Part One: The Breaking and the Becoming
Chapter 1: The Moment Everything Changed
There are moments that split a life clean in two. Mine began in a sterile room with white walls and a word that rang too loud: cancer.
The doctor spoke gently, but the world went silent around me. It was as if my heartbeat stopped long enough for a whole life to flash by — my son, two years old, my daughter, five — their faces were the only images that stayed clear. I remember thinking, I can’t leave them. I won’t.
That night, after the children were asleep, I watched them breathe. My house was quiet except for their soft, steady rhythm. I prayed — not for a miracle, not yet. Just for strength enough to wake up in the morning and keep pretending I wasn’t afraid.
Somewhere in that silence, I made a promise: if I lived through this, I would live differently. I didn’t yet know that I’d emerge from the fire as someone new — someone I’d later call “Dragon Strong.”
Chapter 2: The Battle You Don’t See
Treatment wasn’t just medicine; it was a dismantling.
Days became measured by hospital chairs, blood counts, and the sound of machines. I learned to smile for the nurses and my family, even on the days when my bones felt hollow.
There were nights I cried quietly in the dark so my children wouldn’t hear. My daughter would still crawl into bed beside me, her little hand resting on my arm. “Mommy,” she whispered once, “you’re like a dragon. You’re strong and you breathe fire.”
I laughed through the tears — because she didn’t know she was right. Every drop of chemo burned like dragon fire. It tore through weakness, through pride, through fear, until what was left inside me wasn’t fragile anymore. It was forged.
Faith didn’t come to me as calm assurance; it came as defiance. I wasn’t just praying to survive — I was daring to believe I could rise.
That’s what courage looked like: shaky hands holding still, a tired mother smiling at her children, a heart saying again when the body begged enough.
Chapter 3: Losing the Old Me
When treatment ended, everyone cheered. But I felt hollow. The hospital doors closed behind me, and I realized the war outside was over, but the one inside had just begun.
Who was I now, without the daily fight? My reflection was unfamiliar — the scars, the new hair, the weariness that didn’t wash off. I missed the old me, the woman who didn’t flinch at uncertainty, who planned, who thought she was in control.
But the Dragon — the new strength I’d forged — whispered, She’s gone because you outgrew her.
It took time to understand that healing meant losing the version of myself that believed she had to be invincible. I started to learn that I could be strong and soft at once.
My son would toddle toward me with his toy cars, my daughter would draw dragons with wings as wide as the sky, and I began to believe that maybe the person I was becoming wasn’t broken. She was simply new.
Chapter 4: The Empty Space After Survival
People think surviving is the finish line. It isn’t. It’s the silence after the music stops.
The calls slow down, the prayers taper off, and everyone assumes you’re fine. But inside, you’re still sorting through ashes.
I had to relearn how to live without fear as my first thought. Some days I sat in the quiet and wondered what the point of survival was if I didn’t know how to be alive.
That’s when I began to write again. Not for anyone else — not yet. Just for me.
I wrote about the fire, the children, the tears I never let fall in front of them. And something shifted. The words didn’t just describe the pain — they released it.
Every page was a piece of armor, every paragraph a breath. Through writing, I began to see that my story wasn’t just a record of suffering. It was a map — a way through.
Chapter 5: The Rise of the Dragon
Healing came in whispers. It came in my daughter’s laughter echoing down the hallway, in my son’s messy kisses, in mornings where the sky didn’t feel heavy.
I stopped asking to be who I was before cancer. I started asking who I was meant to become after.
That’s when Princess Crystal Says began — not as a brand, but as a whisper from God: Your voice is healing. Use it.
At first, I didn’t believe it. I had written for years — twenty-three, if you counted all the notebooks stacked on shelves — but this time was different. The words didn’t come from ambition; they came from survival.
I wrote for women who felt invisible. For mothers trying to be brave. For anyone walking through fire who needed to know they weren’t alone.
My bookshelves began to fill with new works — journals, devotionals, stories of faith and rebirth. Each one was a mirror reflecting my journey, but also an invitation: Your story should matter too.
