Letting Go & Hanging On

“Letting go” was the topic of a wonderful and lively @bcsmchat. If you’d like to read the chat transcript in its entirety, click here. While participating in the chat, I found myself struggling a bit with what to say, or rather with how I felt about the topic. Mostly I was, and still am, unsure of what letting go means when talking about cancer. I do know cancer brings a lot of letting go and hanging on.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m supposed to be doing a better job of letting go. I feel as if I’m supposed to be doing a better job of moving on. Isn’t this what’s really meant by letting go?

Maybe, maybe not. It’s more complicated than that.

Letting go is something we all do throughout our lives. We let go of childhood and more carefree days. We let go of careers. We even let go of certain people and sometimes dreams we have too. And anyone who’s parented knows a whole lot about letting go. The whole idea of parenting is to help your children grow up so you can, well, let them go. And on a side note, Dear Hubby and I recently launched number three out of the nest. Talk about major letting go.

Yes, letting go is part of life.

And then there’s cancer.

How do you let go of cancer?

Can you ever really let go?

I don’t think so. But that’s a post for another day.

With cancer, there’s a lot of letting go involved and a lot of hanging on as well.

Cancer forces you to hang on. I don’t mean to cancer, of course, but to yourself.

A cancer diagnosis impacts just about every single aspect of your life, or at least this has been the case for me; so I have had to do a lot of letting go. I have also had to do a lot of hanging on.

Quite literally, I had to let go of outer and inner parts of my body, and not just any parts, but the very parts that represent femaleness.

So yes, I had to let go. After this letting go, I still work hard every day to hang on to the woman I know I still am, but sometimes struggle to see.

I let go and I hang on.

I never expected to not be a healthy person, much less be one with cancer. Letting go of the idea of myself as a strong and healthy person has not been easy. Accepting my new far more imperfect and more fragile physical and emotional self is a challenge every day. I know I’m still me, but yet I also know I’m not.

I let go and I hang on.

I no longer can physically do things I could do before cancer and this really pisses me off sometimes. I hang onto and try to build upon strengths of various sorts I still have.

I let go and I hang on.

Sometimes, I still don’t recognize the person who looks back at me in the mirror these days. (Come to think of it, it might be time soon for a little rant about that). She looks nothing like the person she looked like before cancer, and this is not just because she’s older.

I let go and I hang on.

I no longer stand in front of a classroom filled with elementary-age children on a regular basis, but I will always consider myself to be an educator and someone who cares deeply about children, and not just my own.

I let go and I hang on.

I could go on, but you get my drift.

I think of my friends with metastatic disease who must let go of so much more than I have had to.

They let go. And they hang on, many quite literally, for life every single day.

They let go. They hang on.

I guess we all do.

The tweet chat ended by positioning a certain ‘a’ word into the conversation, as a finale so to speak. It was not intended to be a question, nor a statement necessarily, just a conversation catalyst.

What ‘a’ word you might be wondering?

Acceptance.

Acceptance is a really ‘big’ word, especially when coupled with cancer, and perhaps best left for another day to write about as well…

So yes, since my cancer diagnosis there has been a lot of letting go and a lot of hanging on, too, which really means there’s been a lot of adapting. There’s been a lot of evolving.

Cancer or no cancer, each of us lets go and each of us hangs on in her own way and according to her own timetable.

And this is as it should be.

What’s something cancer has forced you to let go of?

What’s something you hang onto?

If applicable, do you see yourself ever “letting go” of cancer, or is this even possible for you?

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