Life After Cancer: How Survivorship Changed Me and Finding Myself Again
I met the saddest version of myself this past year.
A version of me I never thought I would become.
I lost my spark.
My joy.
My peace.
There were days when I genuinely felt like I had lost myself entirely.
Cancer has a way of doing that. It doesn’t just attack your body. It reaches into places no scan can see. It changes the way you think, the way you feel, the way you see your future, and sometimes even the way you recognize yourself.
And this past year, I barely recognized the woman staring back at me.
When My Own Mind Became the Hardest Place to Be
There were days when my mind became a place I couldn’t escape from.
Fear consumed me.
Sometimes it rendered me completely immobile.
What if the treatment doesn’t work?
What if it comes back?
What if something happens to me?
What if my kids have to grow up without their mom?
What if every ache, pain, bump, headache, or strange feeling means something?
Cancer introduces you to a level of fear that is difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.
And when you’ve been diagnosed more than once, convincing yourself that the worst-case scenario probably won’t happen becomes a little harder.
Because you’ve already been the exception.
You’ve already heard bad news you never thought you’d hear.
You’ve already had your life divided into a before and an after.
So sometimes fear wins.
Sometimes logic doesn’t matter.
Sometimes you’re just scared.
I Was Exhausted in Ways Sleep Couldn’t Fix
I was overwhelmed.
I was exhausted.
And not just physically.
There is an exhaustion that comes from constantly trying to hold yourself together.
From appointments and treatments and medications and surgeries and side effects.
From worrying about your family.
From trying to keep working.
From trying to be a present wife and mother.
From answering texts asking how you’re doing when you don’t even know how to answer that question anymore.
From trying to reassure everyone else when you’re terrified yourself.
Eventually, even little things started sending me into a spiral.
Things I normally would have brushed off suddenly felt enormous.
And I would wonder:
What is wrong with me?
But the truth was, I wasn’t reacting to one little thing.
I was reacting to everything.
The little thing was simply the final drop in a cup that had been overflowing for months.
But I Still Smiled
That’s probably the part most people didn’t see.
I smiled through so much of it.
I showed up.
I worked.
I laughed.
I made jokes.
I took care of my kids.
I went to baseball games.
I answered emails.
I posted on social media.
I had conversations.
I did normal life things while living through something that felt anything but normal.
And I became really good at looking okay.
That’s something this past year taught me that I don’t think I’ll ever forget:
You truly have no idea what another person may be carrying.
Someone can laugh with you and cry the entire drive home.
Someone can show up for everyone else while barely holding themselves together.
Someone can look strong while quietly wondering how much longer they can keep doing this.
Pain isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it looks remarkably normal.
Hard Seasons Show You Who Your People Are
This past year also opened my eyes to the people around me.
Cancer has a strange way of revealing relationships.
You learn very quickly who can handle hard things.
Some people step closer.
Some people sit beside you without trying to fix anything.
Some people check on you months after everyone else has stopped asking.
Some people remember the scans, appointments, anniversaries, and days that are harder than you expected them to be.
And some people disappear.
Some disappoint you.
Some simply don’t know what to do with your pain.
That hurt.
But it also taught me something important.
Not everyone is capable of walking through the hardest chapters of your life with you.
And maybe that’s okay.
Because the people who stayed?
The people who loved me when I wasn’t fun, positive, strong, inspirational, or easy?
Those are my people.
Cancer helped me recognize my tribe.
I Learned I’m Stronger Than I Ever Wanted to Be
People tell cancer patients they’re strong all the time.
I’ve heard it countless times.
“You’re so strong.”
And I know it’s meant with love.
But sometimes I didn’t feel strong.
I felt terrified.
Angry.
Exhausted.
Broken.
I didn’t choose strength.
I chose survival.
I kept going because the alternative wasn’t something I was willing to accept.
And somewhere along the way, I realized maybe that’s what strength actually looks like.
Strength isn’t always standing tall with your fists in the air.
Sometimes strength is crying in the shower and still getting dressed afterward.
Sometimes it’s walking into another appointment when every part of you wants to run away.
Sometimes it’s letting someone help you.
Sometimes it’s admitting you’re scared.
Sometimes it’s simply waking up and trying again.
And apparently, I can do hard things.
Really, really hard things.
I wish I didn’t know that about myself.
But I do now.
Cancer Broke Something in Me
I don’t want to romanticize what happened to me.
I don’t believe everything happens for a reason.
I don’t think cancer was some beautiful gift sent to teach me how to appreciate life.
I would have happily learned these lessons another way.
Cancer took things from me.
It changed my body.
It changed my relationship with fear.
It changed the way I think about time.
It changed relationships.
It changed the way I see myself.
And yes, I think it broke something deep inside of me.
For a while, I thought that meant I had lost a piece of myself forever.
Maybe I did.
Because I’m beginning to understand that healing doesn’t necessarily mean becoming the person you were before.
Maybe she’s gone.
And maybe that’s one of the hardest parts of survivorship nobody prepares you for.
Everyone wants you to get back to normal.
But what happens when normal doesn’t exist anymore?
Maybe I’m Not Supposed to Go Back
I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been asking myself the wrong question.
Instead of asking:
How do I become who I was before cancer?
Maybe I should be asking:
Who do I want to become now?
Because maybe the goal isn’t to go backward.
Maybe I’m supposed to build something new.
A woman who protects her peace.
A woman who knows who belongs at her table.
A woman who stops apologizing for having boundaries.
A woman who understands how precious ordinary days actually are.
A woman who doesn’t waste energy trying to convince people to understand her.
A woman who says what she means.
A woman who loves harder.
A woman who rests when she needs to.
A woman who knows that gratitude and grief can exist in the same body.
A woman who can be incredibly thankful to be alive while still grieving everything cancer took from her.
Maybe both things can be true.
I’m Still Becoming Her
I don’t have some perfectly wrapped-up ending to this story.
I’m still figuring it out.
There are still days when fear gets loud.
There are still moments when I miss the person I used to be.
There are still times when I look at my body and struggle to accept everything it has been through.
There are still appointments that make my stomach drop.
There are still moments when I wonder whether I’ll ever truly feel safe in my own life again.
But there are also good days.
There is laughter.
There is hope.
There are baseball games and family dinners and books and coffee and conversations and ordinary mornings I once worried I might never get to have.
There are pieces of me coming back.
And there are entirely new pieces being created.
Maybe healing isn’t putting yourself back together exactly the way you were.
Maybe healing is looking at everything scattered around you and deciding what deserves to come with you.
This past year introduced me to the saddest version of myself.
The most scared version.
The most exhausted version.
The most broken version.
But she survived.
And because she did, I get to meet whoever comes next.
Cancer did that.
Cancer broke something in me.
But cancer doesn’t get to decide what I build from the pieces.
