“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

While it is confusing and frightening, the experience of finishing treatment for cancer can become a powerful opportunity to release trauma and move into a new stage of life. There are also survivors who continue with some form of treatment as they learn to live with the reality of managing cancer in their lives. The shadow of illness lingers. Quality of life, a phrase mentioned frequently in the context of survivorship, is a theme worthy of personal reflection.

Quality of life goes beyond survival. While there are no statistics that show higher survival rates occur when cancer patients choose to address their emotional needs, it has been shown that their quality of life increases. Opening up an exploration of one’s personal definition of quality of life, the discovery of one’s true self, can bring meaning to whatever time each one of us has to spend in a lifetime.

The University of Toronto Quality of Life Research Institute defines quality of life in health care as “the degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his or her life.”  Their quality of life model is based on the categories of “being”, “belonging”, and “becoming”.

You didn’t choose to have cancer but you can choose to discover who you are in any moment of your life …  who you are, where you belong and who you have become.  And in that discovery, you can free yourself.

Excerpt from my book,  Surviving the Storm: Finding Your Way Through the Wreckage of Cancer