Taking the Leap: How Elizabeth Young Turned Skydiving Into Advocacy

Elizabeth Young lives just outside Memphis, Tennessee, with her husband, two kids, three cats, three dogs, and four snakes. She’s an elementary school teacher during the week. On the weekends, she’s a skydiving instructor.

In March of 2016, she was diagnosed with cervical mesonephric adenocarcinoma, a rare subtype of cervical cancer that develops from leftover embryonic tissue rather than the cell changes usually linked to HPV. At the time, fewer than 40 cases were recorded in the world. Nearly a decade later, Elizabeth is still using her story, and her love of freefall, to help other women feel less alone in theirs.

A Diagnosis Nobody Had Seen Before

Elizabeth wasn’t chasing down a specific symptom. She’d had some spotting, but she chalked it up to ovarian cysts that she had dealt with for years. She went in for a routine pap smear, one she’d almost skipped, that caught that had her doctor concerned.

Her doctor didn’t think it was cancer at first; most cervical cancers take nearly two decades to develop, and her results the year before had been completely clear. Even after the diagnosis, her own doctor had never seen this type of cancer before. Neither had the specialists in Memphis that her doctor referred to her after obtaining the abnormal papsmear. Her sample had to be sent to the University of Michigan just to identify it.

“I had never heard of mesonephric adenocarcinoma, and my doctor hadn’t either… the doctors in Memphis that they sent me to had never seen it either.”
-Elizabeth Young

Once identified, Elizabeth was told her cancer was staged at 1B, meaning the tumor was visible without a microscope but still confined to the cervix, with no spread to nearby tissue. This is considered early-stage and usually treatable with surgery alone. But because so little was known about how this particular cancer behaved, the Memphis tumor board was split on whether she needed further treatment after her surgery. They left the decision in her hands.

[The Memphis tumor board] said, ‘We’re leaving the decision up to you.’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t have the background to make that decision.’ So, I went for a second opinion…”
-Elizabeth Young

So she sought a second opinion, calling Cancer Treatment Centers of America and MD Anderson before choosing MD Anderson, which had treated a small number of similar cases. They advised against additional treatment, told her that surgery would be her best outcome. Eleven years later, Elizabeth is still cancer-free.

Surviving the Surgery Was Only the First Fight

Elizabeth’s had a hysterectomy, a surgery that removes the uterus, cervix, ovaries, lymph nodes along with surrounding tissue as well. One night after coming home from the hospital, she spiked a fever and became critically ill. Her doctor sent her straight to the hospital, where she learned she’d gone septic, a life-threatening reaction that happens when the body’s response to an infection starts damaging its own tissue, and her bladder had stopped working.

“[My doctor] actually said I was within a couple of hours of not making it…”
-Elizabeth Young

Weeks of antibiotics and catheters followed. As a former marathon runner and skydiver, the fatigue hit her hard. But she kept going, driven by her kids who needed her. Elizabeth had already lost her first husband nine years before her diagnosis, when her daughter was three and her son was not yet two. She knew what it meant to be the parent left behind and that fueled her to continue to persevere.

“The initial reaction [to my diagnosis] was, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I have to be here for the kids.”
-Elizabeth Young

Turning a Diagnosis Into a Drop Zone

A few months after her surgery, once Elizabeth was cleared to skydive again, she noticed how few women were jumping alongside her. She wanted to change that, and give the effort a purpose beyond the sport itself. That’s when she found the Foundation for Women’s Cancer.
Elizabth launched Sisters in Skydiving at West Tennessee Skydiving in 2016, an annual jump built to encourage more women into the sport while raising funds and awareness for gynecologic cancer research.

Once she connected with the FWC team , she wanted to build gynecologic cancer awareness, and hosted her first Move4Her event: Sisters in Skydiving.

“I didn’t want to profit from it. I wanted it to give back. I wanted it to have a bigger purpose….and I started advocating for the foundation with my first Sisters in Skydiving event…”
-Elizabeth Young

The drop zone’s owner and pilot backed her from day one, offering half-price jumps to every woman who registers; a discount he still honors more than a decade later.

This year, Elizabeth’s team held their 11th annual jump.

From Connection to Community

For years, Elizabeth’s diagnosis was something she carried mostly alone; there simply weren’t other patients to compare notes with. That changed in 2019, when a woman named Christy found Elizabeth’s story on Facebook. Christy had the same rare cancer and had spent months searching for anyone who understood it.

The two connected, and years later, Christy flew from Minnesota to Tennessee to do a survivor’s jump of her own, with Elizabeth’s husband serving as Christy’s tandem instructor. When they shared photos and their stories afterward, several more women reached out within days, all searching for the same answers Elizabeth and Christy once had.

That response led Elizabeth and Christy to start a private Facebook group, Fighting Mesonephric Adenocarcinoma, in 2021. What began as two women looking to connect and be understood has grown into a community of more than 100 women with the same disease, a number that includes far more than the fewer than 40 cases known worldwide when Elizabeth was first diagnosed.

“We have over 100 in the [Facebook] group now, which it’s pretty amazing to be able to connect with each other, because we need that support system.”
-Elizabeth Young

What Elizabeth Wants Others to Know

Elizabeth’s advice for anyone newly diagnosed is simple: don’t give up, and don’t be afraid to seek a second opinion. For caregivers, she asks for patience. Asking for help doesn’t come easily to everyone, and it shouldn’t have to.

She’s equally direct about why she keeps showing up for organizations like the Foundation for Women’s Cancer and Move4Her.

“We can do so much more together than alone… there’s so much support out there for other types of cancers, but not for gynecological cancers.”
-Elizabeth Young

Her advice to anyone thinking about starting their own fundraising event for Move4Her is the same philosophy that got her here in the first place: find something you’re passionate about, and build around it.

“Find your passion, find something that you like doing, and organize something in that area.”
-Elizabeth Young

Elizabeth’s next jump is already on the calendar. So is the one after that. Every fall, she climbs into a plane over West Tennessee with a group of women who might never have picked up the sport, or found each other, without her.

If you’d like to support gynecologic cancer research and awareness, or find your own way to move the message forward, visit the Foundation for Women’s Cancer to learn how you can get involved.