I recently saw a social media reel that was a punch in the gut. The woman, a cancer survivor, talked about how she hates when people discuss what they have learned from cancer. She went on to say that this kind of conversation puts too much pressure on cancer survivors to look for cancer’s lessons. She argued that this may leave cancer patients or survivors feeling like they have failed at cancer when all they have been doing is white knuckling it through one of life’s hardest experiences. Their work is to survive, not to reflect. I can hear and understand that.

To my readers who are cancer patients, please hear me clearly. There are no have-to’s in being a cancer patient. You don’t have to eat a certain way, think about things a certain way, manage relationships a certain way, and you definitely don’t have to dig deep for the lessons cancer has. For some people, there are no lessons. And that is totally okay.

I write about the things I have learned on my journey with cancer on this blog and in my books. This process of reflection is just naturally who I am as a person. And writing comes to me like breathing comes to others. And sometimes, my intuitive sense of reflection has hurt me. I can overthink things. I have also been told by a couple of former friends that I am “too deep”. Ouch. But the bottom line is that I do not ever want you as a cancer patient or survivor to read what I write and think you need to put your energy into looking for what cancer has to teach you. Unless that is who you intuitively are. And in that case, you should definitely be reflective. This journey with cancer is so individualized, because we come to it as individual humans. We bring to cancer what we bring to the rest of our lives. We bring our strengths and we bring our broken parts. We bring our desire to survive. And that will, forever and ever, be enough.

Be well, my dear readers.