Meet Kat Casperson

For Kat Casperson, "Twice I Rose" is more than a song. It is seven years of fear, determination, loss, friendship, love and unwavering faith in God poured into music. It is the story of a woman who fought breast cancer once, believed she was nearing that magical five year milestone, and then was forced to fight it all over again.

This October, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Casperson is sharing that story through the language she knows best: music. A longtime Tampa Bay singer and performer, Casperson was first diagnosed with breast cancer on July 1, 2019, at age 50. What began as a routine annual screening led to additional testing, a biopsy and a diagnosis of Stage 2B invasive ductal carcinoma in her right breast. The cancer was estrogen positive, HER2 negative and had spread to a lymph node.

What followed was more than seven months of chemotherapy. Kat lost her hair, but she kept singing. The man who would become her husband, Patrick, shaved his head alongside her. She underwent a lumpectomy and lymph node surgery and eventually heard the words every cancer patient longs to hear: cancer free.

Then came the waiting.

For many survivors, the five year mark carries enormous emotional weight. Kat was almost there. Just five months short of five years cancer free, she returned for another routine examination on July 29, 2024. This time, doctors saw something in the other breast. Kat already knew. Soon, she was facing breast cancer for a second time. Rather than retrace the path she had taken before, Casperson chose to undergo a double mastectomy. It was not, she says, a decision made out of fear.

"I did it out of faith and solidarity," Casperson said.

Faith had already become central to the way she viewed her first battle. She remembers reaching a point during chemotherapy when she placed the outcome entirely in God's hands. "If part of my story is supposed to be that you're going to take me, I'm ready for that," she remembered telling God. "And if not, you obviously have a lot for me to do." She could not have known how much of her story was still ahead.

Kat underwent her double mastectomy the day before Hurricane Helene in 2024. Recovery left the fiercely independent singer dependent on others for even the most basic things. Four surgical drains, two on each side, remained in place while her body healed.

Then, just eight days after surgery, Hurricane Milton forced Kat and Patrick to evacuate. They left home with all four drains still attached. The place where they sought shelter eventually lost power as well. In a moment that perfectly captures the hardship, love and humor running through Kat's story, Patrick found himself tending to his wife's surgical drains by candlelight. Kat joked about what a romantic date it had become.

Behind the humor was something much deeper. She wasn't fighting alone. Her husband was there. Her family was there. Her friends were there. Throughout both battles, Tampa Bay's music community was there too.

Kat describes the people surrounding her as an "army of friends." When she was diagnosed the second time, friend Robin Quale organized a benefit for her at the Daiquiri Shack, where musicians and friends rallied around her. Kat hadn't asked for it. Her friends knew she probably would have said no. So they did it anyway. That same spirit of friendship would eventually help transform Kat's cancer journey into "Twice I Rose."

The song did not begin with Kat deciding it was finally time to write about cancer. For years, she had tried to organize everything she had experienced into some kind of chronological story. Cancer wasn't the only heartbreak of 2019. Shortly after her diagnosis, Kat lost her boss. The following week, she lost her father. There was simply too much to process. Then, while preparing to speak at a cancer related event at Tampa's Straz Center, something changed.

Kat was walking her dog, Sassafras, when words and a melody suddenly began arriving faster than she could process them. She pulled out her phone and began recording ideas into Voice Memos. Then she hurried home and started writing. The words came quickly. They rhymed. The story she had struggled for years to organize was suddenly becoming a song.

That song became "Twice I Rose."

Kat knew exactly where to go next. She turned to longtime friend Jason Alfano of Soul Circus Cowboys, whom she has known for nearly three decades. Their friendship began years earlier after meeting on an airplane, long before either could have imagined that one day they would sit together working on a song about Kat surviving cancer twice.

By the time Kat brought "Twice I Rose" to Alfano, much of the song was already there. She had the lyrics, the melody and, most importantly, the heart of it. Alfano helped shape the arrangement, find the right tempo and transform Kat's deeply personal demo into a finished recording. For the piano track, Jason turned to another longtime friend, renowned Tampa Bay musician Rob Stoney, longtime pianist with the Greg Billings Band and a highly respected keyboardist in the Tampa Bay music community.

Cancer had touched people throughout their circle of friends and musicians. Some had survived. Some were still fighting. Others had been lost. "We are here because of our love for each other and her fight, her song," Alfano said. He immediately understood that this recording was different. "The message really needs to get out," he said.

Alfano then turned to another longtime friend, respected Tampa Bay musician and recording engineer Craig Blackwell, to record and engineer the track at Blackwell's home studio.

Blackwell is a guitarist, songwriter, multi instrumentalist, producer and engineer whose career has included extensive work with Queensrÿche vocalist Todd La Torre. But none of those credits mattered when Alfano called him about Kat. The story did. Cancer had touched Blackwell's life as well, along with the lives of people close to all of them. When Alfano told him about Kat and the song, Blackwell didn't need a sales pitch. He was in before he had even heard the finished composition.

Once Kat's original piano and vocal idea entered Blackwell's studio, "Twice I Rose" began to grow. A basic musical foundation was established. A tempo was chosen. Kat recorded her vocal. Piano, drums, strings and other elements were carefully built around her performance, while Kat returned to add harmonies.

What began as a voice memo and words written in a notebook eventually grew into a production of roughly 45 tracks. Despite everything added in the studio, the most important element remained untouched. It was still Kat's story.

Before sharing the song publicly, Kat and the musicians planned something much more intimate. A private listening session at Kat's home would bring together the people who had stood closest to her through both battles, including her husband, mother, sister, closest girlfriends and those Alfano called her "co warriors." Tampa Bay Music News was given the opportunity to hear the song before that gathering.

"You are the first person to hear this," Alfano said. For him, that private circle mattered because "Twice I Rose" belongs as much to the people who walked beside Kat as it does to those who created the recording.

It is a song about surviving cancer twice. But it is also about a husband who shaved his head when his wife lost her hair. It is about friends who organized a benefit before Kat could tell them not to. It is about musicians who said yes before they had even heard the song.

It is about people who have watched those they love battle cancer and immediately understood why this story needed to be heard. At the center of everything is Kat's faith.

Today, Casperson continues to sing and perform throughout Tampa Bay while using her voice to support cancer awareness. In 2026, she was selected as a Hope Ambassador for Tampa's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer campaign.

On October 24, she will walk at Raymond James Stadium surrounded by friends and family as part of Kat & The Rack Stars. She has also been asked to sing the National Anthem — and now, every note carries a little more history.

"Twice I Rose" is not a song that pretends cancer wasn't frightening. It is a song about discovering what remains when fear enters the room.

"My heart behind the song goes beyond my own personal journey," Kat said. "I hope the message that reaches anyone facing a breast cancer diagnosis is this: She did it. I can do it."

"I want any woman who is scared, uncertain or wondering what her future holds to hear this song and know that she is not alone. I have walked through breast cancer twice, and I want my story to remind others that a diagnosis does not get to write the final line of their story."

"My hope is that it brings faith, strength, encouragement and the will to fight to anyone who needs it."

For Kat Casperson, what remained after two battles with breast cancer was love. Friendship. Music. The courage to face the disease again after believing the first battle was finally behind her.

And above all, faith.

Faith that whatever came next, God still had a plan.

Twice cancer knocked Kat Casperson down.

And twice, she rose.