Walking the Line

Yesterday on my twitter newsfeed, in tweet by Cure magazine (a magazine that covers cancer-related stories and findings), I was directed to a moving article by a woman who is living with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.  I am pleasantly surprised at how many articles I have found recently that are written by cancer patients themselves, and covering the difficult challenges they are facing.  It's an encouraging thing to see! What made this particular article stand out to me, however, was the author's main message:

"And then I realized, you know, it's OK to cry. This is a loss. A huge loss."

Her words convey something really important and really special: a combination of acceptance and acknowledgement.  While she has accepted her situation as it is, and is trying to live her life in spite of her disease, she makes the crucial point that it is also necessary for her to acknowledge what she has lost in the whole process.  This is a fine line to walk for any cancer patient, especially one given a poor prognosis.  I know I spent many months in my first year of treatment struggling to accept the 40% chance of survival I had been given and the subsequent loss of so many of my teenage years.  I also was not very good at letting myself be sad about it all.  I think I tried to bury it all and I rarely told myself it was okay to cry.  It took me quite some time to find a balance between accepting my situation for what it was - trying to live as normally as possible in spite of my diagnosis - and giving myself the chance to acknowledge my sadness.  

So, I thank Susan Fariss for writing about this issue in such an honest way and helping others going through a similar experience to know it's ok to cry.  And I end with another awesome statement she makes at the end of her article: 

"While it certainly is true that stuff happens and that I did nothing to earn this spate of horrible bad luck — it doesn't mean it doesn't suck."