupuncture and chiropractic visits. 

For two consecutive Mondays, Jess would go in for the Trodelvy treatment and then have to deal with brutal side effects for the next few days each time. The Beards had the third week off and would spend it traveling, spending time together and living life to the fullest before it was time for another two weeks of treatment.

Jess kept her same warrior mentality throughout it all.

“She had that look in her eyes like she could truckstick Derrick Henry and it just shot right through you,” Jon said. “It was like Rocky riding Seabiscuit at the 1980 Olympics to beat Russia. It was inspiring.”

Jess also dove headfirst into being an advocate and a friend to people who were going through similar things to her. 

She created a program named Ears Over Fears with Executive Director of Respite Retreats Wendy Letow. The organization helps children affected by cancer openly discuss and bravely face their fears with the help of the classic Disney mouse ears. According to Jon, Jess always had an adoration for Mickey Mouse ears and would buy them in bulk on their trips to Disney, so it made sense for that to be the artifact of choice to help young kids cope with their diagnosis. Now run by Letow, the organization is still active today, helping both children with cancer and children of people with cancer. 

Additionally, Jess was active in the Ulman Foundation, an organization dedicated to creating a community of support for young adults with cancer and their loved ones. She also supported multiple fundraisers and organizations for increased awareness about metastatic breast cancer such as Metavivor. 

Jess shared pretty much every step of her cancer journey on Instagram, not afraid to hold any detail back. Through her posts, people from all over the world were able to gain inspiration from Jess’ strength, her candor and her fight.

“I would read every post and every comment and it would inspire me,” Jon said. “She truly became this person that she always wanted to become. She became this person that was just such a light, she was so tough and the pain that she overcame was unimaginable.”

Through her online community, Jess developed meaningful relationships with women across the world who were also suffering from metastatic breast cancer. The women would trade stories about their journeys, the different treatments they tried, and how they were pushing through the horrific disease. 

Those bonds helped Jess with her battle as she had an entire breast cancer community fighting alongside her. But getting close with women who were living on borrowed time also came with an immense burden. 

“She met so many beautiful people, but there was so much pain in it,” Jon said. “She had 12 names tattooed on her ankle (in memory of their lives) and if she would have survived two more months, it would have been at least 14.”

On Feb. 28, Jess passed away. As Jon wrote in his Instagram post announcing her death, “She did not lose her battle with cancer, she lived and thrived with it.”

The Beards and their extended family knew the day might come, but it hasn’t made it any easier to live without such a shining light for the past eight months.

“It’s hard because she was such a light and it’s painful without her,” Jon said. “And it’s because we loved her so much.”

“To all of us, she was our Angel, and in a sense we were hers too,” he added.

As Jon reflects on Jess’ journey, one of his main takeaways is the outpouring of love and support that Jess and he received from the entire surrounding community.

He particularly remembers one time, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, where Jess was hospitalized for a week all by herself. One day shortly after she was discharged, tons of neighbors showed up with handmade signs expressing encouragement and love.

“Nobody knows how much just one little message would give her energy to fight another day,” Jon said. “I’m so proud of her and how the entire community just rallied around her and for all that they did for her.” 

Additionally, Jon is equally as proud of how Jess and he truly lived.

“We were able to live a full life in a short period of time. It feels like we were married and 99 years old in just the eight years we knew each other and the five years we were married. I’m really proud of the fact that we just kept going and moving forward even though we didn’t know how much time we had. We bought our dream home on our family farm and lived in the moment.”

Today, Jon is tasked with the difficult battle of attempting to thrive without his favorite person while honoring the life she lived. He continues to live out Jess’ legacy through continuing to be open and by spreading awareness about her journey and about metastatic breast cancer in particular.

He keeps in touch with multiple women battling metastatic breast cancer who were inspired by Jess’ instagram chronicles, including one in Australia. 

“I have messages from all over the world on my instagram,” Jon said. “The big thing is these women are just the most amazing people. They’re just able to talk and relate and share with each other. They know what they have, and yes they’re scared, but they face it and they truly live.”

For both Jon and Jess, the biggest thing has always been to raise awareness, money and support for metastatic breast cancer specifically. 

Jess always hated pink and she grew to despise it even more through her battle with cancer. Pink has always been the color of breast cancer awareness, but metastatic breast cancer has often been excluded from that conversation.

Despite the disease claiming the lives of 115 people in the U.S. daily and it being the only form of breast cancer that kills, less than five percent of US breast cancer funds go towards researching new treatments for it. 

It’s for that reason that Jess chose to don her favorite color black for her breast cancer awareness fight instead. It’s also why you see more and more blue, pink and green colors and ribbons during the month of October and in general as more people and corporations are working to include metastatic breast cancer in their campaigns. 

Jess’ legacy lives on through her story of love and light through unimaginable adversity and her contributions to the metastatic breast cancer world: increased funding to research and finding a cure, and giving Metastatic Breast Cancer a voice. These contributions ring especially true in October, the annual Breast Cancer Awareness month where pink ribbons are seemingly everywhere.

Don’t leave metastatic breast cancer out of the conversation. It’s the breast cancer that kills.

After Jess passed, Jon found an old notebook where she detailed the early stages of her cancer journey along with the very end of it. As he picks it up, it gets a laugh out of Jon—Jess used to buy new journals, use just a few pages, buy another one, and another, and leave them spread throughout their house, he said. She was writing her story, but, unfortunately, she did not have time to finish it. 

Then, he reads Jess’ words aloud, words he had never read while Jess was alive. It’s the perfect summary of Jess’ lasting impact. 

“Cancer changed my life, in most ways horribly, but I just can’t ignore the light. I’ve found myself. I’ve found my voice. I’ve found my people, my tribe, my place in this world. I’ve done more impactful things in the past four years than I have in the 26 before that. That’s how I want my life to be….This is my legacy.”

To join Jess’ Love + Light movement, get more information and help continue her legacy, please visit Respite Retreat’s Ears Over Fears (Her program), Metavivor (Metastatic Breast Cancer research), Ulman Foundation (Support for young adults living with cancer) and Shannon’s Comfy Chemo Care Bag Project (Her best friend’s org)

If you want to read more about Jess’ story in her own words, follow @jaystachbeard and @letsgetbeard1 on Instagram.