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You can’t imagine it, the singer states. At that moment readying for her first album release in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and at long last the parent to a young child after struggling to conceive for a decade, riding high. Then in spring she was told she had a breast cancer diagnosis.

The singer-songwriter, birth name J. Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The record, her latest release, was meant as an transparent story, addressing every moment of pain she’d experienced since she last made an album (a gynecological condition, losing a baby, broken romances, psychological manipulation, suicidal thoughts) with characteristic openness. The initial release, No Secrets, was released in the spring. But by then there was a mighty secret. Her diagnosis. Then second single, Living My Best Life, came out in May and Cornish was talking to press about how she was living her best life, while still secretly living with her cancer. Four weeks after she shared the news, and in July she had a mastectomy.

She gives me her best “What the fuck?” expression. “I release with a song called No Secrets. I’m giving every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I respond, ‘Uh, nothing really’” the singer has just had to call off performances because she’s awaiting follow-up surgery.

We’re at a photography studio in the capital. She is sporting a beige fake-leather jacket, denim trousers with elaborate white patches, off-white boots and large glasses. Think motorcycle style meets 70s singer aesthetic. “I feel like I’m in the 1970s and I should have a boyfriend with a big tache.” A biker reference, I say, recalling the picture. “That’s what people called me at school!” She smiles. Cornish is sharp-witted, unfiltered and direct. She says she has always been interested in humor and is aiming for her initial standup show soon. “I enjoy humor. When performing I frequently joke about the audience.”

Health Struggles and Diagnosis

Cornish was planning an appearance at the Baftas when she found a lump. “I immediately went to get it looked at, had an test, and they said, ‘It seems benign; your tissue is healthy.’ And I was, like, ‘However, it’s there. I have arm pain and numbness in my fingers whenever I wake up.’ And they replied, ‘Well, let’s just do a biopsy?’ That was 28 March, the day after my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The specialist told her if it was serious she’d contact on the start of the week. By then she had assured herself it was nothing. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to get cancer when she had a busy schedule.

“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after years away and four years without a single. And she contacted me and said, ‘Is six okay?’ And I thought, ‘It’s virtual, probably routine.’ So I log in believing it’s all going to be good, and she says, ‘Are you sitting down?.’ That sympathetic voice? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your test results have come back as aggressive cancer.’” How did you respond? “I answered, ‘That’s unfortunate. The timing is terrible.’ Immediately I felt was, ‘My child depends on me.’”

Some men find me challenging due to my self-awareness

She considered the operation terrifying and absurd. “I hate being put under. You’re escorted. In urgent cases you are wheeled, but then I just marched with a hospital gown and my backside out. Like a dystopian scene.” But, Cornish says, she’s been fortunate. No chemo, no radiotherapy, just the procedure. “It’s terrible, but yet I’m grateful it was caught soon. I underwent removal four months ago and my right breast now looks like a odd shape.” She smiles again. “I got to keep the nipple, though.”

The follow-up procedure is therapeutic and aesthetic. Her chest, she notes, are now “uneven. The implant is larger than before. How rude! I felt, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d never get my boobs done because I’ve got perfectionism, and I know they’d never be perfect. My plans were disrupted.”

Previous Struggles

She is accustomed to medical issues. She thinks her perspective on the cancer has been so positive because she’s used to medical emergencies. Frequently they align with professional successes, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or punch in the stomach, to make her recall not to assume everything is fine. “Frankly, I feel the universe whispers, ‘Things going well? Hold on.’ From a young age, it has always gone alongside high points for me; a major or strange event has affected my well-being.”

She recalls to her youth, already starting her career performing in the West End in a musical (she was cast at the age of nine years old). That’s when she was told about the heart condition Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as vertigo and irregular beats. “I attended rehearsals intermittently on an intravenous line, and going back into hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and 17-year-old Jess has joined the female band Soul Deep while enrolled in the Brit School. “I secured a deal, and I had a cerebral event. Then when I was ready to debut in recently I had a car crash and my throat was injured and I couldn’t sing for a year.”

Hey, I say, wait, I need a moment. At just 17? She nods|agrees