Building resilience during chemo
was one of the most powerful lessons cancer taught me
My body went through so much,
I was in awe by the strength of it
Every time I was told I couldn’t have my treatment because my bloods were not at the level it should be
I had an extra week to recover
At the beginning I got so upset about it
I was trying everything I could
👉🏽changing my diet
👉🏽Exercising
Still things would come up
Red cells were too low😕
white cells were too low🙁
Sore throats and fevers🥺
In days of despair I would say to myself
“Tomorrow will be a better day”
And it always was
Mentally when I would feel so hopeless
About feeling so unwell and nauseous
scared about my future
I would say to myself
“Tomorrow will be a better day”
And it always was
Emotionally when I felt stressed
By the idea of changing all my habits
Things that I had done for my entire life that I knew I needed to let go
Because they simply didn’t serve me
I would say to myself
“Tomorrow will be a better day”
And it always was
The more I practiced the habit of
👉🏽Dusting myself off
👉🏽Shaking myself off after a bad day
The quicker I started coming back from these days
Before I knew they became hours
Before I knew they become minutes
Before I knew it, I was bouncing back
automatically as a habit
Instead of dwelling in the unwanted feeling or situation
I could see it for what it was
And come back from it
Everything we do is a habit
Building resilience is like building muscle
I was lucky enough to experience the
“intensive course” of cancer treatment
Where I was faced with situations and feelings
That threw me off balance daily
I kept practicing it
I kept trusting it
I kept doing the work
My “resilience” muscle kept getting stronger.
“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.”
― Elizabeth Edwards
This is exactly what I did
I put something much better than I had before
A stronger and healthier body, mind and soul
And you can do it too. 💜
Don’t over complicate the practice of building resilience
Dust yourself off and get up again.
