Helen, what an amazing post. Your reflections on illness, identity, and time are so deeply human. It’s true that we often resist the changes that come with serious illness, wanting to see it as just a temporary bump rather than a major shift. Thank you so much for sharing 🙏🙂
I've found strength in Seneca’s line about enjoying the summer even when you know winter is coming and you know you have to prepare for it. It makes it easier to stop and look at the sky and to enjoy the climbing roses.
Two years into this adventure and we started to take things a little too easy and to treat life as just the usual, daily happenings. But I had a little setback last weekend and almost didn't make it to Sunday.
Life is special again now, full of hugs and walks in the sunshine. None of us takes anything for granted anymore. We are compelled to enjoy summer because winter is around the next corner. I'm still not afraid but it feels urgent that I enjoy the time that's left. My children too know that this time is special and give me a lifetime worth of love every morning.
Like you Helen, I'm reflecting over what could have been and what should have been but I am still enjoying the here and now. I hope there is still plenty of sky and plenty of climbing roses for us both to enjoy.
"Being ill helped me to realize how thoroughly overworked and burnt out I was" - I'm in the middle of learning this too.
I loved this post (I love all your posts). It spoke to me because I do tend to look at situations with a kind of desperation for meaning. This probably has something to do with me being a psychotherapist as well as a philosophy PhD student, but it means I can rarely just leave a situation alone and let it be. Instead I'm constantly milking it, desperate for it to be *worth* something: if I have to go through it, I at least want to get something from it.
But... what if I don't? What if I just go through it, and like you say, it's a bump in the road, but doesn't change the road irrevocably?
As always, you have given me much to think about :) thank you <3
"I didn't write beautiful cancer diaries, as Audre Lorde did."
you kind of did though...
Thank for this beautiful essay. I mean it.
Helen, what an amazing post. Your reflections on illness, identity, and time are so deeply human. It’s true that we often resist the changes that come with serious illness, wanting to see it as just a temporary bump rather than a major shift. Thank you so much for sharing 🙏🙂
I've found strength in Seneca’s line about enjoying the summer even when you know winter is coming and you know you have to prepare for it. It makes it easier to stop and look at the sky and to enjoy the climbing roses.
Two years into this adventure and we started to take things a little too easy and to treat life as just the usual, daily happenings. But I had a little setback last weekend and almost didn't make it to Sunday.
Life is special again now, full of hugs and walks in the sunshine. None of us takes anything for granted anymore. We are compelled to enjoy summer because winter is around the next corner. I'm still not afraid but it feels urgent that I enjoy the time that's left. My children too know that this time is special and give me a lifetime worth of love every morning.
Like you Helen, I'm reflecting over what could have been and what should have been but I am still enjoying the here and now. I hope there is still plenty of sky and plenty of climbing roses for us both to enjoy.
Wonderful reflections
Vhikc
Bki
"Being ill helped me to realize how thoroughly overworked and burnt out I was" - I'm in the middle of learning this too.
I loved this post (I love all your posts). It spoke to me because I do tend to look at situations with a kind of desperation for meaning. This probably has something to do with me being a psychotherapist as well as a philosophy PhD student, but it means I can rarely just leave a situation alone and let it be. Instead I'm constantly milking it, desperate for it to be *worth* something: if I have to go through it, I at least want to get something from it.
But... what if I don't? What if I just go through it, and like you say, it's a bump in the road, but doesn't change the road irrevocably?
As always, you have given me much to think about :) thank you <3
It takes patience to be a patient.
Great stuff!