Many of us spent this past weekend celebrating the Easter holiday with family and friends. This Easter was a lot different for me in many ways. The start of 2025 was not the kindest to me. For a number of reasons I won’t disclose here, I was in a very dark place prior to my diagnosis. I had experienced three events that most would say sit on the scale of “major stressors” on the stress scale (loss in the realms of family, work, and friendship). I remember telling myself that things happen in threes, so this was surely the end of it. I was wrong. When I got the call that my mammogram had abnormalities, I sunk down in the couch thinking this was not possible. In fact, through the additional scans and biopsies, I thought there was no way this was possible. This is a mistake. There was no way, in these dark days, that God was going to do this to me. Well, it appears He was going to do it anyways.
At this point I had already sunken into a tough space. I had removed myself from social activities, social media, and anything that had required me to face my friends or family. I isolated in a way a typically extrovert would never even imagine. I found ways to be invisible, and I struggled to get up every morning. I am not sure what hit me exactly, but I woke up one night in a panicked sweat, and I thought to myself, “well, you need to pick your ass up off the floor fast, or you are going to die.” And then, everything shifted. I realized that sometimes you have to be taken out of the knees to be forced to get up and fight. This was the point I decided to go public with my diagnosis. I realized that isolation would not heal me, and my mental health would be my biggest enemy if I didn’t allow the healing I needed to begin.
I was shocked and amazed by the people who showed up in so many forms, in phone calls, texts, messages, comments, visits, gifts, or just prayers. I will forever be grateful for those who stood by me in this time. I immersed myself immediately in reading anything and everything I could consume on physical, emotional and mental healing. I upended my daily habits. I had to face some of the deepest hurts and failures that I had been harboring for decades, and I had to start tackling them one by one. I tore them open, reevaluated, compartmentalized then and found areas I could let go and I packaged them away. Sometimes this meant forgiving people who didn’t deserve it, and letting go of things I could not fix. Other times it involved healing something and reframing its place in my life.
There was a time during all of this I had questioned every ounce of my faith. I was angry and I was so confused as to how this could happen when I had tried to do everything right. I walked into church this past Sunday for the first time since everything had fallen apart., and it hit very different. For the first time in the sanctuary, I felt a purpose and I felt hope again. I’m not sure if it was the sermon that day, the good weather, the hugs and celebrations, the fact that both my kids were present, or if it was the good news from the pathology reports this week. My body was healing quickly from surgery, yet somehow so was my spirit.
Looking back, I think God had a plan. Not only was this Jesus’s resurrection, but in many ways, it was also mine. Whether you believe in God, or some other entity of faith, I believe that despite our thoughts on the formal institution of religion, we all have a higher power we look to in hard times. That seems to be natural in a state of despair, and sometimes the only thing that gives us hope in a world that feels like it is ever spinning off its axis. We “send prayers” when things are hard, but sometimes there is rejuvenation found in also saying “thank you” when things go a little right. So many blessings have come out of the hardships of this year…things I would have failed to see if I hadn’t been forced into a place where healing was an absolute must. Our body is a trifecta of our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing and if you ignore one of more of these, your body will let you know. My diagnosis was a manifestation of a lot of broken things. I truly believe that now. Become aware and conscious of the times you need to take pause and realign. It could very well save your life.
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