Survivorship comes with unspoken pressures, responsibilities and challenges. After all, what is the point of saving a life if the life isn't a meaningful one?
Interpretation
Survivorship entails inherent challenges and responsibilities that must lead to a meaningful existence.
This quote by Suleika Jaouad reflects on the complexities faced by those who survive difficult circumstances. It highlights that merely surviving is not enough; a life must be filled with meaning and purpose to truly honor the experience of survival. The pressures that come with being a survivor can be overwhelming, yet they also urge individuals to seek significance in their lives and the lives of others.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a support group for cancer survivors to inspire others about the importance of making life meaningful.
After my diagnosis at age 22 with leukemia, the second piece of news I learned was that I would likely be infertile as a result of chemotherapy. It was a one-two punch that was my first indication that issues of cancer and sexual health are inextricably tied.
Just a few years ago, at the age of 22, I learned I had an aggressive form of leukemia. I needed intensive chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant to save my life. Back then, my doctors told me that I had a 35 percent chance of surviving my transplant.
When I was diagnosed with cancer at age 22, I learned just how much cancer affects families when it affects individuals.
I remember my first day of chemo as if it were yesterday, hanging up my favorite summer dress like an athlete retiring a jersey. Within a few weeks, my waist had shrunk to a double zero - the size it was when I was in the sixth grade. My cheek bones jutting out. Rings under my eyes. Skin the color of chalk.
In my darkest days in the oncology unit, I promised myself that if I ever got into remission one day, I would become a stronger, healthier and better version of my precancer self.
Today, my brother and I share almost identical DNA, the result of a successful bone marrow transplant I had last April using his healthy stem cells. But Adam and I couldn't be more different.
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots
No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.
I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting
Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.
So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?
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