10 Things To Love About Cancer

Is love the right word?

I wrote this piece, and as I neared the end, I felt a feeling I couldn’t quite pinpoint. I sat with it in the drafts for a few days. When I went back to it later, I shut my computer in a rage at the notion of there being anything “good” about cancer. How could I write that there is anything good about this awful experience? Is this what is meant by toxic positivity?

This week, my hair has started to fall out, my arm is swollen for unknown reasons and I have a mouth sores that make eating anything painful. I am slowly watching what feels like the last piece of myself fade into an unrecognizable person. Cancer patients having to lose their sense of identity feels like a torture straight out of Dante’s Inferno.

Most of the last ten months of my life has been an echoing rage of some version of “fck cancer.” At each turn, anger has led me around with passengers of resentfulness, grief, depression and despair. Even in the moments of “good”, such as finding out the cancer hasn’t spread, or your blood work is stable enough to continue treatments, it doesn’t feel “good.” It feels like a nightmare you’re waiting to wake up from.

There are two types of ways that I have found life to reveal information to you. It either hits you over the head in a pretty obvious manner, or it gives you a painfully slow revelation. The kind where you frequently yell out, “WHY” as if you could convince whoever is calling the shots to speed up the answer. Getting cancer at 32 and losing my entire reproductive system is, of course, the slow burn type of life lesson I am finding. I know this, because in the last month or so, I have felt kernels of information reveal themselves. And even though rage still rides shotgun on a day-to-day basis, I have felt moments of something else trying to reveal itself. The first time, a few weeks back.

I was sitting in my sister’s hot tub, staring up at the sky. It was one of those perfect spring nights. The kind where the temperature is just right, the birds are happily signing and all feels calm. I had the house to myself and was enjoying the warmth of the hot tub against the cool air as the sun began setting. As I sat there looking up, I saw a flock of birds flying in a v formation and spent the next few minutes watching them. I admired the ease as they flew together, each of them adjusting just right with each other’s movements.

Pretty cool.

I looked over and watched as the sun hit against the trees. The most beautiful golden light glimmered against the leaves. I admired her backyard filled with various colorful spring blooms. Truthfully, it was one of those moments that almost felt fake, everything showing off in a ‘too perfect’ kind of way.

The following day, I was recounting this moment with my husband and realized my inflated excitement to telling him a pretty ordinary experience. But as I continued to tell him, I realized what I was really feeling in that moment was immense gratitude. And that lately, I had been having more of these types of thoughts after certain experiences in my week-to-week.

Cancer changes you as a person. I used to believe once the treatments were complete, I would return to “normal.” But certain life experiences are too big. And it isn’t the cancer cells that shift you. It’s the realness that this life isn’t forever. The people we love deeply, the experiences we enjoy, are not forever. Of course, we are aware our time here has an end, but cancer keeps that reality at the forefront. As much as I don’t want to admit to the idea cancer is giving me things other than pain, the reality is that suffering usually teaches us much more than any other life experience.

So, I will honor it. Because two things can be true at the same time. Cancer can bring me suffering and these 10 other things I have allowed myself to see:

1. Gratitude

   For my community, the people I love, the life I have been given, resources, the list goes on.

2. The Ability to be Fully Present

   I soak up every experience fully and stay present. I don’t focus so hard on the future and just live in the moment.

3. Quality Time

   The time I spend with loved ones has never felt more special. Not only because they are showing up for me in the ways I need but it never feels rushed or taken for granted.

4. My Desire To Be Kind

   Experiences like cancer open your eyes to suffering. We don’t know what other people are fully going through. Nothing really matters here on Earth besides kindness and love to one another.

5. Mind/Body Relationship

   I pay closer attention to what they both need. For me, support groups, eating healthier, sleeping more, walking away from stressful situations. I make it a priority to listen and respond.

6. Prioritization Skills

   Work has taken the back burner, people I love the front. It’s never been more clear what the order of importance should be.

7. Community

   I have it and feel such support. Both the one I had already built and the one I have here or in support groups has never felt stronger. It has opened my eyes up to just how well people can show up for one another in a meaningful, life changing way.

8. Slow Down

   I no longer rush around or function on autopilot. My brain reminds me to soak in moments longer before moving onto the next.

9. Immense Strength

   There was a time where someone calling me strong bothered me. Mostly because I didn’t ask to be strong, I was forced into it. There is no denying it, there isn’t much I can’t handle. I have never been more in awe of my ability to stay standing, physically and mentally.

10. Helping Others

    I don’t know what after cancer looks like but I know all I want to do is help people. And that it feels more important than anything else I do.

This list isn’t to undermine the tragedy within a cancer diagnosis. There is no hiding from the heartbreak this road has given me. I have never felt more challenged in my life, at times questioning my ability to keep moving forward. I have felt completely stripped of all that I have known to be true, a veil opened to just how intense this human experience can become. My eyes can’t unsee the memories, my ears can’t unhear the painful facts cancer has provided. My heart and mind are forever altered to this new reality. I think about the people cancer impacts, the families feeling all that mine has and my heart shatters while I try to calm the rage of unfairness inside of me. Cancer has taken so much more than it has given. It’s made me question our purpose here, what truly comes after death and what I want to leave when I am gone.

But I can’t deny that with it brings forward things other than tragedy. I am learning immense amounts in such a short amount of time. I see life in a light I never have before. I have no idea the purpose of this or if it will become clear to me someday, but for now I allow the thoughts and feelings to wash through me, open to all this experience has to give me, the bad and the good.

xx