My story so far has been one of survival and struggle… one of love and pain… one of family and emptiness… my story so far is only that- a story. When I tell it, it feels like I am telling it about someone else. The only part that has always felt real was the destruction and deconstruction of the life I knew and the person I was. Survival is only half the battle.
I battled Stage IV NHL for 6 months through 6 rounds of chemo and 3 rounds of a clinical trial. As the cancer waged a war on my body and the medicine waged a war on my cancer, my soul was caught in the crossfire. Within months of being diagnosed, 3 other people (friends & acquaintances) around my age were also fighting cancer. Today, I am the only one still alive. It is this that has immobilized me, frozen me in a state of oblivion. I am not driven. I stopped dreaming. I have become so painfully aware that I was not the one worth saving, and it hurts me every day.
But here I am now, with this opportunity for redemption. With this chance to earn the wonderful things people have said about me and be as strong as they think I am… and to believe for the first time that maybe my purpose in this world is one worthy of a second chance.
I am not the “woman of the year”, but perhaps I could be.
It wasn’t until 2013, after I recovered from my last of 10+ post-cancer surgeries to repair a bile duct in my chest that had been crushed by a tumor, that the hardest part of my journey began. The people around me couldn’t understand why I was unable to function now that I was “better”. How could I be so strong for those brutal two years only to fall apart now? How could I be so sad when I had every reason to be happy? I was broken. I was drained.
In 2015, some might say that I found myself again, but that wasn’t the case at all. I was finally able to put together the remnants of my world crashing down and create something new. As I look ahead , I am anxious and excited for what’s to come- it’s been years since I could say that. Maybe this is my year- my year to stop being all talk- my year to fall in love with the world again- my year to dream and achieve- my year to make a difference and earn this second life I have been given that so many others were not.
I say that I am grateful all the time- for the support, the love, the medicine. But when I look into my 3 year old nephews eyes and think about how close I came to never knowing him, I feel like the luckiest person on the planet. I hope what we are doing here will allow so many others to feel that same way.
I am not the “woman of the year”, but perhaps I could be.
If you’d like to help Robyn in her run for Woman of the Year, you can donate now
