This was not the post I was planning today. I was working on a piece about movement and the creative process, but the creative process for that piece was disrupted by a milestone I reached three days ago that I felt needed some reflection. That reflection turned into this essay.
On Wednesday, I walked into the chemo suite at the Juravinski Cancer Centre for (what I hope to be) the very last time. I was there for my final Herceptin treatment, which marked the end of all my treatments since January, 2023. It was cause for celebration.
This wasn’t my first rodeo; I had been diagnosed with a different cancer (cervical) in 2016 and, against all odds, I beat it ten months later (you can read about it here if you don’t know that story).
So Wednesday’s bell-ringing was that much more meaningful —I closed not only a chapter, but a whole book.
I celebrated the wins all along the way over the course of the past year — the end of chemo, being done with surgery, finishing radiation therapy, and finally the last of my Herceptin treatments. I have so much to be thankful for, especially the people who supported me and cheered me on throughout all of it, despite having their own lives, their own worries, and for some, their own suffering. They were there for me without hesitation. Their love was the thing that carried me through the darkest parts, and that is something I will hold onto forever.
In celebrating those wins, and throughout the whole treatment process, people have acknowledged my suffering in telling me how strong I am. I’ve been thinking a lot over the past year about this idea of strength. The same day I celebrated my last treatment, I read the piece Toughen Up by
, and it brought these thoughts to the fore. It has made me think about strength in a different way, so I wanted to share those thoughts with you here.I have faced some dark moments. There has been discomfort. There has been fear. There has been so much change and uncertainty which is possibly the hardest part. That feeling of floating untethered, seemingly with no control over my direction or velocity, has been the most destabilizing part of all of this. Fortunately, the most intense of those feelings have abated and so has the threat. There will always be some uncertainty, but that is true for all of us, that is life.
So yes, I suppose I have built some toughness resulting from suffering. But it may not be the same as strength. What I think of as strength-building is knowing the hardship you’re about to face and then meeting it voluntarily. But facing cancer was not my choice. It was a situation I found myself in, and so I followed all the recommended treatment plans. I did what I was told.
Am I strong for surviving? Maybe at the cellular level. Or could it be that I just did what I was supposed to do, and the proven treatment protocols worked? I suppose it could be both. But when people tell me I’m strong, I’m not so sure it’s true. I understand why they say this, and I would probably say it too. It comes from a place of kindness, compassion and encouragement, and that’s the spirit in which I take it. It is sometimes meant as
an affirmation — as if hearing it and believing it will make it true. And it must be, to an extent — I am still standing, after all. But if I am strong, it’s only because living through hardship has made me so. What is probably more accurate, though, is that it has made me tough.
In his piece, Toughen Up, Patrick Muindi warns us not to let the hardships we face get the better of us. We may bend under the weight of it but we will eventually need to straighten ourselves up and prepare for the next storm, and be even more resilient as a consequence — because there will inevitably be another one coming.
This proved true for me, although my second cancer was caught early and my chances of recovery were very good. I wasn’t walking around feeling like a ticking time bomb like I’d done the first time, and for that I will always be grateful. But halfway through my treatments, I had something new to be worried about. A very different problem was rising to the surface and it was about to toughen me up even more.
Issues I had with my partner of ten years became too intrusive to ignore, like mold forming in the walls that you don’t quite see in the early stages. It had been there for a while, growing ever so slowly. Once it had shown itself, though, it couldn’t be unseen. And so I could no longer act like things were okay. The mold had to go — I had to address our issues. And so I did.
I hadn’t thought that he would end our relationship in the middle of the most intense part of my treatments, right before surgery — but he did.
It was one of the most horrible times in my life. I will forever be amazed at how naive I can be, always looking for the good in people and believing things will be okay. My partner was not in a healthy state of mind, that became clear. I was struggling too, but I had to keep going. I couldn’t let this break me. I had to be tough.
With my treatments well underway and under control, I had the realization that, despite all of this, the hardest thing in my life was that I was losing my partner. It was a hard pill to swallow — and I’d already swallowed some pretty hard pills up to that point. I had to turn elsewhere for the strength I needed to get through it all, and fortunately I had an amazing community of good people to lean on. But the painful fact remained — my “one” couldn’t be the one. It shook me to my core. He had his own demons, and I found out how destructive they really were. But that is a story for another time.
The truth is that I’m tired. I’m not certain of the limits of my mind and my body. I’m free of any detectable disease, but I don’t know at what point I’ll hit a wall, get sick or become exhausted. I’m not feeling particularly strong most days. There is still uncertainty, but it seems to be part of life now. It is just another thing that needs to be acknowledged. I have to be nimble, resilient, ready to pivot. I need to be tough.
This toughness gives me confidence, a sense of faith in myself. It lets me know that I can get through the next ordeal that comes at me because I’ve gotten through difficulties in the past. It makes me think of Friedrich Nietzsche’s infamous aphorism, but with a slight modification: What doesn’t kill you makes you tougher.
So am I strong or am I tough? Maybe it’s just semantics. Or maybe it’s the difference between spirit and physiology, and resilience over time — an awareness that my present state is not permanent. However I choose to describe myself, when I’m not feeling strong, I can take solace in the knowledge that I am, most decidedly, tough.
Thank you for being here and thank you as always for staying with me as I ramble on. I hope my words might help someone who is also going through, or has gone through, a difficult time. If I have learned anything, it is that a rough situation becomes rougher when you feel that you’re alone. As long as there are billions of other humans on earth, you are most definitely not alone.
I’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to comment below if you would like to be part of the conversation.
I love that Sarah!
They certainly are. Having come through this there’s no limit to what you can achieve x