This blog is for everyone and for those of you, who’ve been newly diagnosed with cancer, those of you living with cancer, those of you in remission, for your loved ones and carers and those of you who are in bereavement, mourning the loss of someone you loved dearly.  I write from my own experience, and naturally some of what I say may resonate with you and some of it may not.

All of us and every creature, feels fear.  In my Before Cancer days, I used to fear, Fear itself. I used to dread, Dread.  To me fear was the worst of all possible emotions, worse than grief, worse than sorrow, worse than anger. 

Anger in this day and age often gets a bad rap, as if we shouldn’t ever feel it or if we do feel anger, then we shouldn’t talk about feeling it. When we’re diagnosed with cancer, anger is one of the first emotions that can show up. Some of us don’t feel anger and that’s perfectly normal too – we each have our own unique relationship with our emotions.

In the days after my diagnosis, I felt angry about many things. I was angry about having cancer. I was angry with myself, because I felt I’d squandered years in my past. I was angry that I hadn’t achieved what I wanted to achieve. I was angry with having to give up the things I was doing and wanted to do.

Guilt is the way we distinguish between our kind actions and our hostile actions. Holding onto guilt and I include shame does not do us any good. Instead, guilt needs be let go of and replaced by a genuine desire to heal and rebalance – to replace anger we might feel against ourselves with self-forgiveness. 

Being human means, that feeling grief and sorrow during our lives is unavoidable.  Grief and sorrow are the natural emotions we experience when we lose that which we love.  With cancer and any major illness, feelings of loss and sorrow, are inevitable.  It may be that you mourn for your old pre-cancer way of life, for your work, for the way your body was before you became ill.