Jennifer Taylor and Adrien Finkel have been close since they were 2 years old
Credit: Courtesy of Jennifer Taylor and Adrien Finkel
NEED TO KNOW
- A woman’s best friend is helping her through her breast cancer diagnosis — and they’re documenting the journey online
- Jennifer Taylor and Adrien Finkel have been close since they were 2 years old
- Taylor was diagnosed with stage 2 triple-positive breast cancer in 2025
A woman’s best friend since childhood is helping her navigate her breast cancer diagnosis.
Jennifer Taylor and Adrien Finkel have been close since they were 2 years old, growing up blocks away from each other and later attending and living together at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
“There really isn’t a version of my life that doesn’t have her in it,” Taylor tells PEOPLE exclusively about herself and Finkel, both 41. “We’ve been through preschool, high school, college, my marriage, careers, cross-country moves and four decades of life together.”
Taylor was diagnosed with stage 2 triple-positive breast cancer in 2025. “Cancer is obviously not a chapter either of us imagined we’d have to navigate [together],” Taylor says.
Credit: Courtesy of Jennifer Taylor and Adrien Finkel
Finkel had just moved back to New York City around the same time that Taylor got her breast cancer diagnosis.
Taylor — who works as the founder and creative director of A Taylored Affair, a New York-based event planning and design company — has undergone treatment that includes 12 weeks of initial chemotherapy (THCP), a double mastectomy, 20 rounds of radiation and chemically induced menopause, as well as an additional chemotherapy treatment called ENHERTU, which she is undergoing until December.
Credit: Courtesy of Jennifer Taylor and Adrien Finkel
Finkel, who does creative operations at RYZE Mushroom Coffee and owns CAKE RIOT, was there at Taylor’s first mammogram appointment, and she has been at every one since.
The best friends also go in for biweekly chemo visits at the Perlmutter Cancer Center. (There, Taylor has formed a close relationship with her oncology nurse, Bianca, who she says has “made me feel safe, known and human in a place that can be incredibly scary.”)
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“When I was first diagnosed, one of the hardest things was having to tell people over and over again that I had cancer,” Taylor tells PEOPLE, recalling how Finkel “suggested we start documenting what was happening so I wouldn’t have to keep retelling it.”
As a result, the friends created an Instagram page, @JenAndAdrien, where they have shared photos, video and insight since. “At first, it really was that simple. Then people started finding us,” Taylor says.
Credit: Courtesy of Jennifer Taylor and Adrien Finkel
“I had spent the first days after my diagnosis desperately searching the internet for someone who looked like me and whose life still looked vaguely recognizable. I wanted to know what chemo actually looked like. I wanted to know if I would ever laugh or go to dinner or wear something I liked or feel like myself again. And so much of what I found made me feel like my life was already over,” she continues. “I think that’s why we kept posting. We wanted to show the whole thing — cancer can be terrifying and brutal and unfair, and at the exact same time, you can laugh so hard with your best friend that you forget where you are for five minutes. Both things can be true.”
“We have never wanted to put a shiny bow on cancer. There is no amount of positive thinking that makes a double mastectomy, chemo, radiation, chemically induced menopause at 40 or being scared about your future fun,” adds Taylor. “Our philosophy has basically become: This really f—ing sucks, so let’s sit in it together, and laugh whenever we possibly can.”
Credit: Courtesy of Jennifer Taylor and Adrien Finkel
According to Taylor, “I don’t think cancer taught me that life is precious. I already knew that.”
“What it showed me, in a way I don’t think I understood before, is how precious it is to have people who are willing to walk directly into the worst thing with you instead of standing outside of it,” she continues.
“Adrien walked in, she never left, and maybe that’s the story for me,” Taylor — who is a mom to a 5-year-old daughter, Frankie — adds. “This isn’t really a story about cancer.”
“Cancer is just the terrible thing that happened,” she further explains. “The story is about friendship, family and the people who make an unbearable thing bearable.”
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