When cancer steps back into your life it can send you down a heart-wrenching emotional path. Feelings of anger, confusion, frustration and sadness collide inside your head like the noise of a child banging on pots and pans. Sooner or later though, your mind settles on the reality of the situation. Then hope can get a grip on you.
I’m a firm believer in pity parties. To find hope we sometimes first have to get through a pity party—and often more than one. It’s seems like “party” is a misnomer because crying and withdrawing doesn’t feel like a party at all. Yet, when we allow ourselves to go through it, something cathartic happens—glimmers of hope begin to emerge. A wise friend once said to me, “we can’t always choose what we go through, but we can always choose how we go through it.” That’s the essence of allowing hope to have its grip on you and your struggle.
Through my own struggles and walking beside others, I’ve learned a lot about hope. That hope has been magnified by some amazing people in my path. One friend beat Lymphoma after being told he had a ten percent chance; he’s now a 3-year survivor. At last year’s Young Survival Coalition, I met a number of women diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer, attending as one-month to five-year survivors.
I prayed alongside others for a woman who was in the battle for the third time, twice with breast cancer, then esophageal cancer. She was told that her prognosis was “very poor.” She’s now more than a year outside the battle and mentoring others newly diagnosed. Her unwavering faith is apparent in her words: “you must be willing to focus on the small miracles, not the darkness.” Then recently, I was honored to meet another woman of unwavering faith. She’s a young mother (and breast cancer survivor) with four children; and now she’s facing stage 4 lung cancer. She boldly claimed total healing before treatment began.
Some would read those stories and say, “that sounds great, but that’s not the case for everyone.” Sadly, that’s true. One might gain a month, another a year or some ten years and more—yet, they’re grateful for every moment. The commonality that I see is their choice about how they go through their struggle. Dwelling on the diagnosis could have resulted in hopelessness. Instead, they all chose to dwell on hope and surround themselves with those who did the same.
Perhaps pity parties should be timed, much like when you give a child time-out. Cancer is a reason to get really mad and time-outs are part of the grief process. There’s a time to pout and there’s a time to shout. Pity parties ought to be followed by praise parties where the focus is on the small miracles, rather than the darkness.
I’d love to see “stage” redefined for patients, as literally: a period or step in a process. That definition infers that you’re going up and forward; now those are hopeful words! After all, isn’t that the reason for treatment, to help patients and their families move on with life again? When hope gets a grip, there’s no telling what will happen—even if cancer steps into your life again.
Maryann Makekau, Author & Inspirational Speaker (www.becausehopematters.com)
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