Grief and the Illusion of Control

The past week, we celebrated our son's final and hopefully last chemotherapy treatment ever.

As excited and grateful as I am, and as much as it feels like we can finally begin to breathe again, there is also a deep grief living in my body.

We live in a culture that wants us to move from sadness to happiness as quickly as possible. To get back to work. To get back to normal. To get back to who we were before the diagnosis.

But I can't go back.

I'm not the same person.

My son was faced with a cancer diagnosis, and for several months I didn't know what that would mean.

Every fear and every worry consumed me. I can dress it up and tell myself I'm okay, but if I'm honest, that fear is still there. In some ways, it's grown bigger.

Here's the thing I've been running from and trying to control since I was a little girl.

After one of my best friends died when we were 18, and then especially after becoming a mom, I spent so much of my life trying to outrun the deepest pain I could imagine: losing someone I love.

The thought of it.

The feeling of it.

The possibility of it.

Fear has a way of leading us places we never intended to go.

I think it's one of the reasons I ran toward certainty in a very conservative church, overriding my own intuition and giving my power to something outside of myself. Deep down, I didn't trust myself to hold the pain I was carrying.

If I just believed the right things, did the right things, prayed the right prayers, maybe I could somehow protect myself from grief.

Every single night since I was a little girl, my prayer has been the same:

"Please, God, just let me live a long life with the people I love most. I can get through anything as long as I don't have to experience death."

But my son's cancer diagnosis shattered the illusion that I ever had control.

The truth is, everyone I love will eventually die.

And so will I.

There is no amount of worrying, positive thinking, gaslighting myself, controlling, healthy food, vitamins, exercise, or even prayer that can prevent that reality.

There was nothing I could have done to stop my son from getting cancer. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't mine.

That truth is heartbreaking.

But strangely, grief has also pulled me into the present moment in a way nothing else ever has.

I'm still scared.

Some days I'm terrified.

So I've been letting myself cry. I've been letting myself feel it all instead of trying to outrun it. I'm trusting that every tear releases something my body has carried for far too long.

Because I don't want my soul to hide.

I don't want fear to make me shrink or play small.

One thing I've always loved about myself is that I love deeply. I love fiercely. I love with my whole heart.

I don't want fear of losing the people I love to close that part of me.

Living afraid of loss isn't really living.

I don't want to spend whatever time I have left living small, angry, disconnected, or afraid of love and connection.

These kids of ours have taught me far more about myself and about life than I could ever teach them. And my son has been one of my greatest teachers since he was a little boy.

As much as I hate this grief, I also know it is a gift.

Not because cancer is a gift. It isn't.

Not because suffering is something I would ever choose. It isn't.

But because grief has a way of stripping away the illusion of control.

It keeps bringing me back to what matters. It keeps me connected to myself, to the people I love, and to our shared humanity.

This life...

Who knew it could be this beautiful and this heartbreaking all at the same time?

This is a picture my mom shared with me this week while she's in Hawaii healing herself too!