Firstly let me say that I am SO much better since Saturday. That had to have been the worst day I’ve had since all this nightmare kicked off. Each day since then has progressively gotten better and better and I’ve never been more thankful for that. Elliott is probably the happiest though as now we have some semblance of our ‘normal’ lives back.
So I’ve obviously been thinking a lot lately about what it means to move past this trauma. I don’t use that word lightly because I think in order to fully heal and even accept what’s happened I need to give my cancer the weight and importance that maybe I haven’t been.
I remember from the first time I went through treatment that the treatment itself was the easy part. Moving past it and trying to live a normal life was the hard part. My friend Karolin said it best that once you’re finished everyone just expects you to be normal again when you’re not. You’re still healing and processing everything that’s just happened. I remember this being the hardest part.
So I’ve decided, as part of my self-induced healing programme, to latch onto an important word:
SURVIVOR
Definition: A person who survives, especially a person remaining alive after an event in which others have died.
That is what I am. I am a survivor, not once, but twice. I’m still alive and I’m fighting every single day what has happened to me. And what has happened to me, through NO fault of my own. Should I work out more? Definitely. And I’ve been trying my best to go to Pilates each week. I even went when I basically needed a blood transfusion because I couldn’t breathe (and I went today!)
But I’m a survivor and it makes me so incredibly proud of myself to say it over and over again. I did it. I have survived. 🙂