and then, i lived

i haven’t written here since before my surgery.

i think part of me thought i would come back when i had something profound to say about it all. when i could wrap this summer up neatly and tell you what it taught me.

but this summer did not happen neatly.

it happened all at once.

i walked into a hospital and let people remove pieces of my body because staying alive mattered more than keeping them.

i woke up different.

i learned what it feels like to look down and recognize yourself and not recognize yourself at the exact same time.

i learned that “cancer free” can be two of the most beautiful words you will ever hear and somehow still not erase everything it took to get there.

i learned that surviving something doesn’t mean you immediately understand it.

sometimes you survive first.

and feel it later.

so much of this summer has been exactly that.

feeling it later.

there were mornings i woke up hurting and still heard little feet coming down the hallway.

there were tiny hands that did not care what my body looked like. they just knew it was mommy.

there were lunches to make. baths to give. hair to brush. kindergarten forms to fill out. bedtime prayers. monster trucks. boo-boos. laughing until somebody snorted.

life kept asking me to participate in it.

and maybe that was the gift.

because somewhere between surgery and recovery and raising two little humans, my oldest baby started kindergarten.

kindergarten.

there is something almost cruel about watching your child begin an entirely new chapter while you are still trying to understand the one you just survived.

but i stood there and watched her walk toward her new life.

and i realized i was doing the same thing.

this summer also asked me to let go.

of a marriage.

of versions of people i kept hoping would eventually become who i needed them to be.

of explanations i was exhausted from giving.

of the belief that loving someone enough can make them choose differently.

of the version of myself who thought keeping the peace meant carrying everything quietly.

there is a very specific grief in accepting that something you fought desperately to save was never yours to save alone.

and there is an equally specific freedom when you finally stop trying.

i have grieved things this summer that are still alive.

i have celebrated things while simultaneously mourning them.

i have been devastated and grateful in the same hour.

i have cried because something hurt and then cried harder because something was beautiful.

and somehow, in the middle of all of it, there was love.

not the kind that asks you to prove you deserve it.

not the kind that makes you anxious.

not the kind that requires you to abandon pieces of yourself just to keep it.

a quiet kind.

a steady kind.

the kind that sat beside me when i was scared.

the kind that loved me when i didn't feel particularly beautiful.

the kind that never asked me to hurry up and become okay.

the kind that reminded me that softness does not have to be dangerous.

and i think that might be one of the strangest things about this season.

i lost so much.

and somehow, i found so much too.

i stepped into a bigger role at work while rebuilding myself outside of it.

i watched people i love step up in ways i will never forget.

i learned who can hold heavy things with me.

i learned who cannot.

i learned that family can be the people who share your blood and the people who simply decide, over and over again, that they are staying.

i learned that children are unbelievably resilient when their world is filled with honesty, consistency, laughter and love.

i learned that my body is not an ornament.

it is the place that carried my babies.

it is the place that carried me through cancer.

it is scarred now.

and it is still mine.

maybe more mine than it has ever been.

there was a time when i thought becoming softer meant becoming easier to hurt.

i don't believe that anymore.

softness is not the absence of boundaries.

softness is not silence.

softness is not staying.

softness is not making yourself smaller so someone else never has to confront the ways they have hurt you.

sometimes softness is leaving.

sometimes softness is saying no.

sometimes softness is letting someone love you.

sometimes softness is standing naked in front of a mirror after your body has been changed forever and deciding you are going to learn how to love her anyway.

sometimes softness is admitting you are tired.

sometimes it is letting your mother take care of you.

sometimes it is laughing with your children five minutes after crying in the bathroom.

sometimes it is realizing you do not actually want your old life back.

that one surprised me.

because i don't.

i don't want to go backward.

i don't want the body i had if having it means forgetting what this one survived.

i don't want relationships that require me to betray myself.

i don't want to be the woman who can handle everything anymore.

i want to be the woman who knows what is hers to carry.

i want slow mornings.

i want loud children.

i want ridiculous laughter.

i want work that means something to me.

i want dinner around a table.

i want prayer.

i want people who say what they mean.

i want love that feels like somewhere i can put my bags down.

i want a life i don't have to recover from.

maybe that is what this summer gave me.

not a fresh start.

something better.

discernment.

i know what peace feels like now because i know exactly what it feels like to live without it.

i know what being loved feels like because i spent a very long time confusing endurance with devotion.

i know what health means because i have waited for pathology results.

i know what an ordinary tuesday with my children is worth because there was a moment when the future stopped feeling guaranteed.

nothing about me is untouched by this summer.

my body isn't.

my family isn't.

my career isn't.

my relationships aren't.

my faith isn't.

my definition of love isn't.

and i don't think i am supposed to pretend otherwise.

so no, i did not come back here with a perfectly packaged lesson.

i came back with scars.

with two babies who keep growing no matter how badly i want time to slow down.

with a daughter in kindergarten.

with a little boy who still thinks mommy can fix almost anything unless it is removing a bug from our home.

with people who showed me what it means to stay.

with a love i wasn't looking for.

with a body i am learning again.

with a life that looks almost nothing like the one i thought i would have.

and with more gratitude than i know what to do with.

this summer burned through a lot.

illusions.

plans.

people.

fear.

old versions of me.

but maybe soft girls burn slow because we aren't meant to disappear in the fire.

maybe we are meant to let it take everything that was never supposed to come with us.

and then walk out carrying only what remains.

i am still soft.

maybe softer.

but i am not the same woman who walked into this summer.

thank god for that.