My battle with cancer was more of a mental one.

I remember crying with all seven of my children in mind saying to myself that no matter how hard it got, I wouldn’t give up.

No matter how much this hurt, that I had to keep pushing.

Family and friends in the beginning offered prayers and the infamous line “If you need anything “let me know”.

In that moment, I didn’t know what I needed so they didn’t hear from me.

Throughout each stage of this journey, I didn’t know what I needed until it was missing. I’ve always been a private person so picking up the phone and verbalizing what I was thinking was the last thing I thought about.

I lost friends.

Friends that didn’t know what to say, so they stayed away and didn’t say anything at all. Friends that I’ve considered sisters.

I also gained a few that didn’t know what to say but showed up anyway even when all they had to give was a smile or a thank you; I appreciate that.

I had heard that not all journeys were meant for you to go through in packs, sometimes you have to go through them alone. I fought with this because I never would allow someone I love to feel alone in a time when they needed more love than I could give.

Society says that everything should be perfect. When someone would ask how I was doing/ feeling (before cancer), my answer was an automatic “fine or great” even when things weren’t I knew eventually, it things would be.

But good ol’ Carcinoma taught me to be truthful!

All of my days weren’t the best and when they weren’t, I said it!

This is where it becomes mental.

You’d ask me four days in a row how I was feeling and I’d be truthful and say I’m in pain, I’m not feeling good or I’m healing. In my mind I’d feel like I was nagging or that I needed to be more positive when those were exactly how I was feeling in each of those moments.

There were two things that I saw happened after that.

1. I wouldn’t elaborate on how I was feeling if I felt bad or in some cases wouldn’t say anything at all about the pain (imagine that) or

 2. If there was a text message asking me how I felt and the answer was the same as the last, I wouldn’t answer at all because I didn’t want to sound redundant.

I’ve heard someone say that doing either of those pushes people away.

I hope they know that that was never my intention.

If they didn’t know, now they do.

The focus became less on how I felt and more on how I wanted to feel and healing.

Healing begins internally and I needed a good head space.

To me, I needed all of my energy in those painful moments to dig deep within to look at my babies smiling faces and smile back, no matter how much pain I felt in that moment, I wanted them to feel LOVE.

I owed them that! That’s what I fought for!

Moving forward I want every woman to feel free to speak about how she feels and to NEVER EVER feel alone because of it.