Point #11 of my 11-point program for Caring for Yourself While Supporting Others
From my book Stay Present: A Child, A Diagnosis, A Family's Way Forward
There’s a chapter “Checked and Unchecked Boxes” in my book Stay Present which perhaps conveys my most significant learning during our journey through the pediatric cancer treatment world, and the lesson applies to life in general. When some milestone had been completed or we got a “happy MRI,” we’d breathe a collective family sigh of relief. “We/she made it!” was my thinking, as if that survival “box” had been checked and we could now “go on with our lives.”
Strange thinking, in retrospect, that our lives were not “going on” just because we were in a holding pattern to some test result. Equally silly, but understandable, was the unspoken thought that we had crossed some final bridge and would never have to revisit it again.
I remember the conversation that my husband Graham and I had on our morning walk as we realized these wishful yet unrealistic notions. At a deeper level, we understood that “No one ever gets it all done, you never get to say that you’re home free.“ Indeed, we did have frequent test results based on a diagnosis that gave us cause for concern. But as the father of our daughter’s anorexic childhood friend said, “Every family has something.” Even then, I thought that they must’ve done something wrong to bring such distress upon their family.
This is not meant to sound dismal and perhaps it’s obvious to you, but we don’t know when trouble may visit us or those we love. It doesn't mean that we did anything wrong, or that they did anything wrong. My good friend watched a member of her church congregation struggle to the front alter to receive prayers after undergoing treatment for one of those diagnoses. A voice in my friend’s head whispered, “Oh the poor man, I’m so lucky!” One week later, it was her: her husband got his own diagnosis.
Stuff happens, even to me and you, and we don’t get to check any box permanently. That has to be accepted eventually, and although life doesn’t go in a straight line to where we want to be, we will have what it takes one way or another to come through it.
Whatever you do that works in the present regardless of what the future may bring, keep repeating rather than thinking you’ve checked that box and can resort to your same old habits.
If a daily reading helps, repeat it. If going for a walk helps, repeat it. If writing in your journal or eating healthy food helps, repeat it. Repeat, repeat, repeat whatever works.