I am the magic maker in my house. I say this in no way to discredit my incredible husband, Dave. But when we became parents, I fiercely took full ownership of every holiday tradition, and all the imaginary characters that come along with them. I’d been looking forward to that nearly as much as holding my newborn babies.
For my kids — now 6, 9, and 11 years old — I am the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and Santa. And I love every last second of it. I love the sneaky exchange of a tooth for a glitter-sprayed dollar bill, the meticulous placement of Easter eggs, and chomping on the carrots and gingerbread men at midnight on December 24th to prove that Santa indeed devoured his snacks.
I’m also playing a role I never expected: I’m living with brain metastases from stage 4 breast cancer, along with leptomeningeal disease, a rare but unfortunately common companion to HER2-positive breast cancer that has spread to my brain. The traditional outlook for my condition is short — when I was diagnosed in May 2025, my prognosis was “weeks to months.” Thanks to science, I’m beating the odds. But being the Boston-born-and-raised blunt person I am, the first question I asked my doctors was, “Should I treat this like my last Christmas?” Their answer was honest: “We just don’t know.”
My biggest fear is the “magic” dying with me. Not because I’m gone, but because I’ve held so tightly to being the deliverer of all the holiday wonder. When my middle son lost a tooth while I was on a work trip, I found myself in a phone argument with my husband, saying the words, “No, Dave —the Tooth-Fairy dollar has to be spray-painted gold, and tied with a gold ribbon!” And for a family that’s generally health-conscious, the amount of sugar, flour, and butter — for whipping up Italian cookies and Swedish bread — that circulates in my kitchen around Christmas would alarm any nutritionist.
In the movies, there are poignant and poetic storylines around the mother who’s grappling with a potential last holiday. But in real life, I feel far less like Diane Keaton in The Family Stone, and much more like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, documenting and feverishly writing as much as I can for Dave and my kids, to memorialize and preserve everything.
The family recipes I’ve made during my 11 years of motherhood are now handwritten, for my kids to hold onto in perpetuity. The pictures that once resided somewhere in the Cloud or in a basement shoebox are now printed and neatly organized into albums. The velvet dresses that used to lay in heaps in the back of closets are now folded into keepsake boxes for my daughter (just in case she has daughters of her own someday, and wants to carry the tradition forward). I organized the holiday wrapping paper and labeled it for Dave, so he knows which presents are from Santa, and which ones are from “us.”
While I know that I’ll be here for this Christmas, future Christmases are not guaranteed. And somehow I’ve convinced myself that if I can adequately prepare my family for that loss, I can make their pain less profound. With each present I wrap and each cookie I bake, I wonder about how best to document any detail that’ll keep the sparkle in the season when I’m gone.
But part of this process also means getting out of the way and letting go, knowing that I’ll have to hand over the proverbial keys to my husband and our family and friends. I’m moving toward accepting that the next phase of memory-making will happen — it just won’t be a replica of what it once was. The magic won’t die with me, it’ll just take a different shape.
I’m grateful to be here this holiday season, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid it could be my last — though I hold tight to the hope that it won’t be. A diagnosis that once enveloped me in terror, the fear that I might not see the end of this summer, has reshaped my purpose in whatever time I have left. It’s made legacy planning and memory preservation my top priority, especially now, when each birthday, special-occasion dinner, and school recital feels even more precious.
In the eight weeks between each scan, knowing any one of them could mark the official start of my final stretch, preparation has become my full-time job. Print the photos. Write the letters. Tuck handwritten notes into recipe cards. I joke that I’m living my accelerated coastal-grandma life: I’m establishing the “artifacts” I pictured passing down to my grandkids, but I’m creating them for my own children. As heavy as all of this is, you still have to laugh.
During my years as a mother, the end-of-year demands of my career always competed with the family. Come every November, I already felt stretched in a million directions, trying to be everything for each of my kids and coworkers, all while picking out stocking stuffers and wrapping presents after kids were asleep. And as terrible as this situation is, it carries with it a strange and unexpected gift: For the first time, I get to devote myself full-time to creating holiday joy. This season, I am entirely present, a gift I could never give my family until now.
Since I can’t control what happens next with my body, all I can do is throw my whole self into my preparation, and hope that I set the table for Dave. And I can rest in knowing that the magic I’ve built and orchestrated over these years will always live within the people I love most — whether or not it arrives tied neatly, complete with a gold, glittery bow.
Julie Devaney Hogan is a mother of three and former tech executive from the Boston area. Her journey through Stage 3 HER2+ breast cancer in 2022 and now Stage 4 in 2025 deepened her commitment to advocacy and storytelling. She serves on the board of the Know Your Lemons Foundation and is embracing her early dream of becoming a writer; you can follow her work, and upcoming children’s book It’s Still OK to Laugh at JulieHoganWrites.
