Celebrating 5 YEARS CANCER FREE!
11/30/22
Dear Friends and Family,
As I sit and look at the calendar, I think to myself “the last month of 2022 is tomorrow”. Before I let my mind wander and start thinking about the holiday rush, I pause and think about what I am especially grateful for in November of 2022. My husband and I celebrated our nine year wedding anniversary and this month marked being FIVE YEARS CANCER FREE (from my last radiation treatment)! I am now a member of the Survivorship Program and will go to one appointment a year. I still see my radiation oncologist yearly amongst other appointments that come after breast cancer treatment.
It seems like yesterday that I was celebrating my last radiation appointment on November of 2017 in the radiation waiting room with friends and family. When I think of the outpouring of love and support, I received throughout my surgery and treatments, it brings a smile to my face.
In the beginning of January 2018, when my life was no longer consumed by cancer treatments, I felt “lost”. I wasn’t sure what to do with my time. I was working and going through the motions that everything was still the same, but it wasn’t, I wasn’t the same person I was before cancer. I was grieving the person I was before cancer. Grief and loss can occur, not only with the passing of a loved one, but when people are faced with a life altering health diagnosis. People can often experience the loss of one’s self and grieve the person that they once were before their diagnosis.
As many of you know, I have been in the helping profession for my entire career, as an educator, school counselor, and now I will be utilizing my counseling skills as a Licensed Professional Counselor. I look forward to helping my clients navigate life with or without a life altering health diagnosis.
Cancer definitely puts life into perspective and I had to “rediscover” who I was as a person and what is and isn’t important to me. To this day, I continue to learn things about myself and navigate life. One thing cancer did remind me of, is that “Each day is a gift from God”. Some days may be good and some days may be bad, and some days may be in between, but each day it is still a gift…
Like I used to tell my upper school students, “Just take five minutes out of your busy, busy schedule and think of what you are grateful for, if you don’t have five minutes, one minute works too…” Everyone that is reading this can participate too. 😉
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Anchored in HOPE,
JW
Anchored in HOPE 