On Loss & Growth
Is it possible to live several lifetimes in one year? Time is a mental construct, right? It feels like the year 2050 when I think about all that’s happened over the last year. It’s been equal parts exhilarating and heartbreaking. I’ve felt some of the most empowering joy coupled with the most overwhelming loss. I’ve never felt so confident in who I am and how I want to live. I’ve also never felt so alone.
The loss started with my “health.” Getting cancer meant I wasn’t young and healthy anymore. If we’re being honest, I hadn’t been healthy for years. In 2018 I confidently told my therapist “I can’t worry about my physical health, I focus more on my mental health.” She has a great poker face. That’s not how it works. The things I did to “take care” of my mental health were destructive to my nervous system. My physical baseline was burnt out and hungover. Since I wasn’t sick, I still considered myself healthy. My mental state was largely anxious. Since I was hyper productive, I was doing “well”. Emotions start in the body but that physical baseline meant my emotional state was numb. All that leads to a pretty nonexistent spiritual existence too. Losing my health meant I lost the ability to lie to myself about my health.
With the loss came trauma. When you’re experiencing trauma, your brain directs all your mental and physical energy toward dealing with the immediate threat until it’s gone. Cancer was the trauma and the threat was dying. In order to stay on this earth, all of my mental and physical energy was focused on healing. My physical health could no longer be ignored. Now it was more important than my mental health. My emotional and spiritual health came along for the ride too. The band was back together and with it came unwavering confidence in myself. No one was dying on my watch. Trauma response activated.
Then came the loss of my independence. It happened so fast I didn’t even realize it. My diagnosis was overwhelmingly chaotic, starting treatment across state lines within days. That whiplash definitely didn’t help the broken sternum. Before I knew it, I was an adult sized baby constantly getting coddled, poked, and prodded. Honestly though, it was pretty chill. This 5 month chemo induced hangover was a welcome break from life. A baseline of soul crushing anxiety, lying to yourself, working a stressful full time job, and living in your head to avoid your body is all consuming. Making a shift to consuming myself in healing did wonders for my mental health. My hardened emotional and spiritual health were thawing out too. Despite literally fighting for my life, I was as present in my body as I could be. All I had to do was love and take care of myself. I understood the assignment.
Losing my hair was another huge shot to the heart that will one day get it’s own manifesto to process. One of the few times I broke down in tears during my diagnosis was when a doctor told me I’d be losing my hair in the next two weeks. This was right after he told me I was going to be severely immunosuppressed and an infection could kill me. He didn’t understand why women always cried about the hair and not the infection part. I can’t wait to send him what I write about my hair, he's going to learn so much. I digress…
When I looked forward to life after my sabbatical, I was apprehensive but excited. With a renewed appreciation for any experience outside the four walls of my Cancer Castle and a burning desire to get back to New York, I was confident in myself and my future. Sure, it would be hard. I was bald and I heard about that whole PTSD thing. I could handle it though. I had a fresh perspective and tools to take care of my physical AND mental health. I was going to be unstoppable. This new and improved Shannon was ready to go back to the world she never wanted to leave.
Once I got back to New York, I started to build back my health, my independence and my hair. I was working with a nutrition coach, taking a writing class, and ingesting a questionable amount of biotin each day. Regardless, my attempt at a graceful swan dive back to my life turned into a belly flop. Evidently binge drinking is actually horrible for physical and mental health. Who knew? Working a full time job and then socializing 6 nights a week? Not at all restorative. Taking care of myself in New York City was harder than chemo.
My body wanted nothing to do with my old life, despite how much my mind did. Our minds are extremely powerful. It’s how I lived in mine for so long. It helped me build the life I wanted, even if I wasn’t fully present in it. Now that I was back in my body, it was too much. I didn’t want it anymore. Sunday scaries are all fun and games until laying on your couch wasting away brings you back to the last time your body was pumped with toxins. There’s that PTSD they talk about!
The process of getting back what I thought I lost made me realize what I actually lost. The person I was before cancer, my relationships as I knew them, and the life that I loved. I was pretty adamant that I wouldn’t lose any of these things, actually. In my “Why Me?” post on February 9th, 2021, I riffed on the reasons I may have gotten cancer and let everyone know that cancer wouldn’t change me.
“The reality is I will be ending treatment the same person that started it,” I stated. The denial was real. 10 months later and I’m no longer in denial. I don’t recognize who I was before cancer. Am I a different person?
Not really. I’m the same person I’ve always been, I just live differently. And I grew up. A lot. Before, my identity and a lot of my relationships were built on questionable coping mechanisms, doing instead of feeling, people pleasing, and fun. Now, I prioritize my well being and take care of myself. The things that used to relieve my mental stress now bring up physical trauma. Feeling like a stranger in your own life is trash. After the dumpster fire of the last two years, I’ve had enough trash.
The flames of that dumpster fire are burning down and what’s left isn’t bad. Loss makes space for you to fill your cup with other things, better things. There are a lot of better things coming and reasons to be excited. I might be letting go of who I was but I really like who I’m becoming. A phoenix flying out of the flames, if you will. I’m confident, sensitive, and authentic. I speak my mind and largely don’t care what other people think. When hard feelings come up, I don’t numb them or escape them. I go inward and sit through them to grow. Most of the time, at least. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
I’m starting a HypnoBreathwork® Coaching business, which is hilarious considering I still have that stressful and challenging full time job. “Relax! Balance! Rest!” she says, while building project plan after project plan. This is different though, I swear. Holding space for people to connect with their authentic selves lights me up in a way that I’ve never experienced. It’s like bringing them all the best, most healing parts of my cancer journey without the cancer. Bonus points when I can support cancer survivors working through their experience too.
The excitement of the future generally outweighs the heartbreak of letting go of the past. It’s still there though. The opportunities to sit through hard feelings are plentiful and the growing pains hurt. I miss being able to relate to my friends the way I used to, I miss my hair. Yes, it’s growing back but the mullet phase is coming. PTSD dredges up other trauma with it, and there’s no shortage of what to choose from while I’m living in my hometown.
“Personal growth doesn’t need to look like a radical life transformation,” I boldly claimed on February 9th, 2021.
I still stand by that statement, even if it isn’t my truth right now. Cancer didn’t change who I am but it changed how I live and cope in a pretty radical way. Just because it’s necessary growth doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. I’m feeling the grief that comes with it. Instead of getting stuck in the pain, I’m recognizing it as love with nowhere to go. Luckily, this love has somewhere to go. I don’t know exactly what this new life looks like but I know it’s full of love.
