For months after my cancer diagnosis and surgery, all I could think about was getting back to “normal.”
I clung to it like a life raft.
I imagined the moment when the surgeries would be done, my face would be “fixed,” and I could return to the version of me that existed before—before the hospital gowns, before the radiation, before I saw my reflection and didn’t recognize it.
But here’s what no one tells you:
Normal doesn’t come back.
And eventually, I realized… maybe it shouldn’t.
The Illusion of the Old Life
When you go through something traumatic—something that permanently changes your body, your perspective, or your reality—it’s natural to crave what came before. It’s familiar. It’s safe. It’s what you know.
But the person you were before didn’t know what you know now.
She hadn’t endured what you’ve endured.
She hadn’t shed what you’ve shed or grown how you’ve grown.
The truth is: going back isn’t possible.
Because the “before” version of you… doesn’t exist anymore.
The Dangerous Wait
I spent so much time fantasizing about my return to “normal” that I stopped living in the present.
I waited to feel whole.
I waited to feel strong.
I waited to feel worthy again.
But waiting becomes its own kind of paralysis.
At some point, I had to ask:
What if normal isn’t something you return to—what if it’s something you redefine?
Reclaiming Now
I stopped waiting to “feel ready.”
I stopped waiting for the prosthetic, or the next surgery, or the new mirror.
Instead, I started taking small steps toward the life I could have now.
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I moved my body to feel strong.
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I cooked meals that made me curious again.
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I learned languages, practiced piano, wrote new stories.
Not because I was “recovered,”
but because I finally realized that life wasn’t waiting for me to feel like myself again.
It was waiting for me to show up as I am—today.
A New Normal, On Purpose
What I’ve found is this:
“Normal” isn’t a fixed destination.
It’s a flexible, evolving state.
And it can actually be better than what came before—if you stop measuring your present against a past that no longer fits.
So I stopped waiting.
I started building.
Not back to who I was.
But forward into who I get to become.