That became my truth — the mission that shaped everything I’ve done since.
When I rose from the ashes, I didn’t just come back to life — I came back with fire in my chest and purpose in my hands.
I was no longer just Crystal.
I was Princess Crystal Says — the woman who writes light into dark places, who shows others how to turn their wounds into wings, who lives and breathes the promise that every story matters.
I became Dragon Strong.
Part Two: The Rebuilding and the Rising
Chapter 6: Learning to Breathe Again
After the storm came stillness.
The days no longer revolved around hospital visits or medication schedules. My children grew louder again — laughter in the mornings, tiny arguments over toys, little feet racing through the house. Life returned, but I didn’t step into it easily.
At first, I felt lost inside my own survival. Everyone wanted the triumphant version — the woman who beat cancer and never looked back. But healing doesn’t erase what happened; it teaches you how to carry it.
I started taking walks alone, one slow step at a time, learning to listen to the rhythm of my breath. I realized I had been holding it for years — in fear, in fight, in endurance. Letting it go felt like surrender and rebirth at once.
That’s when the idea of living on purpose began to stir. I wasn’t meant to just exist; I was meant to create again.
Writing had always been part of me. I had been an author for twenty-three years — pen in hand, heart on paper — but now the words carried something new. They weren’t about performance. They were about peace.
Chapter 7: The Spark Returns
I began with small things: short reflections, prayers written on the backs of envelopes, journal pages filled with questions.
At first, my words were shaky, fragile — like me. But each time I wrote, I felt my strength return. I was remembering my own voice.
That’s when I heard it — that familiar whisper I’d ignored for years: Princess Crystal Says.
It wasn’t a brand yet. It was a calling. The name came from a truth I was finally ready to accept: I wasn’t meant to blend in quietly. I was meant to speak light — to write for the broken, the brave, and the in-between.
Slowly, that whisper became a mission. I created space for others to read, reflect, and heal — one page at a time.
The first guided journals came from the very things that saved me: stillness, reflection, prayer, and courage.
Each one carried a message that felt alive in me: Your story matters. Your healing matters. You matter.
Chapter 8: Building the Bookshelf
The bookshelf began as a collection of my words — devotionals, journals, stories about dragons, fairies, and faith. But over time, it became more than a bookshelf. It became a home for every kind of healing.
Some books were for women finding their way back to God. Some were for children learning to dream again. Others were for anyone who needed to remember who they are when the world tries to make them forget.
Every title had its own heartbeat, its own whisper of hope.
People began to tell me how my books found them at the right time. A teacher shared one with her students. A mother used a journal to write through her grief. A survivor wrote me, saying, “I didn’t think anyone understood until I read your words.”
That’s when I knew this wasn’t just publishing. This was purpose.
Princess Crystal Says wasn’t about me being the expert. It was about being the proof — proof that you can walk through fire and still create beauty from the ashes. Proof that you can be both gentle and unbreakable. Proof that healing can be written.
Chapter 9: Dragon Strong, Author Steady
When I look back now, I see the threads connecting everything — the girl with a pen, the mother in the storm, the woman who rose from the ashes with fire in her voice.
The cancer didn’t take my life; it gave me the reason to live it differently.
Writing became my ministry. My books, my shelves, my brand — they became the wings I grew after the fall.
Every story I publish now carries that same fire. Every word is a torch passed to someone who’s walking through their own darkness.
I’ve learned that being Dragon Strong doesn’t mean being fearless. It means knowing the fire inside you burns brighter than anything that tried to destroy you.
That’s what I want people to feel when they read my words — not pity, not perfection, but power. Their own.
Chapter 10: The Voice That Endures
Now, when I sit at my desk, I see more than a stack of manuscripts. I see years of surviving and rising. I see my children growing — strong, brave, joyful. I see the woman I became: mother, survivor, author, encourager, and light-bearer.
Princess Crystal Says has become my way of whispering to the world, your story still matters. Even if it broke you. Even if it changed you. Especially because it did.
