Another Year Another Lesson
A little over a year ago I started blogging my journey through what felt like the longest year of my life. Although it was full of pain that didn’t make much sense at the time, it brought me to a completely different place in my journey. As I started to write that year after my diagnosis, I learned that the most challenging part of the whole journey, was learning to live a new normal after it was “over.” The truth is, that was just the beginning and all of that trauma hit me pretty hard and new heartache was added. I had terrible anxiety thinking about taking you through such a personal experience with my treatment, my breakup, losing my job, and a whole lot in between. Every time I thought it was over and I could start to move on with my life, something new kicked me down, and my life unraveled even more. Writing was never easy but every time that I did, I felt all of the physical and mental agony, but also growth and acceptance as I reflected. Growth is never easy, it is often painful and you don’t always see the results until some time has passed. Yesterday marked two years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer and like always, that is a trigger for me. I relive that day like it was yesterday and it’s paralyzing. I am beyond grateful that I am here to tell my story and my life appears “normal” like nothing ever happened, but inside I hurt. I hurt physically from the side effects of everything that my body endured with the multiple surgeries and procedures, and I hurt mentally from the trauma of it all. I hurt often but with that hurt, I am feeling all of my feelings. I am processing and accepting. I am building a new chapter of my life that looks a whole lot different, but what I have endured will always be a part of me. A light at the end of a very dark tunnel that I can brightly see and touch. We all have traumatic events in our lives and we all deal with those things differently. I never wanted to wake up years from now and have to accept everything after I had already moved on. I don’t like to brush things under the rug and I honestly don’t think I am capable of that. My personality is to feel and deal with issues. I remember going through everything and that was my fear, with all of that adrenaline pumping through my body to carry me through, I wasn’t processing it all. Starting this blog was a way for me to do that and sometimes I wanted to share those thoughts and the recollection of my emotions, but sometimes I wanted to do that alone and not share in that moment, or sometimes I didn’t want to deal with it at all. As new trauma and loss happened, it made it harder for me to share and I would lose sight of that light at the end. Most of the time that I posted, I was just laying everything out and you read it as I went through it. There are things that I didn’t recall happening or feelings I never felt until I typed them out. That has been such a helpful part of my healing and growth and I knew that maybe somewhere it could help someone feel like they are not alone when shared. Your messages I have received have done just that. Everyone is struggling with something and your bravery in sharing and your extremely kind words have meant everything to me. There is no timeline on how long it should take us to heal or where we should be at in that process. Everyone’s journey and how we cope with events and constant disruptions in our lives are unique to us. Maybe now that I have reflected and accepted certain things, I will have more courage and confidence to put it out there, and you will too. When we neglect our problems and feelings, things often get worse. Life never settles down, so dealing with hardships will allow us to keep moving forward in our journey. I am sure new things will pop up as they always do during reflection (and life) but I can’t stress enough, how important this step is in the process of continued healing and growth for ourselves.
With that said, I wanted to share those blog posts of the longest day of my life and give myself a boost of confidence that I made it another year and reflect on the extreme growth that has happened from writing this a year ago today. Thanks for your continued support as I bare it all.
