Am I Healing?

People continue to ask me if I’m “over” cancer. Or if I’m “OK now.” I still don’t know how to answer them. I remind myself that polite questions about health do not require an entire confessional about how I’m really feeling. But the truth is, I DON’T know if I’m “ok now.”

There’s a joke that has made the rounds of the cancer posts and blogs that goes, “When do you stop worrying about cancer?” The answer is, “When you die from something else.”

I have written reams about healing from sexual trauma. But I don’t have a clue how to heal from the trauma of cancer. Even now, five years later.

Here’s what I had to say about it in in November of 2021, one year past the end of treatment.

“I’m still not sure how I want to conclude this story. But I want to be done. Whether these words will find a larger audience, or stay here to comfort me, is something I can decide later.

I’ve learned not to look too far into the future. Projects grow and change, and writing to heal changes the person who writes. I am not the same person who began this memoir last April. I’m not sure who I am. The last two years have been confusing for everyone, pandemic survivors and cancer survivors alike. One thing I do know: this memoir is the hardest thing I’ve ever written.

Two years ago, I was spending a lot of time trying to figure out what the third act of my life should look and feel like. I could never, EVER, have anticipated that act would begin with a world-wide pandemic and a cancer diagnosis. While I have fought through multiple traumas, and refused to let them define me, cancer is different. Healing from trauma is a lifelong process, but at least most of the traumas I’ve experienced before have had a defined ending point. Not cancer. There is no truer example of continuous, active healing than healing from cancer.

All anyone wants to hear is that you have “beaten” cancer. But no one beats cancer. It is a part of the human condition, an aberration of our normal growth and healing processes. Our cells grow and change and deliver us new bodies on a daily, monthly, yearly basis. If we live long enough, eventually one of those cells will mutate, and grow wrong. I will worry about cancer until I die of something else.”

What do I say now?

There is no beginning or end to healing – whether it’s sexual trauma, cancer, violence, or anything else that the world may visit upon us. We live, and struggle, and laugh when we can. And we heal. We have no choice. You heal or you die. And I’m still here.