As the new year begins, I’ve found myself energised for new endeavours and projects – pandemic and lockdown notwithstanding.
There has been a powerful urge telling me: it is time for something new.
But it’s interesting – every time I try to take a step forward (like with this Home Ec project I’m so excited about), I feel a pull backwards.
I’m realising I still have a great deal of unfinished business from my cancer journey.
There is so much I haven’t processed for myself. Moments I didn’t acknowledge, and hard-won insights I didn’t write down.
Most of this was due to the intensity of the experience. It was as much as I could do to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
There was undoubtedly a part of me that was scared to look at these things full on.
There was also a feeling of ‘I’ll do it later’ – because it didn’t seem that these moments would ever end, or that I could ever forget how they felt.
And now I’m realising I need to return to some of these experiences, and process them by writing them down, turning them over, and telling the story.
Partly, it feels like an insurance policy – reminding myself how I coped so if, heaven forbid – I should need to make use of this knowledge again.
Some of these lingering thoughts purely practical – others are more metaphysical.
It’s going to be interesting to discover whether I can move backwards and forwards at the same time, in a sense, stretching myself in two directions. Part of me suspects I may need to hit pause on new endeavours, approaching this processing more like a slingshot, needing to pull backwards more aggressively to be able to launch into whatever awaits in the future.
Looking back on my cancer journey, I think I was most reluctant to engage with the practical stuff.
I didn’t want this to become a cancer blog, even though my experience with this disease is threaded into its very marrow.
I didn’t want to feel like my life story was primarily about cancer.
But from today’s vantage point, that feels like less of a threat. I feel myself getting stronger and recovering more every day, both physically and emotionally.
So maybe it’s time to log some of these things before the slip away entirely. And to be less afraid of what happened, or what might lie ahead.
Today, I am creating a new category for this – making space in a very real way.
It’s time to deal with the unfinished business.
Photo by Kyler Boone on Unsplash