Embracing the New Normal

This is the cancer-survivor-me writing this post.

I wrote in my award winning memoir My Ticket to Ride: From Cancer to Flourishing about embracing what in the cancer community is often referred to as the new normal.

Now, as I read and hear about people with cancer resisting accepting their new normal, I have this to add: I find myself celebrating my new normal whatever it is. It is always changing. (and it always will). I’m not as physically energetic as I used to be – a  new normal.  I can observe that as bad for me and have the perception I have lost something, and grieve my life will never be the same, or, I can embrace this new way of feeling, enjoy not having to go, go, go, all the time, and celebrate this slower pace.

Since I wrote My Ticket to Ride and its companion workbook Heart of  Courage: Solutions for Undoing What Fear Created, I can now embrace myself as an author, something I didn’t do when I created my awesome perpetual calendar  Doorways to Daily Soul Nurturance years before cancer joined my life. Now, as an author, I schedule Book Parties and answer interesting questions about my experience and enjoy how this creates amazing conversations. There are workshops where I share techniques I used to keep me on the path of wellness while doing cancer. I learn enormous amounts from the participants and they gain new ideas for living a more empowered life. We all win! That is a new normal for me.

I’ve noticed how I may not accomplish all I used to accomplish before the cancer. I also notice, enjoying more one-on-one time with others and taking more me time. More new normal to embrace.

As I went through the hellishness of the cancer experience, I did my best to acknowledge all that blessed me, no matter how insignificant it seemed at the time (even the chemo). Was it easy. Not always.  Yet I knew,  how I chose to perceive my life is how my life would be created. I relinquished regret that my life wasn’t as it was before cancer and made joy the basis of my my life — my new normal. Is every one of my days filled to overflowing with ecstatic joy? No. Yet, when I look at and feel the underlying peace of it all, life is joyous.

Even if I never had cancer, I’m still not 25 and cannot do what I did at 25 or whatever age I choose to look back on. Living is a constant redefining of normal. Cancer, or any major life wake-up call just makes me/us more aware of it. As I went through the cancer, I asked myself, “How are you going to allow yourself to learn from this cancer wake-up call?” “How are you going to put what you’ve learned into action?” “What are you doing to acknowledge all the joyous experiences in your life right now?” “Are you celebrating the joyous, or are you still attached to the perception of what your life was before the wake-up call?”

Let’s celebrate our new normals! 

© 2019 Cristina Whitehawk