Singing Through It and Never Giving Up
Some stories are loud before a note is even sung. Caly Bevier is one of them. In this episode of TURTZED, she shared her journey from a rare stage three ovarian cancer diagnosis as a teenager to standing under a shower of gold confetti on America’s Got Talent, and what it really means to keep your head held high when no one is watching.
When “You Are Pregnant” Is Not The Answer
At fifteen, Caly went to her pediatrician with a hard lump in her stomach and constant trips to the bathroom. She was active, a competitive cheerleader, used to pushing through discomfort. Her doctor walked back into the room, leaned against the counter, and said, “So you are pregnant.”
Caly knew she was not. She had barely held hands with a boy. Sitting there with her dad, hearing a story about her body that did not match her reality, she felt confused, unseen, and a little bit crazy. It took more tests and an ultrasound to finally reveal the truth. It was not a pregnancy. It was a tumor.
Cancer, A Teenager, And Tuning Out To Survive
When the words “stage three ovarian cancer” arrived, they landed in fragments. Lose your hair. Chemo. Surgery. Her brain did what a lot of young brains do under shock, it focused on one or two details and blurred the rest. She worried about telling her cheer coach she would miss competitions. She listened to “Cancer” by My Chemical Romance and cried in quick bursts, five or ten minutes at a time, then told herself to get it together.
Only later, visiting kids in the hospital who were not going to make it, did the full weight of her own story hit her. Seeing their reality gave her perspective on what she had lived through and how close she had come.
Music As The Place The Feelings Go
Caly has always felt her emotions most clearly through music. Sometimes it is a song like “Cancer” or “Fight Song.” Sometimes it is the way one single lyric cracks something open that she had been keeping shut.
Her golden buzzer moment on America’s Got Talent, singing “Fight Song,” was not about chasing fame. It was about honoring the gift she had, pairing it with the story she had survived, and choosing to step into a life she never originally planned. Hearing Simon Cowell, the harshest critic in the room, hit that golden buzzer told her what her dad had been saying for years, this is worth not giving up on.
Writing Her Own Fight Song
For a while, everyone wanted her to be “the girl who beat cancer” singing positive, uplifting anthems. That was part of her, but not all of her. Moving to Los Angeles, writing her own songs like “Head Held High” and “Tread Lightly,” and letting herself write about heartbreak, anxiety, depression, and religious trauma allowed her to tell the whole truth.
Now, she writes when she feels inspired, not out of obligation. Some songs come from arguments with her partner, some from quiet sadness, some from standing in powerful Hawaiian waves and realizing that letting herself be knocked around and resurfacing is exactly how her healing has felt.
What Caly Wants You To Remember
Be yourself at every stage of yourself.
Your struggle does not have to “match” anyone else’s to matter.
You are not a burden for needing to talk about what hurts.
There is always someone who will listen, even if it takes time to find them.
And above all, the words her dad told her on a regular afternoon about a volleyball team and a tough coach have become the through line of her life: do not give up. Not on the song you are writing, not on the version of you that feels most true, and not on the life you have not fully stepped into yet.
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