Julie Forward DeMay really didn’t want to talk about the cervical cancer that she was fighting with all her might. But, says her mother, June Forward of Oconomowoc, she wanted her friends to know how she was doing, so she blogged about what it’s like to face down fear and win.

Not just personal friends, but others battling cancer, their families and caregivers read the blog. They came to know Julie as a determined 36-year-old mother who aimed a full arsenal of emotions at the disease — from anger to humor, frustration to inspiration, outrage to peace.

It took more than a year after Julie died for her mother to assemble the blogs into "Cell War Notebooks," a book that Forward chose to self-publish "because I didn’t want anybody to edit those words." So Julie’s blogs appear in the book just as she wrote them.

Forward says although the book chronicles a monumental struggle, her daughter’s words are often "uplifting and full of hope."

From March 5, 2009: "There is a small part of me that is screaming and yelling and saying can’t someone just rip this stuff out of me and chuck it in the garbage? Can’t I just throw up and have it come out? But I have to keep going. I have to drink my vegetables and eat my vitamins. I have to watch Scott and Thandi finish the sauna. I have to help Luka learn to jump rope. So here I go."

Julie majored in creative writing in college, Forward says, and she was also a freelance photographer. Julie’s photographs illustrate the book just as they were used in her blogs, like the picture of her getting a buzz cut the day her hair started falling out in clumps from the chemotherapy.

From Jan. 25, 2009: "With cancer, it always comes down to the hair. I won’t miss it so much as I will miss my life with hair. Being bald is the cancer signal and from here on out, I won’t be so incognito with my damn ugly mutating cells. People will see my pretty scarf and know that I am sick.

"They won’t know if I am wearing a cute blonde pixie cut wig, I guess though. Anyone got one of those?"

Julie writes as if she is having a conversation with a close friend. Forward says people who did not know her personally have told her, "I feel like I have just befriended the most amazing woman."

As the posts move across seven months, an intimate portrait of Julie emerges — her struggles with the treatments’ side effects; her fierce love of her husband, family and friends who pull out all the stops to support her battle; and her insistence on living on her own terms.

From July 28, 2009, the last post: "It’s time to teach my daughter the beauty and strength in surrender; it’s time to show her the absolute courage it takes to fight with all the power you have and then realize the Pain is not going to stop until you give it the word."

"Her life dream was to be a published author," Forward says. "So I said to her, before she passed away, ‘Julie, I want to get this published for you.’ I couldn’t do anything else, I couldn’t take her pain away, but I could get it published for her. I would give anything if it wasn’t about this."

Proceeds from "Cell War Notebooks" will be put into a fund for Julie’s daughter, Luka.