Sharing the Strength

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, many people urged me to write a blog about my experiences. Although I consider myself a writer and enjoy blogging, I wasn’t sold on the idea for a couple reasons. First, due to a hectic schedule, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to post as often as I would like, or should, in order to keep an active audience. Second, I didn’t know what I could write about that wasn’t already out there in cyberspace.

Then one day as I was sitting home recovering from my surgery, I read an email from a student of mine who started her own blog about living with hypoglycemia.  She was thanking me for assigning the blog as a class project, saying that her writing has been so fulfilling and that she has built an international following.  Then she said something that really made me think: “It is just great to write about your own experiences and see through your eyes instead of some medical journal saying how it ‘could’ or ‘would’ be.” I started thinking that maybe I DID have something to offer – perhaps even a different perspective – and maybe I should rethink my earlier decision not to write about my journey. When I tried to rest later that day, so many thoughts started running through my head that I couldn’t nap. Still trying to talk myself out of committing to such a project, I made a deal with myself – if the blog name “Sharing the Strength” was available (as I was SURE it would not be), I would create the blog. It was, so I did.

When I first started the blog, I envisioned a place where other people who had been diagnosed with the same rare cancer I was, soft tissue sarcoma, could come and discuss their experiences. Somewhere along the way, however, it grew into something else. Instead of focusing on sarcoma, my little blog began to evolve into a series of musings about life, and even though these thoughts were written through the lens of cancer, I found out that they were finding their way into people’s lives who didn’t have cancer – and they still held meaning.

My hope is that this little portion of cyberspace will offer you calmness during uncertainty, light when it seems the darkest, and strength when you feel you have none left.  Sharing the strength, we can all get through.