Invisible Struggles

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the many invisible struggles all around us. Much of my ruminations arise in the context of living with a usually invisible terminal illness since that’s what I have lived every day since that fateful appointment in 2017. But it’s not just the metastatic cancer diagnosis and all the physical struggles that come with it and the treatments, it’s also the mental and emotional anguish. People know how to adjust to someone who has a broken leg, what’s not so easy to adjust to are those things that aren’t obvious, aren’t visible.

What often comes to mind when my mind drifts to this topic is the exhortation to “be kind, you don’t know what each person you encounter is dealing with.” That’s not a bad thing to consider since it’s a true statement, there’s truly no way to know what anyone else is really carrying unless they tell you. And being kind is never wasted.

But here’s what I struggle with — some of these invisible struggles are so completely, totally consuming that there’s no room to truly consider all the other people and their struggles.

And so our worlds get smaller.

We retreat.

And when we emerge to deal with the world, to interact with people who don’t know our story or how much we carry every day, it gets harder to even want to engage.

Because other people are also consumed with their own stuff and sometimes people who need kindness don’t ask for it in kind ways. Because sometimes the act of existing is all that is possible for that day. Because sometimes the need to advocate for basic things is so damn tiring. Because sometimes we simply cannot muster the energy to be one more thing to one more person. Because we hold tightly to that view of ourselves before the trauma, before cancer, before the darkness and we aren’t that person any longer. Because sometimes the people who love us the most say the most carelessly hurtful things. Because sometimes we need the people around us and we don’t have the room to confront said carelessly hurtful things for fear of abandonment.

Having invisible disabilities/struggles can be one of the loneliest positions to be in.

One of the reasons that I chose the word “beauty” to focus on for 2024 is that my world has gotten very dark. I’m halfway through year 7 of living with stage IV Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) and everywhere I look, there is trauma and struggle and death. I just turned 45 and my social media feeds are full of people with cancer that is progressing, people entering hospice, of death announcements and funerals. As I serve my community in a variety of ways, I constantly hear the stories of progression and the unrelenting march of cancer towards death. Continuing to enter into and process all of the feelings that arise in order not to simply be numb to it isn’t easy. And I can’t say that I’m succeeding, at least not all the time.

As this post is published, I’m on my way to Jacksonville, a little more than two (2) hours from where I live, to participate in cycle #4 of the clinical trial I’m in. This week will be filled with a LOT of appointments, a LOT of needle sticks (10+ this week), a LOT of interactions with various medical staff, a LOT of time away from my family and a LOT of angst as we struggle to keep things normal for the kiddos. I’m pretty anxious about how it will all unfold because of what has already happened in the last three (3) cycles, and I hate being dependent on so many people, most of them strangers. And when I’m anxious, I get super critical and mean and I don’t bite my tongue so well when things go wrong and mistakes are made.

And so I’m committed to looking for glimmers, to looking for the everyday beauty in people, in the world around me, in the midst of the hard. My goal for this week is to speak up about all the things that go right and to compliment as many people as possible for real, true things. I’m not embarrassed to say that this effort will be significantly assisted by prescription medication.

Stay tuned …