Hello Sweetheart,
Oh, this is hard to say, but what I’ve discovered is you never “go back to normal” after your child has been diagnosed with cancer.
I am not sure what “normal” would be for us. We are both so different now that sometimes our old life feels like a dream, something that belonged to someone else.
Your old life is no more. Long live the new life!
We are busy still adjusting to the “new normal,” which is a life in Sweden, rather than Dubai, where Yousef was born and where I’d lived for 25 years!
The aftermath of cancer.
We had no idea about the aftermath of chemo or surgery. We didn’t know how changed we’d be by leaving our home and family.
We never had to think about how we’d cope with such things. But here we are in the day-to-day of life, taking it all one day at a time.
Of course there are people all over the world thrown into circumstances they never wanted and yet can’t escape. My heart goes out to them. Their suffering is nearly unimaginable.
Last year, Yousef had an assignment at school. He was asked to write from the viewpoint of a refugee, forced to leave his home because of war. He was supposed to put himself in the refugee’s shoes – and there are so many around the world that we can empathize with these days.
Yousef wrote his paper instead on cancer.
“I had to leave my home and my family and my school. I don’t have to imagine war. I had cancer. That was my war,” he said.
I see the aftermath of his war. I see him respond to how other children treat him, (not always so kindly,) and I see how he sometimes misses his old home.
It is so hard to watch, and yet, I also see his resilience and his emotional openness. He communicates how he feels, he talks to me. Would he do these things had it not been for cancer? I don’t know.
You get to choose who you become – from this moment forward – you can choose. As Nick Vuijic, (who inspired Yousef so much,) says,
“You can choose to be bitter or better. Choose better.”
I hope you will.
Feel Hugged,
Helene
P.S. To download my booklet How To Use The Power of Questions To Get Through Anything you can click here.http://helenerennervik.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/How-To-Use-The-Power-of-Questions-To-Get-Through-Anything-by-Helene-Rennervik-Coaching-online-consulting.jpg
And, you can buy my book Hoping and Coping, How My Darling Little Son and I Broke Free of Cancer on Amazon or via this link. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B6BQ3YD/
Thank you!