Johanna Owens knew she wanted to go to college to further her writing skills and have a successful career since she was a teenager. However, she never thought she would endure a series of faith-defining moments, cancer diagnoses and unexpected moves before eventually crossing the graduation stage and starting her own business ventures.
Owens was born and raised in San Diego, California and began her undergraduate degree while working full-time at a law firm at 17 as a legal secretary before later becoming a litigation paralegal and notary.
Years later, she married her first husband, but his alcoholism and financial issues later resulted in the couple’s divorce. She tried to resume her college courses while working full-time but said this season of her life was also difficult due to her broken relationship with the Lord.
A year after her divorce Owens, then 26, said everything turned for the better when she married her current husband, who was a naval officer and was studying to be a physician’s assistant at the time. She said this new relationship was a positive step forward for her future.
“I had to work you know, to make ends meet and then I ended up meeting my current husband of 26 years. … We kind of just repaired each other and led each other back to the Lord,” Owens said.
After getting married, the Owens moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba where her husband was stationed. While in Cuba, she worked on her undergraduate degree and was surprised to learn she was going to have twin daughters.
Shortly after giving birth to the twins, she learned she was pregnant with her third daughter. However, with this pregnancy, she also received her first cancer diagnosis: Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
“You’d think, who gets cancer when you’re pregnant?” Owens said.
Due to the severity of her cancer, Owens said “they whisked me off of the island there and we had to move.”
Owens said their duty station was changed and her family moved back to San Diego to be near her parents since the doctors warned her that the situation was serious. She began chemotherapy during her third trimester. After chemotherapy, doctors did a biopsy to confirm her cancer type, and she gave birth to her third daughter.
Despite the health challenges, Owens said she was determined to take up classes again. However, she had to pause her studies to undergo a stem cell transplant after her cancer relapsed.
In 2007, her family had to prepare for another move so her husband could complete a civilian fellowship at a hospital in San Antonio, Texas. Owens said the transition was difficult since she was diagnosed with a melanoma while also having to care her for three children as her husband was busy working.
“He (my husband) was deployed like three or four times … but by the grace of God … I took care of those kids. And you know was healthy and alive, and (had) three kids under five in diapers and it was just all God,” Owens said.
She said it was only because of God’s grace and faithfulness that she was able to overcome that hectic season. Although she had to put her degree on the back burner once again, Owens was determined to continue taking more classes when her family moved to North Carolina.
However, in 2013, just as she began to chip away at her classes, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She did not want to let this third cancer diagnosis stop her from living her life and completing her undergraduate education. Although her diagnosis was serious, she decided to continue marching forward and switched her area of study from political science to journalism and literature.
A few years later, in 2019, she began her own real estate closing business, Crystal Coast Notary, LLC, in Cedar Point, North Carolina. Her experience with the legal field and as a notary, made the business a good fit.
However, in 2020, she faced the new obstacle of breast cancer, which required her to get a double mastectomy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My kids were graduating college at that time and so … (I’m) just thankful to be able to be here with them,” Owens said.
She said despite having to persevere through several cancer treatments, she is thankful for the opportunity to continually grow her faith and find comfort by relying on the Lord.
“I wouldn’t change a day of the spiritual growth, … when you’re alone in those hospital rooms and … you face your mortality, and it’s just you and Jesus and the Word, … you change your perspective … This year marks her fifth year of being cancer free and she is excited to have completed her Bachelor of Science in English and Writing – Journalism. She switched the focus of her studies after her daughter graduated from Liberty, and she decided to complete her online education through Liberty’s program of study,” Owens said.
“I’m just thankful for Liberty, I’m just thankful for the courses that they provide … from a biblical worldview, I’m thankful for all my instructors and the professors that poured into me. It’s been a great journey,” Owens said.
Now, as Owens looks to the future, she plans on furthering her real estate closing business. She said she enjoys helping people understand their real estate packages as well as guiding them through the process of signing their documents.
“I love doing it, I love meeting people, … and so you can really minister to people too, it’s a great way to share (the gospel),” Owens said.
She also hopes to use her writing skills as a means for sharing stories of those who endured perilous times, including her father’s experience as a WWII Marine Raider veteran.
Owens said before her father died he asked her to share his story by compiling a story from the hundreds of handwritten pages he wrote during the war. For her capstone project, she put these pages into a book and hopes to sell her work to a publisher.
“My dad was a really strong believer and there was so much faith interwoven … in those pages. … I never really noticed it before until I typed it up. … I think (his story) is an important thing for me to get out there … ,” Owens said.
She said she believes God wants her to continue sharing stories like her father’s as she looks to the future of her career as a writer. She said, “the stories are incredible” and that each of her father’s pages were “pieces of history” that she enjoyed putting together.
Owens also said she is grateful for the spiritual maturity she gained from enduring all of her cancers, since those trials and hardships have even encouraged her husband to grow in his faith as well as her children. “And yeah I think, had I not gone through what I’d gone through with all the illnesses, would I be spiritually where I am now?” Owens said. “I don’t know, I mean I always tell people I don’t think I would trade a day of the illness and the fire that we had to go through. I don’t think I’d trade a day of the spiritual growth that we gained, both my husband and I.”
From persevering through several harrowing cancer diagnoses to staying committed to completing her degree to raising her children, Owens said she could not have gone through it all without God’s help. She said the key lesson she learned from her trials is that her worth comes from God and not from receiving a degree.
“Nothing that you earn here is greater than what you’ve earned with Christ already,” Owens said.