Julie Yip-Williams, whose candid blog about having Stage IV colon cancer also described a life of struggles that began with being born blind in Vietnam and her ethnic Chinese family’s escape in a rickety fishing boat, died on Monday at her home in Brooklyn. She was 42.
Joshua Williams, her husband, said the cause was metastatic colon cancer.
Ms. Yip-Williams’s richly detailed blog, which she started writing after receiving her diagnosis in 2013, was more than an account of her siege with cancer. It was also a meditation on love and family as well as a message of openness to her young daughters, Mia and Isabelle, about her illness.
Ms. Yip-Williams wrestled with hope, which she cursed as an “illusory sentiment.”
“Cancer crushes hope, leaving a wasteland of grief, depression, despair and a sense of unending futility,” she wrote in 2014, adding: “Hope is a funny thing, though. It seems to have a life and will of its own that I cannot control through the sheer force of my mind. It is irrepressible, its very existence inextricably tied to our very spirit, its flame, no matter how weak, not extinguishable.”
Her blog, with additional material written by Ms. Yip-Williams, is being turned into a memoir by Random House, which expects to publish it later this year or early next year... (continues)
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CBS Sunday Morning. We want to take a moment now to note the death this past Monday of Julie Yip-Wlliams.
As you may remember, Tracy Smith told Julie's story here on "Sunday Morning"just two weeks ago … a story that was all about living on borrowed time.
Julie was born totally blind in Vietnam, and narrowly escaped a plot hatched by her own grandmother to have her killed on grounds that she had no future.
Julie Yip-Williams.
CBS NEWS
But at age three, Julie and her family made it to the United States, where a surgeon was able to give her only partial sight, leaving her still legally blind.
Undaunted, Julie Yip-Williams went on to graduate from Harvard Law School, and pursue a corporate career -- only to be diagnosed with colon cancer five years ago.
Still undaunted, Julie underwent every surgery and treatment and clinical trial she could find, to no avail.
Through it all, she shared her experience in a candid blog, My Cancer Fighting Journey, while also preparing her daughters -- Isabelle, age six, and Mia, eight -- for the day when her borrowed time would run out.
Julie Yip-Williams was just 42 years old.
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