I suppose I was always going to write this piece because writing is how I digest life. What I’ve been less certain of is whether or not I was going to share it.

Digest life—

One of the primary reasons one must digest life is because life happens to us. That used to cause me so much grief, rage, and resentment—the fact that I always felt like I was responding to, reacting to, rising to—life. Because somewhere along the way, I’d been assured that life was a whole bag of choices and if I made the right ones, life would be well; it would take the shape I’d imagined and reward me for all those right choices I’d made. But instead, life kept throwing curve balls and expecting me to catch them when I really suck at catching balls. Life is riddled with choices. They matter, and we make them minute-by-minute, but mostly, life is an unruly creature; we grasp anywhere we can, hold on tight and try to find laughter in the ride. Writing is how I digest life. It is how I slow life down to one-half or three-quarter speed to be able to settle into it.

The day after Thanksgiving, while I sipped my morning coffee, an email pinged my inbox, an MRI report that I’d not expected to receive until after the holiday weekend. Against my better judgment, I opened it and logged in with the attached code, thinking that, at most, I’d be scrolling through a whole bunch of fascinating pictures of the inside of my body. But there was also a report attached, and I skimmed through the medical jargon, scanning for any hint of indication that all was well and my doctor’s abundance of caution had paid off with reassurance.

Instead, I read the words referral to gynecologic oncology along with the name of a cancer I’d never heard of. Of course, I googled it—WTF— and then promptly regretted that decision. The past week has been a rollercoaster, a whiplash of anxiety and assurances, of questions and rationalizations, but no matter how glaringly obvious it may be now that I should never have seen that report before my doctor did, life threw me the ball, and I had to figure out how to catch it.

I know there is no playbook, and I’ve oscillated between crippling anxiety and grasping the very real chance that it is much ado about nothing. But it’s the frantic grasping part that is so exhausting—the fighting—the winning; I quickly understood that I needed to step outside the box of fighting and winning.

It feels so cliché, but I don’t think I ever truly understood the extent of sharpened perspective that accompanies this level of uncertainty. The truth is, even before finding myself here, my every recent instinct, epiphany, and step forward have been arching my path toward acceptance and surrender. And by surrender, I don’t mean giving up; I mean not saddling myself with the expectation of managing things that refuse to be managed, of having influence over things that are so far outside the scope of any kind of power that I possess. And it’s forcing me to digest my life from the perspective of what I have done instead of what I haven’t. No matter what I learn from next steps, these are the lenses that I will snap into place; this is one of those pivotal points when trajectories are birthed. I’m grateful that my path had already begun to curve in this direction. No matter where we are in our lives and what is or isn’t on the horizon, in taking stock of ourselves and others, the nourishment of ourselves and our loved ones cannot be achieved in the lack of but in the possibility of.

I’ve lived through a lot of lack, and I always thought that only in remedying the lack would the possible arise. But the actual is that the lack and the possible exist side by side, kind of an everything-everywhere-all-at-oncething. Simultaneous existence is what I want to expand into.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve spent plenty of the past week heartbroken, scared, confused, punching my fists into the chest of time. But I know I need to be able to exist in the space of losing my shit while simultaneously making space for the discovery, the surrender. As humans, we tend to operate organically from a position of guarantee, the guarantee of future, and I, in particular, tend to expend too much energy on the promises and dreams of future.

But really, the only certainty is the breath we’re in.

I keep asking myself why I’m shocked to find myself here when I know how common a place it is to be. Why am I knocked off kilter when I’ve moved through my existence expecting things like this as to somehow be prepared? Turns out, we can never really be prepared, and that kind of existence is grueling and entirely unsustainable. If there is any irony here, it would be that I’d finally reached a point of complete exhaustion from my lifetime of being prepared and mentally living through every what-if. The irony would be that the day after I decided that preparing for the worst-case scenario was unsustainable and I was going to commit to the best-case scenario instead—after all, I concluded, both are equally probable—the day after I made that promise to myself, Trump was re-elected and less than a month later, this.

At this point, I’ve spoken to my doctor and have an appointment scheduled with a specialist. A benign mass still remains the most probable outcome—a hysterectomy is required to be sure—but despite the possibilities and the unknowns, the percentages, numbers, and facts, I still found myself unwittingly returning to the worst-case, wanting to answer all those what-if questions. Over the course of the week, the urgency of those moments has lessened as I’ve begun to settle into the uncertain, but they still bubble to the surface now and then. I’m beginning to understand how much of life is simply sinking our fingers deeper into the pelt of time and holding on, knowing that whatever grand plan we may have dreamt up, time will take us where it will, and there is nothing we can do about it.

Before I go, there’s one more thing.

That first day, within the onslaught of all the possibilities, I stood in front of the mirror naked, floored, trying to parse out the mystery of the things I could not see deep inside my body. And, as I stood there, I thought of all the times I’d stood in that very spot and despised that same body reflected back at me. And in that moment, it dawned on me that I don’t remember a time in my life when my body wasn’t a problem for one reason or another.

And then I wept, not for fear but for heartbreak.

Our bodies carry us through time and space, and it is an absolute travesty that we are ever taught anything but reverence for them. Instead, whether it’s unrealistic beauty standards or the echoes of religious upbringing and “mortifying of the flesh,”—abhorrence and shame seem to be our measure of them. I wondered how different things would be if we learned in early years—reverence—only reverence and gratitude for our bodies.

I implore us all, regardless of age or gender, when we’re tempted to look in the mirror and despise what we see to just stop. It’s not worth it. Self-care isn’t a trope, a TikTok reel, or an Instagram wellness guru epiphany. True self-care is reverence, gratitude, that in-the-gut, bone-deep gratitude and acceptance.

The past week has been whiplash, but as I await a date for surgery, I’ve found a place that I can settle into, and it is one of normalcy, the mundane; those things that have so often caused me rancor are now the things that bring me comfort.

Soon, I’ll bid farewell to my womb. And no matter what comes next, I’ll always feel gratitude for that miraculous organ that grew and nurtured two of the most radiant, compassionate, and remarkable humans I know.

So yes, I wrote it, and yes, I’m sharing it. My most authentic self is raw and real, and presently, this is my real. Perhaps I’m an oversharer, but I’ve never signed onto stoicism, and going it alone has as much appeal as swallowing glass. Plus, ever since I began to share my writing, it has been with the intention of hoping that someone, somewhere, will feel seen. As a society, we tend to avoid and shrink from conversations about illness because they are, at best, uncomfortable and, at worst, heartbreaking and frightening. It’s that lack of control thing; it puts us all in a vulnerable place full of messy and complex feelings. It is important that we can find our way to linger there. Illness is just as common in our human existence as health, and perhaps if we didn’t avoid it so desperately, moments like this wouldn’t be so devastating, and people who are in those moments wouldn’t feel so alone. I’m unbelievably fortunate to be wrapped in the blanket of a most loving family and group of friends, but still, I’ve done battle with that stoic guilt of not ruining someone’s day. I can’t imagine being in a place where I felt like I had to exist in this moment of uncertainty all alone.