Choosing Joy

Joy comes with me to every chemo infusion

I had a rough week. Today is the first day I’m feeling good. I realized it in the shower when the thoughts started pouring in of what I wanted to share with you all.

Cancer is everywhere and yet it is so isolating.

I have yet to share that I’m battling cancer with someone — friend or stranger — who hasn’t responded with “I’m a survivor,” or “me too” or “my — is also.” It’s wild how many people cancer impacts. Yes, I know I am a broken record. I just can’t wrap my head around it!

Cancer and survivors are everywhere. But during this hellish week I also seemed to be finding loss everywhere I looked. Ok mostly on social media — a big part of why I stay off social as much as possible. No matter the message, I can’t simply scroll by. I have a hard time separating other people’s pain from my own. I grieve the losses of strangers as if they were my friends. I feel for their partners. Their parents. Especially their children. And then I begin to think of my children and their futures. And of my own battle. My cancer has responded incredibly well to the red devil (worth it!) and I am filled with gratitude. The tumor I originally found on top of my right breast last November is no longer able to be felt. (I’ll pause for the amens and hallelujahs)

I am endlessly grateful for the miracles of modern science. Yet I’m wracked with guilt and anxiety. Guilt that I’m lucky and my cancer is responding so well. That, based on how things look right now, I will get to live a long life, to see my children grow up. That I will earn the title “survivor” when so many others aren’t as fortunate, are robbed of decades, don’t get to see their children grow or perhaps even have children.

Then there’s the anxiety. The annoying inner voice we all have to varying degrees. Mine loves to get spun up over things I have no control over: will I have a recurrence? Will my cancer respond to treatment then? Will my children get cancer? Will they also test positive for BRCA? And, of course, a barrage of questions that pop into mind after reading another’s story on social media: Why is my cancer responding to treatment and hers didn’t? Will mine stop responding? Will those things happen to me? And on and on …

Lillian has the sass of seventeen in a seven-year-old body. It seems lately everything I say and do gets under her skin and every little inconvenience is the end of the world or, as she likes to say, the “worst day EVER.” Which is, ironically, often in a day that has also been tagged the “BEST DAY EVER!”

This past week while I was feeling awful, but I still made myself get out of bed, shower and drive Lillian to school. I love this time with her. Just me and her, my little mini and bestie. Sometimes we’re quiet and just ride together. Other times we’re singing our hearts out to The Greatest Showman or Taylor Swift. Sometimes we just talk about nothing and everything.

This particular day Lil was having a “worst day ever” from the jump. Everything brought on the whiny tears. We somehow made it into the car and she struggled with the seat belt, voicing her discomfort the entire time. I put the car in drive (to more whines of “Mom I’m not ready!”) and finally eased out of the driveway. I’d barely turned out of our very short driveway to cries of “Oh man, I dropped my pen! This is the worst!”

I parked the car and turned to look at Lillian.

It took all the patience and strength I had to stay calm and not scream that I am the one who deserves to be whining and complaining and marking every day the WORST ever.

I took a deep breath and told her that life isn’t always pretty and perfect and things don’t always go how you’d like them to go. And sometimes we have to do things we really, really don’t want to do. That’s just part of it. What you do about those things it up to you. You can choose to be upset about them, to feel like the universe is out to get you or that you are doing something wrong, or you can choose joy. You can understand that sometimes, despite our best effort and intent, we drop the pen. Sometimes we stub our toe or miss out on an opportunity. Sometimes we have to make our bed. Pain is fleeting. Opportunities are not limited. You can choose to be happy despite a setback, to see the positive, to learn and grow and find a way over or around rather than standing stuck at a roadblock.

I know. Big moment for me.

But as we drove to school and she reflected on what I’d said I thought about how I’d felt over the past week. Even as much as I focus on choosing joy, I’d let myself focus on fear, anxiety, sorrow. I think it’s healthy to have a balance of emotions and naive to think you can positive-think your way out of anything, but happy is who I am — even if I cry at crappy commercials, strangers’ birth announcements, and lost dog flyers. I try to find the silver lining, to give the thing a chance.

And it was a good reminder for me. I need to choose joy. The fate of another has no bearing on my life or outcomes, not in this situation anyway. But I can and should leave space for the other emotions — as long as they’re limited in their purview. Choosing joy isn’t always easy, but it does become second nature over time. When trials like, say, cancer? show up on your path it becomes increasingly difficult. When you feel ill all day every day, when you feel like your life is paused while the world continues to move forward, like every new day could hold a painful new surprise, like life has treated you so unfairly despite all the good you do (or try to do). There is still reason to be happy, to be grateful.

I am surrounded by so much love and support. I have an amazing family who cheers me up daily, just by being who they are. Cancer has reconnected me with so many friends from all chapters of my life and across the miles. It has brought me closer to friends I already had. It has refocused my perspective on a lot of things that used to cause me stress and allowed me to let things slide. Cancer is making me a better, stronger person.

The Red Devil is behind me. The countdown to the end of chemo begins! Twelve rounds starting Thursday and I’m ready to tackle this “easier” drug, with Joy beside me.