Grief Is a Funny Thing

For weeks, I’ve been grieving in silence. Over the past few days, I finally found the courage to break that silence. A few days ago, a close friend noticed the sadness in my eyes and the worry written across my face. I tried to brush it off, telling him it was nothing and that I was fine. I truly thought I was doing a good job of hiding what I was carrying, but apparently, I wasn’t. The truth is, you can only carry so much pain in silence before the weight becomes too heavy to hide. Eventually, we all reach a breaking point.

When the frustration and tears finally broke through

At first, my grief came out as frustration as I found myself being moody the majority of the day. Then, it surfaced as tears while I was driving alone last Tuesday, listening to a song that unexpectedly stirred something inside me. A few days later, it revealed itself again—in my eyes and on my face—when a close friend looked at me and asked if I was okay. At that point, my grief had become impossible to contain.

Finally, I realized it was time to face what I had been trying so hard to hold inside. It was time to open up about this new kind of grief after cancer I had been carrying silently for several weeks. So, I decided to write about it.

Sharing my feelings publicly

I shared a deeply personal post across my social media platforms, along with twenty photos that represented what I had been feeling. In the caption, I opened up about something I had struggled to put into words: I was grieving the person I was before my cancer diagnosis.

It was one of the most vulnerable things I had shared, but somewhere inside, I knew I needed to let it out. To my surprise, the response was overwhelming. Friends and family reached out, left comments, shared encouragement, and opened up about their own experiences with grief. So many people connected with the thoughts and emotions I had been carrying privately.

Maybe that was the lesson in all of this: sometimes the things we are most afraid to say out loud are the very things we need to release. Maybe letting it out was a good thing after all.

Why grief after cancer is so hard to sit with

Grief is a funny thing. The more you try to hide it, the stronger it seems to become. The more you try to suppress it, the more pressure builds beneath the surface until, eventually, it erupts like a volcano. You would think that by this point in my life, I would know exactly how to handle grief whenever it shows up. But the truth is, I still don’t. I’m still learning what to do with it, how to sit with it, and how to make room for feelings I would much rather push away. And if I’m being completely truthful, I don’t like grief one bit. But I’m beginning to understand that ignoring it doesn’t make it disappear. Sometimes, the only way through grief is to finally allow yourself to feel it.

Missing who I was before

The truth is, I miss the person I was before cancer. Before my diagnosis, I didn’t think much about death. I didn’t think about cancer, either. I simply lived my life freely, without realizing what a gift it was to move through the world without those thoughts constantly lingering somewhere in the back of my mind.

But now, I know all too well what it means to hear the word “cancer” attached to your own life. I know what it feels like to have your sense of safety shaken and to realize just how fragile life can be. And even though the cancer itself may be behind me, I’m still recovering from everything it left behind.

Sometimes, I don’t just grieve what happened to me. I grieve for the version of myself who existed before it happened—the man who didn’t know what was coming, who didn’t carry these fears, and who could simply live without wondering how quickly everything could change.

How a diagnosis changes who you are

Cancer changes you, and in many ways, the person you were before cancer is gone. The moment you receive that diagnosis, you are thrown into an entirely different world—a world filled with appointments, treatments, uncertainty, side effects, financial hardship, fear, doubt, and emotional trauma, just to name a few. You learn things you never wanted to learn, experience things you never imagined you would have to endure, and face realities you may have once believed belonged to someone else. And once you know those things, you can’t simply unlearn them. They become part of your story and, in some ways, part of you forever.

But grief is part of being human, isn’t it? At some point, in one form or another, it touches all of us. So if you’re grieving something—or even someone you used to be—please know that you are not alone.

Learning to embrace who I am now

Finally allowing myself to face my grief helped me accept something I had been struggling with for a while: cancer changed me. And I’m beginning to realize that maybe that’s okay.

I’d like to believe that I’m wiser now. I listen to my body more closely. I appreciate the little things in life in ways I never did before. I’m more aware of how precious time is, and I carry a deeper sense of gratitude for simply being here. Most of all, I feel a sense of triumph knowing that I have walked through some incredibly difficult seasons, faced some ginormous obstacles, and somehow found the strength to make it to the other side.

I will always miss the person I was before cancer. That version of me deserves to be remembered, because he carried me as far as he could.

But I’m learning that grieving the old me doesn’t mean I have to reject the new me. The old me will be missed. But this new version of me? He’s someone I could definitely get used to.