Calling Cancer a Gift Or an Opportunity for Enlightenment Is Insulting!

Many many times after hearing the phrase, well we’re all going to die sometime, I retorted with the usual - well you don’t know from what and how painful your existence will be until that day comes and I hope you never do. I’d not wish my “growth experience” on my worst enemy. I actually have a mortal enemy and guess what? I don’t forgive her either. So I don’t wish it on her but I still hate her guts. She did something so reprehensible that it led to the stress in my life that probably led to the speeding up of my cortisol production that also led five years ago to my stage four diagnosis. I hate cancer more than I hate her. Cancer sucks. My life changed for the worse not the better. I am broke, broken and tired. Focusing on my now and my breath and today and this moment and not making plans - is that better? No. It’s not better. I am as always though my life growing and expanding as human being,, and more secure in the person oI am. I am still me - just me with cancer and I know a lot more about cancer. There’s simply a coincidence that I strive to be a better person as wisdom springs from experience, as knowledge blooms from curiosity or in some cases necessity, and as love deepens and strengthen as the choices I’ve made rely on the wisdom and knowledge I’ve gained. I’ve earned a living and the worst thing for me is a lack of independence. When you support yourself since the age of 14, you become fierce in the independent nature of your life. But there’s a secondary level of strength that has come to serve me well - tenacity. After tenacity humor. If not for both I’d be a candle blown out by the wind, my soul gone back to the place from whence it came, in essence without those things supporting my psychological health I’d be a dead parrot. Like the Monty Python sketch https://youtu.be/vnciwwsvNcc and I wish to place a complaint. No religion makes room for the lepers, the cancer addled, the terminally ill. We are ignored and isolated, put in a box and left there to die. If it weren’t for my online support network, including you who i love dearly, I’d be editing out the salty words and trying like hell to find a nice way to say - cancer is a narcissistic fucking asshole that takes one by their own vascular system and sucks the light out of our eyes. Yeah, there’s growth. But that’s called a tumor.

Just came accross this post, and I have felt the shock and sting of hearing someone in my life respond with an enthusiastic, "What a blessing!" when I shared the news of my cancer diagnosis. I still have a hard time fathoming it, but it is clear from your post and the comments that this type of statement is not as unusual as I'd hope it was.

I am writing to share with you my response, in the hopes that it may help others as a tactic to respond to such statements. I've actually used this as a response to many different statements ("check out this diet," "read this book" "I hear picking out an implant is like selecting tiles for your kitchen"-- yes, heard that one too, of course, from someone who has never been through this). I'll pause to share that I have re-evaluted some of these "friendships," and generally avoid the blessing person now, lol. Who says that????!!!!

The response that has worked well for me is simply, "I'm not there yet." or "I'm not there." In some instances, it acts like a reset button and the conversation goes elsewhere. In others, the person feels the need to once again explain what they are suggesting. In which event, I respond again, "I am not there." It is a way to demonstrate your lack of agreement without calling someone out for saying something completely ridiculous or offensive.

Wishing actual blessings for you all!

I don't like the idea of anyone lecturing a cancer survivor about the nature of their own experience and it's deeply offensive to suggest that God deliberately caused someone's cancer. However, my own experience is that having breast cancer has been a near death experience that prompted changes in my awareness of my own mortality and appreciation of my continuing existence. I imagine that my attitude would have been changed equally by surviving a train wreck or being the one person pulled from the tornado debris alive. Is that a gift? More like random good luck. I dodged a bullet because, as bad as it has been, it could have been so much worse. The list of what I've lost is long, but right at the top is happy obliviousness to the briefness, the fragility, and the randomness of life. So, now instead of the daily ordinary routine of life with all it's comforting boundaries, I live a life fraught with uncertainty and worry. What will happen to my 10-yr old if I die in the near future? Are any of these ordinary tasks important in comparison to taking care of my body and health? Do I really want to spend time working at (fill in the blank) when I don't know how much time I have left? Sadly, the importance of these questions was no different before I was diagnosed with breast cancer, but I never thought about my life ending except in some distant very old age, and I wasted so much precious time. Is this sudden awareness a "gift"? No, but I understand how someone may make a bad word choice in trying to describe it. It's both enlightenment and a burden to realize that in the end, there won't be enough time, that one must every day prioritize what is most important, jettison the unimportant without a second thought, and not waste the finite days and hours of your life on bullshit.

Hi Nancy. Thank you so much for this post. I recently was diagnosed with Breast cancer while getting a reduction. I was told there is no other way it would have been found until too late. That being said, my options are now very limited and I’m having a double mastectomy in a few weeks. Even the options with my surgery are limited because I’m relatively healthy. People/family are telling me how grateful I should be and they don’t understand how upset it makes me to hear. Am I lucky that I made the decisions that discovered this, yes. But I don’t want to hear it from other people who have no idea what I’m going through and are telling Me to “just feel grateful” for anything especially when I am approaching my first of 3-4 surgeries because I’m not overweight instead of the 1 surgery I would have had if I was. Insane right? And when I try to tell them how I do feel they force their statement down my throat, again. I don’t feel grateful, not right now. I feel pain from the surgery I had, I feel angry, I feel upset and a bunch more things. Your post and the others on here has made me feel validated today. Thank you.

If cancer is a gift, I want to return it. I want a full refund, no exchanges...thank you. I have Stage 4 breast cancer and do not feel I have received an opportunity to be a better person or to improve my life. I feel, instead, that a huge steel door has slammed shut and that I can never get back to my old life on the other side. That is, in itself, such a devastating feeling that I can't even describe it. Words fail me here...and I like the power and intrigue of words. I don't, however, like when words are used in a vacuous way...spoken to ease your mind but instead rattle you. I've been told I could 'beat this' and I've had more than one finger wagged in my face telling me to 'be positive'. It made me feel like a small child who received no presents on Christmas Day and was lectured to be grateful for life and not to expect more than the gift of being alive! OK. But everyone else got gifts and they aren't giving them away or offering them to me. Being excluded from the luxury of having a life that hasn't been threatened by a terminal, incurable illness does not feel like an opportunity to show gratefulness. I suppose people are trying to make lemonade out of lemons when they say cancer is a gift. I'm here to tell you its a lemonade you wish you never had to drink. It comes with much suffering and a guarantee to kill you...eventually. No thank you. I'd prefer to keep the lemons...if only I'd been given a choice.