Shocked. Michelle Reiss never thought she’d hear the word cancer, let alone Hodgkin lymphoma, about herself. But that was the diagnosis the now 36-year-old faced in 2024.
Questions swirled: What treatments were coming? Was she going to lose her hair? One of the first things she searched on Google was head wraps for chemo hair loss. One of the toughest Google image searches of her life.
“There was nothing that felt like me, that felt fashionable, or that would give me sort of this sense of uplift when I really needed it,” Reiss says.
She mentioned this dilemma to her friend and colleague Shiry Zofnat Yosef, a caregiver for her brother who is navigating colon cancer treatment. A few days later, Zofnat Yosef sent her a collage of clickable links with pictures of scarves and hats. Bright, colorful, beautiful. “I can face this,” Reiss thought. “I can be myself. I can feel like myself while still going through cancer treatment.”
This exchange blossomed into Jadey, a cancer resource the pair launched in October 2025 targeting anyone facing a cancer diagnosis and those looking to support someone else – though the site is particularly a boon for younger women. It offers everything from answering medical and lifestyle questions on topics like fertility to recommending what skin care items to use during chemo. Users can explore articles, product guides and advice from editors, medical professionals and patients, as well as create their own registry for family and friends to shop from. It’s a far less clinical package than you’d get from other websites.
“You need to know it’s going to be a little crazy,” Zofnat Yosef, 46, says of the cancer journey. “You need to know how to have certain conversations. You need to know what to ask.”
It couldn’t come at a more important time. Breast, liver, ovarian and colorectal cancer are among the 17 different types of cancer rising for Gen X and millennials, according to American Cancer Society research published in 2024.
Alexandra Strelzyk, 34, was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in May 2025 while trying to conceive a third child. She appreciates how Jadey covers topics other outlets might shy away from, “whether it be some of the fertility stuff, or it be about intimacy, like maybe these things that were taboo.”
‘Speaks to this moment’ of rising cancers among millennials
Where did the name “Jadey” come from? Jade is a plant and a stone, with connotations of balance and healing and wellness in Eastern medicine. On the flip-side, when you or someone you know receives a cancer diagnosis, they’re likely a a bit jaded. It also sounds like it could be your friend’s name.
As cancer creeps into younger and younger people’s lives, few roadmaps exist for how to proceed. Jadey is eager to fill the gap. Its registry option, for example, alleviates the inevitable deer-in-headlights feeling people experience when they learn of someone’s cancer diagnosis and they don’t know how to help. Much like a wedding or baby registry, a cancer registry lets you customize what you need so others don’t need to ask.
No website can hold all answers, and visitors to Jadey’s website will see notices that its content is not medical advice and to seek out qualified health professionals.
Many have expressed to the Jadey founders they wish it existed when they were initially diagnosed with cancer. “I think that speaks to this moment that we’re in where so many young people are getting diagnosed, also so many people are making it to the other side, or are living longer with a chronic diagnosis and going through treatment for years,” Reiss says.
Being “done” with cancer isn’t necessarily the goal. “You can still live a very fulfilling, meaningful life while living with cancer and continuing to go through treatment, or just living with the uncertainty that you finish treatment and it may come back, and you’re never done with it,” Reiss says. “You’re never on the other side 100%.”
The ‘life-saving’ effect of storytelling
Jadey is challenging the norms of what going through cancer looks like – something that resonates with Strelzyk. “Maybe don’t assume that I’m frail or don’t assume that I’m sad or that I might not be feeling great,” she says, as there’s a large spectrum of how people might react to treatment and what they’ll need in a given moment.
“I think people get too caught up in like that ‘I don’t want to make someone uncomfortable,’ or’ I don’t want to like be an extra burden,’ but I think in doing that, it ends up straining relationships more and like pushing people away because they were uncomfortable,” says Lauren McDermott, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2024 just before her 22nd birthday. Now at 23, she’s grateful that Jadey is a concentrated space for real stories that aren’t just medical jargon that’s hard to understand. After a double mastectomy and radiation, she’s on hormone therapy for likely the next 10 years and in medically-induced menopause.
While primarily a hit with millennial women, Jadey is a resource for all identities; Ash Davidson, 46, welcomed the opportunity to share his experience with the platform as a trans man. His doctor discovered breast cancer during his long-awaited top surgery in 2022. Devastated is too a soft a word to describe how he felt.
Later sharing his experience with Jadey served as a balm, he said through tears: “When you find organizations, when you find platforms, when you find places that amplify and showcase stories like mine, like ours, it’s life-saving.”
“We need as many places as humanly possible, where stories exist that look like all of the different types of people that get cancer, not just a handful,” Davidson adds.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Millennial women are getting cancer. This website is helping them.
Reporting by David Oliver, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
