LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - Penny Blackerby began as a client of the Inside Out Foundation and now serves as a volunteer and board member.

In 2017, she was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. She had already heard about the Inside Out Foundation through her sorority, which already supported the IOF as part of breast cancer awareness. But now Penny was walking through their doors as a client.

“The first thing I did is...I came up, and still in the shock mode that I was going to go through this,” she says,”And I did my wig fitting...and then learned when I left that day, I had a bag full of my wigs, all the supplies for the wigs, stuff for the surgery, and really understood what the services were about and how they were going to help me.”

The services Penny talks about are designed to help clients who are suffering from physical or emotional losses, due to illness or traumatic events.

“What they bring to the table is compassion,” Penny says. “They treat everyone with love and care, and I know that every time I came up here that I always left feeling better about myself. I felt beautiful again. I had the confidence. They just instilled some of those things back into you that you weren’t cancer. You were still a beautiful woman.”

As a survivor, Penny vowed to give back. She joined the IOF board soon after.

“One of the covenants I made when I started chemo is that day was an extremely scary day, for anybody has been through that. And I sat down, and I had a talk with God.... And I said ‘Okay, you know the numbers of my days, and whether there’ll be short or long, I want people to see and me to see you and how I can help other people.’”

Cancer survivor giving back after getting help from Lubbock’s Inside Out Foundation