TW. ILLNESS

I have shared some parts of my personal life on this blog. This is probably the most personal share to date.

My older sister (who I am so close with) was diagnosed with stage 3B ovarian cancer about a year ago. Since then she has undergone chemotherapy and surgery. For a while, she was good. Fast-forward to now and she has a recurrence. The tumor is inoperable and she has to do chemotherapy again. I don’t know what the outcome will be. I can’t control anything having to do with this.

I’m a therapist and I don’t even know how to be there for my sister. And I’m so angry. I’m gutted – it literally feels like my guts are being ripped out of my body.

Pivoting to a different topic that pertains to what I’ve shared…

In the past, I have given a gift to people that I call 52 things I love about you. It’s a small mason jar that I decorate and I glue a little poem on. Inside it are 52 strips of paper citing 52 things I love about that person. They pick a paper out once a week for one year.

This year I did that for my younger sister. She suggested I do it for my older sister who is battling cancer. It was always in the back of my mind to do it, but I had been putting it off – because I knew it would be hard.

I sat down tonight to write out these 52 things. At first, I thought “how am I gonna even find 52?” And then I started to write. And then the tears came.

If you’ve ever had the experience of knowing you needed to cry, but couldn’t you may be able to understand how cathartic this was for me and also how much it sucked.

As I sat at my kitchen table crying, I thought who could I reach out to to help me hold this? And unfortunately, given the time of night it was and other circumstances there wasn’t anyone. That was a harsh realization. It hurt. I felt – alone and flailing… like I was drowning.

Somehow, someway a part of my brain took over… maybe it’s the work that I’ve done in therapy?

I said to myself, “this is so hard right now, but the hurt and the pain are going to diminish. It’s going to pass. It will suck at the pinnacle of the pain. And what you are feeling right now is going to dull.”

It was at this moment that I picked up my pen and started writing this:

We are all going to suffer. We are all going to face hardships. Sometimes the people that we need/want will be there. Sometimes they will not for various reasons. Sometimes they can’t be in the moment.

What I’m taking away from this experience tonight is that I can be there for myself and even though it’s not what I want I know that the pinnacle of my pain will pass. And there is an important distinction there. It’s not that I won’t feel this pain because I will probably for a long time. Tonight I was at the pinnacle. And I accepted it. And I reminded myself it would start to dissipate.

Acceptance and commitment therapy is exactly what I experienced. I accepted that in the moment I felt so sad so angry and so alone. I let myself cry. I let myself feel bad. I wholeheartedly let the moment happen. And it started to come down.

Then, I remembered that tomorrow I could call my best friend. Tomorrow I could talk to my husband, who, for the record was sleeping at this time and for various reasons it was not worth it for me to wake him up. I could reach out to my therapist. I could sit back and observe what was happening for what it was and allow myself to just be in this.

The acceptance part is that I know it’s not going to be the only time this happens. The commitment part is the acknowledgment and handling – who can I reach out to and if the timing isn’t right what am I going to do?

As I finish this writing, I have calmed down and I’m feeling so much better. Yes I am writing this in real time.

It’s kind of funny… even as a clinician sometimes when I think of therapy, I think of it as a solution or an end all or be all to problems. That’s not what it is. I think it’s learning about yourself, recognizing thoughts and patterns, maybe doing something different and maybe accepting where you are in the moment and then committing to doing something the next time that is going to be helpful.

I thank you for listening.