Jules Peters: My Cancer Journey

After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016, Alarm manager Jules Peters is now cancer-free and on a journey to ‘rebuild’ her body and rediscover her femininity.

Jules is no stranger to dealing with the emotional rollercoaster that cancer brings. For over 20 years, her husband and Alarm frontman, Mike Peters, has lived with both lymph cancer and leukaemia, so they have learned as a family to live their lives in the shadow of cancer.

Despite having first-hand experience of being a carer to Mike during his cancer journey, Jules’ own journey with breast cancer has thrown up a host of personal mental and physical challenges. As well as managing The Alarm, Jules also plays keyboards and sings backing vocals in the band, and as a performer, losing her hair and part of her breast as a result of her treatment was a very difficult process, which is why she is on a mission to explore the various surgical options offered on the NHS to re-sculpt her damaged breast.

This documentary sees Jules explore her relationship with her ‘new’ body post-cancer. In a bid to capture the real emotional and physical impact of cancer, Jules seeks out other women in similar situations to talk candidly about love, sexuality, body image and hair loss. Along the way, she meets harpist Catrin Finch and the women behind the hugely successful BBC podcast You, Me & the Big C as they trade their most intimate fears and express their deepest concerns.

Jules also comes face to face for the first time with a fellow cancer sufferer who contacted her online after she publically shared her own experiences. Weaving their stories together as they juggle the everyday realities of being a patient, mother, wife and co-worker, we hear a mixture of moving, funny and searingly honest experiences of what it’s like to live with cancer, but not be defined by it.