Meagan O’Hehir and Heather Cust met years before cancer entered either of their lives, crossing paths on the netball courts of the Rosebud Football Netball Club. It would take a diagnosis, then another, to turn a passing acquaintance into a partnership that now reaches dozens of peninsula families a year.
Meagan was 33, fit and healthy when, in October 2022, she found a lump in her breast. The diagnosis was invasive HER2-positive breast cancer. What followed was a year of IVF to preserve her fertility, six rounds of chemotherapy, surgery, five weeks of radiation, twelve months of immunotherapy, and multiple procedures and blood transfusions.
“It was one of the hardest years of my life, but I chose to shift from ‘Why me?’ to ‘Try me’, and through every challenge I found strength that I didn’t know I had,” Meagan says. “Today, I’m incredibly proud to say my treatment worked. I had a complete response to chemotherapy, and I remain cancer free.”
Heather was 34 when she was diagnosed with ER/PR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer just weeks before her son’s first birthday in 2023. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation followed, along with two years of ongoing hormone therapy.
“It was a fast-growing cancer, but my persistence in advocating for myself meant we caught it early, and I had a really positive outcome,” Heather says. She is currently pausing that hormone therapy as she and her husband are expecting their second baby.
When Meagan was diagnosed, Heather found herself reaching out to check that she was okay. A few months later, Heather received her own diagnosis. Whether it was coincidence or intuition, the pair say, they leaned on each other through parallel treatment and recovery, and realised they shared a desire to turn what they had been through into something that helped others.
That something began over dinner in 2024. “All good ideas seem to start over a glass of wine,” Meagan says. That night the pair decided they would host a walk and run for the peninsula community, and pulled it off within five weeks; ninety people attended the inaugural event.
The name came from Heather’s sister Steph, who suggested Breast Foot Forward, building on an early working title of Step Foot Forward. It’s a nod to the idea of moving forward, one step at a time, and it stuck fast enough to carry through from a single event into an entire organisation.
Founded officially in October 2024, Breast Foot Forward has grown from a soft pink logo built around breast cancer awareness into branding that reflects the green and earthy tones of the peninsula itself; chosen to represent, as the founders put it, “The amazing healing landscapes we have here.”
At its centre is The Comfort Project, which delivers care hampers each month to the five local hospitals that provide cancer care to peninsula patients, including the Rosebud and Peninsula Private centres where Meagan and Heather were treated. What started as a goal of twelve hampers a year has grown to more than sixty, alongside monthly wellness classes at Bays Cancer Centre led by instructor Rhi, who draws on her own cancer journey to guide gentle movement for people in treatment.
Since the pair started, Breast Foot Forward has directly supported approximately 120 people through its programs and events; numbers Meagan and Heather are quick to note are still “only scratching the surface” of how many locals are diagnosed each year.
The cancer journey also never really ends
Running a growing organisation alongside full-time work, young families and ongoing health monitoring is, they admit, a juggle. “The cancer journey also never really ends,” Heather says. “There are ongoing scans, check-ups and moments that can be unexpectedly triggering, even years down the track. If one of us is feeling overwhelmed or needs to take a step back, the other naturally steps up.”
Much of what Breast Foot Forward does is deliberately delivered through nurses and hospital staff rather than in person, out of respect for how raw a diagnosis and treatment can be. The messages that reach Meagan and Heather stay with them, like the woman who wrote in after receiving a hamper following her first radiation oncology appointment, describing it as “a warm group hug from a group of people I don’t yet know, but who understand the journey.”
The organisation runs on local support from sponsors, volunteers, and a grant from Community Bank Southern Peninsula that has allowed The Comfort Project to expand. Over the next twelve months, Meagan and Heather will be working towards formal not-for-profit status; a step they hope will bring further funding and partnerships within reach.
Their next milestone is fast approaching. Breast Foot Forward’s Annual Community Walk & Run returns on Saturday 17 October, with a 10km walk and run starting at Safety Beach Yacht Club and a 5km walk and run from Anthony’s Nose Boat Ramp, both finishing together at Rosebud’s Village Green. The event is deliberately untimed, to keep it open to anyone currently in treatment or recovery, and kids under 16 walk free. Registrations are open via their website.
Meagan and Heather say that at its heart, Breast Foot Forward is a small, community-led organisation, and every person who gets behind their vision helps them to reach another person going through breast cancer treatment.
What they’re really trying to do, they say, is make the hardest days of someone’s life a little easier.
Peninsula Essence October 2026
