10 ways to Thrive with a Cancer Diagnosis or Chronic Illness

Give Yourself Permission to Grieve 

When you are diagnosed with a chronic illness or cancer you begin to grieve. You grieve your health, but you also grieve body changes, dreams and hopes that might have changed, freedom to not worry about illness, specific relationships that have changed, shifts in your career and the ease that comes with pre-diagnosis life. Grief is not something we can power through or shove away. It takes time to move through and learn to carry. Grief morphs and changes how it looks over time, but the most important piece is to allow yourself to grieve, this allows healing and acceptance. 

Create a Support Team

Relationships are crucial, especially when you have a new diagnosis. You need people to show up, love and care about you. Sometimes people are well meaning, but do and say the wrong things when you have cancer or a chronic illness. They want to help, but maybe don’t know how. My advice is to create a support tree. List out your key support tribe and reflect on what they do really well at. Do they make you laugh? Are they awesome at organization? Do they make a killer lasagna? Focus on their areas of strengths and utilize them for what they are naturally really great at. Believe me, it makes things so much easier. 

Get Organized from the Beginning

A system is key. Get yourself a filing cabinet and a cancer/ chronic illness specific organizer that you take with you everywhere. Write it all down, record your doctors appointments, request medical records for everything you do. Make sure you also keep a space for medical bills, business cards and support information. You need all of this and when you feel overwhelmed it can be easy to feel even more overwhelmed with paper everywhere. Enlist a member of your support tree to help with organizing all of this. 

Ask for Help and Delegate Tasks

Asking for help is so so hard. I know this. It’s not fun to have to do, but trust me, it’s necessary. You can’t do this alone. That doesn’t make you weak, it makes you more capable to focus on the pieces you need to focus on to get through this. That makes you strong as hell. Let the people who love you take care of things you don’t need to. Save your energy and focus for the things you do. Tell your support when you need them, they want to show up, they just need to know how.

You will have many opportunities to pay it forward, but for now it’s about you getting through the hard stuff. 

Increase Self- Care and Self-Love 

I can’t stress this enough. Self care is crucial when you are going through a chronic illness or cancer diagnosis. Time to reflect, to quiet down and to take care of your body and mind is essential in having energy to do hard things. You have to care about the whole you. You matter and need more love right now. Treat yourself how you would a friend, talk to yourself with compassion and self-love. Some easy self care tools could include: journaling, bubble baths, meditation and deep breathing, binge watching your favorite show, taking a nice walk, indulging in your favorite food, mani/ pedi, massage. 

Practice Gratitude  

Gratitude can be a very helpful practice, especially when it can feel like things are heavy or hard. Cancer and chronic illness can take a lot of time and focus from other things in your life and therefore it is helpful for your brain to tune into some of the things you feel grateful for or are happy with. This practice by no means invalidates what you are going through and that it is very difficult and emotional, but it can be helpful to point out 3 things a day that you found gratitude in. This practice provides a sense of fulfillment, joy and connection. 

Beware of Toxic Positivity

When you are going through a health concern or illness, there can be a lot of sadness, anger, physical pain and difficulty present. These feelings are normal and valid and actually important to experience in order to heal and deal with what is happening. Many people can feel scared to confront these feelings because they aren’t pretty, they are hard and bring up a lot of emotions. When we reject these feelings by covering them up with toxic positivity statements or invalidate how we truly feel and say everything is okay all of the time, we actually prolong healing and the grieving process. It’s okay to not be okay sometimes. It’s okay to feel shitty every now and then, you are going through a ton of really hard stuff. Don’t let people force toxic positivity on you Because it makes them feel more comfortable with your illness. Don’t force toxic positivity on yourself because you’re scared to look at how you really feel.

Move your Body 

Movement helps with body and mind. Especially when you’re going through cancer or a chronic illness, fatigue is a large component and can’t affect a lot of areas of your life. Moving your body is one of the only ways to combat fatigue that is illness related. Start small, take a short walk or stretch. Try to move a little more each day when you feel able and your body and mind will thank you. Always be compassionate if you are having a down day, that’s okay, there is always tomorrow and some days walking to the kitchen and back is enough. 

Slow Down

Our lives are often at rapid speed. We go, go, go and are consistently distracted and exhausted. Slow down. Take this opportunity to remove things from your life that no longer serve you. You are experiencing an increase in stress, your body is often in fight or flight mode and you may even be experiencing some anxiety. Take more time for you, do less where you can. Try to savor the moments you care about. The goal is to be more intentional with your time.

Learn to Say “No”and Own Your Time 

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries! Saying “No” can be so hard, you don’t want to let anyone down, you want to give your best to everyone all of the time, but there is a limit on what you can do and what you should do. Own your own time. You do not have infinite energy and you need it for the things you really care about, that are important to you. Managing an illness is a full time job and you have a big life to live. Take this opportunity to start practicing the art of “no”. You can do this with compassion and kindness and reclaim your energy and time. It’s freedom to say “no” to the things that no longer serve you or maybe just don’t fit in right now.