By Steven Petrow — 2017
The scar represented the loss of my younger self’s sense of invulnerability, and — no surprise — triggered a fear of death.
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CLEAR ALL
Imagine being at risk for 12 cancers. Welcome to a life in limbo.
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Paige More gets real about what it was like to be a body positivity advocate who didn’t love her own body, and how she’s repairing her relationship with it now.
Accepting help from others when you have a cancer diagnosis isn’t a sign of weakness.
Cancer patients deal daily with dread stirred by organisms produced by the body they attack.
Understanding the patterns of reaction to a prolonged illness with perhaps years of remission and a significant chance of being cured will help you put your emotional survival in focus while your doctor concentrates on your physical survival.
After treatment ends, one of the most common concerns survivors have is that the cancer will come back. The fear of recurrence is very real and entirely normal. Although you cannot control whether the cancer returns, you can control how much the fear of recurrence affects your life.
Just as cancer affects your physical health, it can bring up a wide range of feelings you’re not used to dealing with. It can also make existing feelings seem more intense. They may change daily, hourly, or even minute to minute.
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” ~Nelson Mandela
As long as you think vulnerability is weakness, you’re going to be afraid. Mirabai Bush and Ram Dass on the kind of vulnerability that’s actually strength.