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.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone.
Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.
I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.
When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people tooβleave them behind. You don't yet know about the habit they have, of coming back. Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you've been.
Life, to me, doesn't feel like a straightforward story; it doesn't make sense for me to get up there and just tell a story. Life feels like what my show feels like: chaotic and strange and disconnected.
There's that bubble of childhood that makes you innocently do anything. Then, when you get older, that pops, and you're aware of limitations and judgment and social pressures and things like that.
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