At thirty-two years old, Tara Shuman started the long journey of accepting the harsh and liberating reality — that no one’s life, including her own, would last forever. We cannot control the way in which we die, but we can control how we live.
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I never understood the concept until I got cancer.
Hope.
I had heard about it quite a bit, in quotes and on Oprah. I had observed how important hope was to people who were going through hard times. But I had no clue of its significance until I was thirty-two years old, diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. No family history. No reason. No words. At least, not at first.
[Read: We Don’t Control Much– But I Still Have Hope (& You Should Too)
It was August 2012. I had just celebrated my sister Rachel’s wedding and, the day after, my sixth wedding anniversary to my college sweetheart, Brian. We had two children—Teddy who was 4 and Annabel who was 1. Brian and I both had full-time jobs, a mortgage on an imperfect house that we thought was perfect and an assumption that we would grow old together. We may have even felt entitled to the growing-old part.
Then a radiologist told me I had cancer. My world froze in a hellish sort of way. Darkness set in.
In that cold and lonely place, I felt too sick with worry to eat. I started to shed weight almost immediately. As I watched my body shrink, I figured that cancer was killing me.
[Read: When There Isn’t a Cure For a Disease, How Can We Help?]
Cancer equals death. At least, that’s what I thought when I was diagnosed.
More darkness. Then…a light.
A few days after my diagnosis, I felt something I had never felt before: Hope.
In the darkest times of my cancer journey, many of which I write about in the pages of my new memoir, Hope Is a Good Breakfast, I clung to hope with white, shivering knuckles. I also came to realize that I needed more than hope to find peace with what was then happening to me, and even more so, with what could happen down the road.
[Read: Breast Cancer Gave Me a Second Chance]
I came to agree with Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism:
“Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.”
I originally conceived of this book as a way to spread a message of hope. I wanted to share with others, particularly those who have been thrown into a dark cave by cancer or by any other cruel reality, the possibility that they could still have light; that what we thought was our end may not be our end after all. I wanted to write a story that would leave readers with an implicit and humble message that with enough hope, we could all find happiness beyond the darkness of a really bad time.
We can beat cancer. I wanted to believe it. I had to believe it.
Over time, however, something in me changed. What it meant to beat cancer changed.
[Read: Bonner Paddock is Climbing Mountains, Literally, With Cerebral Palsy]
For me, at the end of the day, it’s not enough to be full of hope for something to happen—or not happen—in the future:
- Better also to work hard to affect positive change.
- Better to be in the moment that is.
- Better to live without feeling entitled to anything—particularly tomorrow.
Please don’t get me wrong. I still believe deeply in the power of hope. I feed off of hope every day—hope that modern medicine can one day treat or cure all cancer. Hope that pain will subside. But we can’t stop there. We can’t go a whole day on breakfast alone.
At thirty-two years old, I started the long journey of accepting the harsh and liberating reality—that no one’s life, including my own, would last forever. I felt fear and freedom in the realization that I couldn’t control how I died. But I could control, at least in part, how I lived.
[Read: 10 Lifestyle Tips to Increase Breast Health]
One thing that cancer has shown me is that we all find ourselves in a dark cave at some point in our lives. If you are in one now, or want to be prepared to face what may come, here are 3 things that have helped me through difficult times:
- “I am here now.” Cancer has shown me that sometimes, a moment is so heavy with fear and worry that one can’t bear the thought of the future. Since hope is innately forward-looking, sometimes it isn’t helpful, at least not on its own. Shortly after my diagnosis, I came up with a simple mantra: I am here now. In my moments of panic, I found myself repeating those 4 words over and over again in my head, even whispering them out loud to myself. Those words brought me into the present moment and away from fear associated with the future.
- Writing. You don’t have to be a writer to write. You just need a pen and paper or a computer screen. Hope Is a Good Breakfast is tangible proof that writing has great healing powers. Writing didn’t make my cancer go away (excellent doctors and modern medicine hopefully did that), but it helped me understand so many complicated experiences with more honestly, clarity and comfort. Our world moves so quickly, but sitting down to digest a thought or an emotion has therapeutic powers beyond anything I had ever imagined.
[Read Maria Shriver’s latest essay]
- Find stories of resilience. Thanks to sources like MariaShriver.com, those who seek out evidence of human resilience can find stories of men, women and children who have dwelled in the darkest of caves and still found a way back into light. These stories can be a source of great hope. I would like to think that Hope Is a Good Breakfast is one such story. Because cancer was the greatest challenge I have ever faced. But it helped make a dream of mine come true…I wrote a book.
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This article originally appeared on MariaShriver.com
Copyright © 2015 by Tara Anne Shuman. This modified excerpt originally appeared in Hope Is a Good Breakfast, published by Wildewood Press. Reprinted here with permission.
{Image credit: Oliver Berghold, Unsplash}
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