Each time a reader opens one of my books, I imagine their hands catching the same fire that once kept me alive.
And I pray they see what I finally know to be true:
We are all weavers of light.
We are all storytellers.
We are all Dragon Strong.
It’s quieter, wiser — written from the woman who has walked through everything and now stands as proof.
Part Three: The Legacy and the Light
Chapter 11: What the Fire Left Behind
The world moves on quickly after pain.
But I didn’t want to move on — I wanted to move through.
There’s a difference. Moving on feels like pretending. Moving through feels like honoring.
When I looked back at my life, at the fire that nearly consumed me, I saw that it hadn’t just burned what was fragile — it had refined what was eternal.
The fire left me softer.
It made me pay attention to the small miracles: my daughter’s laughter echoing in the kitchen, my son’s hand finding mine without a word, the sunlight breaking through the same window where I once sat and wept.
It also left me braver.
I no longer hide behind quiet or doubt. I speak with the calm certainty of someone who’s seen darkness and knows it can be survived.
That’s what I carry now: the light that only fire can teach you.
Chapter 12: The Bookshelf Grows
The Princess Crystal Says Bookshelf is more than a collection of my work.
It’s a timeline of healing — my own, and the healing of those who found themselves in the words.
Each book was born from a different kind of season:
A journal for grief.
A workbook for faith.
A fairytale about a dragon princess who mirrors my fight.
A story of a fairy and a dragon who find courage in each other.
Every one of them came from truth, disguised in wonder.
People sometimes ask me how I keep creating after all these years.
The answer is simple: I write from the same fire that once tried to destroy me.
When I open my email and see notes from readers — women who say they found strength, students who say they learned to believe again, people who say, “Your story sounds like mine” — I remember that this is the work.
I write so others can remember their own worth, their own voice, their own fire.
That’s what Princess Crystal Says means now:
It’s not about being royal.
It’s about being real.
Chapter 13: For the Ones Still Fighting
There are days when I still feel the ache — the ghost of treatment, the weight of memory. But it no longer frightens me. It reminds me of who I am.
I often think about the women still sitting in that hospital chair, eyes closed, praying for a breath of peace. The mothers trying to hold everything together for their children. The ones who feel invisible.
I write for them.
I speak for them.
I built Princess Crystal Says for them.
To every person still fighting, I want to say this: you are not broken; you are being reforged.
You are not weak; you are becoming Dragon Strong.
Your story isn’t over because you’re still standing in the middle of it.
It’s sacred even here, especially here.
Chapter 14: The Light Continues
When I look around my life now, I see the proof of grace in everything — my children thriving, my books reaching places I never dreamed of, my readers carrying my words into their own healing.
It’s humbling. It’s holy.
I don’t chase success anymore. I build spaces for connection — for healing, for hope, for truth. I remind people that their stories have value because they lived them.
That’s the thread that ties everything together — the dragon, the fairy, the mother, the writer:
Your story should matter.
And it does.
Because when one of us tells our truth, another person finds their way out of silence.
That’s what legacy really is — light passed from one soul to another, until the whole world glows.
Chapter 15: And Still, She Rises
There are still quiet days. There always will be. But I’ve learned that quiet isn’t emptiness; it’s space.
It’s where the next story is waiting.
When people meet me now, they often see the brand — Princess Crystal Says — and the bookshelf filled with dragons, fairies, devotionals, and journals. But behind it all is just me: a mother, a survivor, a storyteller.
And every time I sit down to write, I whisper the same prayer I spoke when it all began:
“God, let this help someone heal.”
Because that’s what the fire taught me — that even in the ashes, beauty waits.
And every time I write, every time I speak, every time I remind someone that they matter, the dragon inside me exhales a little more light into the world.
I am still here.
I am still writing.
I am still Dragon Strong.
Thank you for reading my story.
Your story matters!
Crystal Amon
Princess Crystal Says
Copyright 2025
Princess Crystal Says 