From Pain to Purpose
Seven years ago, I didn’t choose this path. Cancer showed up on my doorstep, uninvited and unwelcome. It wasn’t a teacher I asked for, and I won’t call it a gift. Today, after seven straight years of treatment, I face a hard truth: the very thing I tried to escape shaped me into someone I might not have become otherwise.
Those treatments were brutal. Week after week, month after month, year after year, my body became a battleground. I lost count of the appointments, the scans, and the times a doctor spoke softly, trying to prepare me for what might come next. I felt my strength fade in waiting rooms. I watched my reflection change into someone I didn’t recognize.
Treatment didn’t only go after the cancer. It also stripped away the armor I wore each day. It shook my sense of who I was and what I could take. In the worst moments, when fatigue sank into my bones and fear whispered that I might not make it, I found something I didn’t expect. I was stronger than I thought. Not a slogan kind of strong, a real strength that showed up when I felt empty.
Between treatments, in the quiet hours after my energy ran out, there was nothing left to distract me from myself. I met a part of me I hadn’t known before. When the outer layer I depended on was burned away, something clearer was left behind. I learned I could sit with uncertainty, and it wouldn’t crush me.
Cancer forced me to lose control of what I couldn’t predict. That loss did something strange. It made room for change. I stopped fighting the present moment. I stopped living only in the fear of next week, next month, next year. I began to live in the now, not because it felt calm or wise, but because it was the only way to stay here.
Acceptance didn’t erase what hurt. It made it possible to keep going.
Over these seven years, one discovery has mattered most. I found purpose in helping others. I always loved writing, not to track my medical story, but to reach across the loneliness that cancer creates. I write so someone else can feel seen in a place that often feels invisible.
I write to help people name what they’re living through. I write to offer steadiness when everything feels unsteady. I write to show how staying in the present can become a lifeline when life feels like it’s breaking apart. I write to echo the voices of others, and to remind them they aren’t alone, not in the waiting rooms, not in the sleepless nights, not in the shock of learning new things about themselves.
What I write isn’t meant to be a pep talk. It’s meant to be company. It’s meant to offer care, honesty, and a hand to hold while the hard days keep coming. And if a reader finds their own strength along the way, then the words did what they were meant to do.
Cancer took more than I can measure. It stole years I won’t get back. It left scars I’ll carry for the rest of my life. Still, it cracked something open in me. It taught me to live each day in the one place any of us truly have, this moment.
I didn’t choose this journey. But I can honor who I’ve become because of it. I can also honor the chance to use what I’ve lived through to help someone else find their way down their own hard road.
Few things hit the heart and mind like cancer. It drags you through fear, grief, anger, and the sharp pain of how unfair it all is. It can lead you to the dark question of whether you can keep going at all. It strips away comfort and asks, “Who are you when the familiar supports are gone?”
That answer doesn’t come fast. It comes in small choices, made on days you never wanted. It comes through simple acts of showing up when you’d rather disappear.
Cancer teaches a hard kind of courage. Not the kind that looks bold. The kind that gets you out of bed when you don’t want to. The kind that speaks up at an appointment when your voice shakes. The kind that asks for help, even when pride tells you not to.
It also teaches that hope doesn’t depend on certainty. Strength can stand beside tenderness. Meaning can take shape in a fire you never asked to walk through. Cancer changes you, whether you want it to or not.
So what do you do with the person you’ve become?
