Staying resilient isn’t about not feeling the things you feel, or suppressing negative thoughts, nor is it about not being honest when things are hard. Letting go of your expectations to be ok is ok, it is scary to go there… Confronting fears, being afraid you wont mend after you have broken. But “ruin is the road to transformation”.
It is also about working with what you’ve got, finding the strength in yourself to be happy and thankful for those things, rather than feeling angry at the shit you have been dealt.
Your resilience level is so much about perspective, you may not feel resilient right now, yet to others you appear to be thriving during a challenge. It may take time and distance from that challenge for you to begin to acknowledge how resilient you really were.
I have realised that instead of portraying myself as totally resilient, it may be more comforting to others to show what is is really like in the depths. So that you understand its not just you who feels like this… There is strength in both numbers and honesty.
One persons coping mechanism will be very different to the next. Personally, I find comfort in using my experiences to help and even inspire others. But its about what works for you and not according to anybodies expectations – your strategies may be quiet and not apparent to others.
Yes I am 22 and I have cancer. Yes I feel like cancer has stolen a year of my life. But, Hodgkins is curable, I am being cured, my recent scans show no remaining tumours after only 2 cycles of ABVD. (I still have to go through the full 6 months of chemo to make sure none of the buggers ever come back.) But I believe everything happens for a reason. That reason being I will grab life with both hands after all this bollocks. I believe my future would have been entirely different had I not been faced with this at such a young age. I used to be so comfortably numb, but now I feel everything with such passion. And for those reasons, cancer, you can have my 22nd year.
I’ve just stumbled across this and I’ve read every single entry. Your badass attitude goes without saying, but you are in fact a really natural writer – you’re actually funny af(!) and I think what any cancer fighter could do with is a dose of this blog to help get them through! Kudos to you. X
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