RECLAIMING MY LIFE WITHIN A STAGE 4 CANCER DIAGNOSIS

everything and nothing changed

RECLAIMING MY LIFE WITHIN A STAGE 4 CANCER DIAGNOSIS

I’ve done a lot of thinking since the Stage 4 cancer diagnosis in 2024. A lot of thinking, resisting, arguing, stomping my feet, and bargaining. And all of that thinking, resisting, arguing, stomping, and bargaining is also known as grief.

As it turns out, it takes a long time to grieve the old version of you when you’re told you have a disease for which there’s no cure. After that disease breaks your back in two places and almost paralyzes you. In an instant, the life you lived before is a memory, but not a distant one. And it’s a memory that I hung onto for far too long as I attempted to integrate my old self with my new reality.

A Stage 4 diagnosis, at least right now, means that you will be in treatment for the rest of your life, or until such time that you make a different decision. It’s your constant companion, and a pretty crappy one at that.

As I emerged from the haze of my emergency surgery, I began to realize that everything and nothing in my life had changed. Let me explain.

Before my diagnosis, I had dreams of what I wanted my life to be. Even a 60-year-old woman has dreams, right? But after the diagnosis, my goals suddenly switched to learning how to walk again and figuring out what food wouldn’t send me immediately to the bathroom.

And in the middle of it, the sense of purposelessness was devastating. I’d never been one to define myself by my work — at least that’s what I told myself — but the minute you’re not able to do the work you once did to sustain yourself? Your sense of purpose gets an existential beat-down.

I truly floundered for a while with this. It was more devastating than any prognosis could ever be. I didn’t want to live for two days without purpose, and feeling like dreams were a thing of the past was a reality that I couldn’t bear.

I suppose it’s that way with most creatives. Our lives are centered on the fact that we imagine. We create entire worlds with paint, words, bits of yarn, and kitchen ingredients. It’s what we do, who we are. And I suddenly couldn’t do any of it. My brain was foggy, my body ached, my legs didn’t work. My heart felt heavy and I struggled to assign any meaning to any of it.

And then it occurred to me — not suddenly, but in bits and pieces like most important occurrences do. Humans are meaning-making machines, and what I was making all of this mean was that the quality of my life would never, ever be as good as it was before, and I would simply need to accept that.

And in my little creative heart, I just couldn’t accept that. I knew there had to be something more for me, some new meaning to uncover.

And there was.

And here’s where the “everything and nothing changed” comes into play. While it seemed as though everything in my life had irrevocably changed, what I realized was that what had really happened what that the smoke had cleared to allow me to see what was there all along.

Life-threatening diagnoses tend to reorient your sense of time and urgency very quickly. Before these diagnoses, we live with the illusion of permanence, that we have all the time in the world to do the things we want to do. The truth is, we don’t, we never did, and we never will.

Once I understood this, much of the grief lifted. I still struggle from time to time with a sense of loss, of course, but understanding — truly understanding — that our time in this bag of skin and bones is limited, all the dreams we have become more clear. And the dreams we held previously that perhaps weren’t so important? They drop away.

These days I find that my dreams are not tied to achievements, milestones, and anything in the distant future. Instead, my dreams are bound to purpose, expression, connections, and presence. My dreams stopped being about creating a future version of myself and became more about fully inhabiting the person I already am, today.

And I can’t think of anything more liberating than understanding — finally! — that I don’t have to fix myself with some overpriced course, that I don’t need to look younger in order to embrace my crone-era vibrance, and that every minute of my 62 years is valuable, beautiful, and even exciting.

Cancer might take years off my life; I understand that. I could also get run over in the grocery store parking lot tomorrow, as could you. So what’s left is a deep understanding of the value of this moment, where I’m at my computer writing to you lovely people, and the next moments when I might tidy up my living room (or maybe not), watercolor, call my sister, and plan next week’s podcast.

Because my life, as it turns out, was never about becoming and improving. It was always about being, embracing my purpose, and allowing my dreams to present themselves as they will.

And that is what I call living.

BIO: Jenny Peterson lives in central Texas (the blue part) and is a copywriter for a horticulture marketing agency. She writes on Substack via her newsletter Jenny’s Dying to Live, and recently launched her podcast Jenny’s Dying to Live via live video on Substack every Wednesday evening

at 6:30pm CST. She writes and speaks about living well after a devastating diagnosis, has too many dogs, and is married with two adult sons.