This is the third post of a three-part series where Heather discusses the evolution of her cancer experience. Click here to read the first post!
By Heather Bonynge
5. Connection
This is when I found Young Adult Cancer Canada (YACC). Connecting with YACC, and other young adults with cancer changed my life. It gave me an outlet of support which was separate from my family and friends where I could share my real feelings and thoughts about my cancer, the ones I was always too scared to admit to even myself. I could tell these people–who used to be strangers–about my fear of recurrence, my thoughts about death, and the extreme loss I feel for not being able to have any more children–and I knew that they got it!
Don’t get me wrong, my family and friends were always a wonderful support system, but I could never be completely honest with them about my bad places because I always felt I had to protect them. I had to remain be positive and strong for them. The fact that I was still dealing with these feelings more than two years after all was supposed to be said and done with made it even harder to share because in my head it made me appear weak. Like I said before, my life after treatment was supposed to resume just as it once had, and in my head I felt that everyone else must think that way, too.
My first connection with YACC was at their Survivor Conference in Ottawa in 2011, and then again at a Retreat Yourself in 2013. At these events, I got to be in a room full of people and they were completely willing to be vulnerable and open with me by sharing their stories. When when it was my turn, they were completely accepting as I did the same. I learned that I didn’t actually know my own story until I started sharing it.
6. Reflection and Moving Forward
One week after Heather started treatment
I was finally able to start to find direction away from my anger and bitterness through sharing my story, attending these conferences and retreats, and meeting fellow survivors and young adults who have faced such high levels of adversity and come out thriving. I was able to move to a place of reflection. Gradually, I came to a position of understanding. Understanding lead to learning from my journey. With that knowledge, I have come to accept everything I went through, and with acceptance, I have finally been able to move forward.
That has been the shift. That is the change in my cancer journey. For the first time in five years, I finally feel like my life is moving forward again, and I am moving into a place filled with light.
I don’t think this new phase is going to come without its own set of challenges and hard work, though. Despite feeling lighter and more hopeful then I have in a long time, I can’t say I have completely moved past all of my feelings of grief.
I’m still struggling daily with the fact that I can’t have more children. This is a kind of sadness I have not figured out how to overcome. Right now, it often feels like I never will. I try not to be negative about it, and to focus on the positive. I have one beautiful daughter, who is my circle of happiness, and I am incredibly grateful for her, but there is always this overwhelming sense of loss for the path I had imagined in my life before cancer–the path that involved two or three or four kids.
I know that my sense of purpose and direction will continually change. There will be moments of elation and heartbreak, ebbs and flows that maybe I don’t navigate with the greatest of ease, and challenges will continue to reveal themselves–but that is okay. Whatever path my life takes–although there may be a period of regression–my eventual direction will always move me forward. As long as we are living, our stories are ever evolving and changing.
Heather in St. John’s in November 2013 for YACCtivist training when “a lot of the change really started happening”
