Cancer Gave Me Peace

Every year, I choose a word to be my overarching theme for the next 365 days. In 2021, my word was correction. In 2022, it was truth; in 2023, it was acceptance; and in 2024, it was peace. I set the intention that in 2024, I would live a more peaceful life. I wouldn’t be at odds with anybody. I would choose to forgive myself and others. I would deliberately live a much calmer life.

My diagnosis uprooted my life

Little did I know, 6 months into my year of peace, I was diagnosed with stage 2 esophageal cancer, and my life changed forever. How could I have peace when my world was flipped upside down? How could I have peace during chemotherapy cycles and peace knowing that there is a strawberry-sized tumor at the lower end of my throat? The moment I got diagnosed with cancer on that Friday afternoon in June, life suddenly felt far from peaceful.

Cancer changed my perspective

Although it looked like that year I got my word wrong, oddly enough, in hindsight, 2024 was indeed a year of peace. To give you some context, before cancer my life was hectic. My schedule was always jammed-packed from working two jobs. As a single father, I felt as if all the pressure of raising my children was on me. I felt as if I was constantly in a rush, and I was still healing from my divorce. The idea of rest was foreign to me. Life for me felt like I was running an exhausting marathon, all day, every day, with no end in sight.

However, cancer changed all of that very quickly. Cancer slowed me down. Cancer caused me to let go of the idea in my mind that I had full control over my life. Cancer pulled me out of the marathon race that took over my life. Cancer gave me peace.

Defining peace in the face of illness

One day, I looked up the word peace and according to Merriam-Webster.com, peace is a state of tranquility or quiet. Some synonyms of peace include calmness and serenity. But as I continued reading the definition, there was another meaning. The second meaning was a period in which there is no war or a war has ended.

Ending the war with ourselves and cancer

If we are completely honest with ourselves, I think for a lot of us, we are at war with ourselves sometimes. Maybe we feel as if we aren’t good enough. Maybe we feel like a failure, or maybe we feel like we should have been way more ahead in life than where we currently are. We tend to be our own worst enemy. But when you get a life-changing diagnosis like cancer, it shakes things up a bit. It changes the path that you were on. The things that used to matter don’t matter anymore. The noise quiets down, and you are left with silence, stillness, and serenity.

Some might say the war with myself may have ended, but the war with cancer just began. And although that might be a little true, in my opinion, cancer for me felt more like a stretching or me being pulled to my limits. It didn’t feel like a war to me; it felt like an expansion.

Finding peace in the uncertainty

You might wonder how I could have peace when things looked so uncertain. To answer, I had peace knowing that I had relinquished control. When you surrender it all, you free up space for peace to abide in you and with you.

Suddenly I had order in my life. I had structure and routine. It wasn’t the structure and routine I necessarily wanted, but the trips to treatment and the rest and quietness calmed me. There is a certain type of peace that you feel when things are in order and on a set routine or plan for your life. I knew the plan. The plan was chemotherapy, surgery, and recovery. Thankfully, the plan worked, and today there is no longer a strawberry-sized tumor in me anymore. The doctors have detected no more traces of cancer in my body. Who knows how hectic my life would still be if cancer hadn’t interrupted it. I learned many things as a result of having cancer, and oddly enough, learning to make space for peace in my life was one of them.

In 2025, my word was trust, and I’m excited to pick a word for 2026. Have you ever tried picking a word for the year? If you haven’t, I think you should.