Tag: change

In december 2020, my mum was diagnosed with stage four cancer. A very rare one in which chances of surgery are nule. My life changed radically. I left the job I loved, in creative education, I left the guy I loved, and the city I loved, to go and be with the person I love the most in the world, my mum. It was an easy decision during a very difficult time. 

What’s funny is that during one of the most unstable years of my life, towards the end of it, it was all looking a bit more stable. I was about to rent a flat, near where my university was going to be. I was going to embrace living with my partner and enjoy every minute of it. 

But life works in very interesting ways and once again, everything changed. So, fast forwarding to January, my mind racing about the idea of starting a full time masters, online, feeling alienated from the world I knew (in London), alone in a city I am meant to call home, looking after my mum was not at all how I had expected my 2021 to be like. 

I have learned the importance of love, and most importantly of embracing the beauty in the little things, the little moments. My life has been a constant cycle of never-ending changes, and adapting to change has been a skill I have long learned. 

Change in my life started at the age of 1, when I left my cozy home in the city of Lleida to move to the seaside life in Huanchaco, Peru – there, I was raised for over 10 years. Then, my family and I moved to New York, and then to Pennsylvania. When change is constant, you either ride with it or let it consume you. It was hard, inevitably, but it did prepare me for what the future had in store for me. 

 I now find myself sitting down in my auntie’s flat in Lleida. I am experiencing high levels of stress for this project’s research. Why? Because with such big events going on in my life, with so many problems going on – I wonder, how do I cover it all? How do I make big improvements happen? How do I help my mum and those going to hospitals feel better? How, how, how… and how do I find a common ground between my interests without heading into a deep health-related investigation that would mostly fall into a scientific spectrum. 

I have been thinking and thinking and doing a lot of inward reflection, which I then have been advised to stop doing. And I have listened, and I have embraced that process of looking at things from a less emotional point and started looking at things from a much more analytical one. What is the biggest “inciting” element of emotional distress within hospital patients and family members? CHANGE. C H A N G E. \

“Duh” you might think, but it’s not as obvious. We have been wired to achieve stability, we have been taught to try to make life as static as possible, or maybe not all but I have. We aim to be stable, to have security, to be predictable and to know that we will hold a future. So when we are told we’re ill, or that the person we love is ill, our life changes. We might not notice right away, but the alarm bells, the anxiety, the fear, it all is evoked from the deep and engraved alert that change is coming our way. Most times, we relate change to an extremely negative path – completely understandable if your life, loved ones, future, home, money are at stake. But when change is unavoidable, how do we embrace it? 

As someone who has been living with a person with stage four cancer for the past six months, I can say I have observed deeply how much change my mother has been going through. And of course, how much change each of my family member’s have been going through. But here’s the thing, we all go through it in different ways, however some choose to ignore the transition they’re experiencing while some decide to embrace it. I have been placed in both spectrums. My mum has been hit hard by the change of her life. She knows cancer sucks, she understands it’s irreparable and that there is no going back however,  she struggles with the idea that her life is different.

And I’m not sure if it’s because we’ve been so impregnated with the idea that being different is bad. She knows that for now she cannot work, for now, she gets tired on walks, for now, she’s losing her hair, for now, she’s feeling nauseous, for now, she’s emotionally drained, for now, she doesn’t want to socialise. We link the positive embracement of change with over-the-top hollywood movies about a cancer patient that decides to complete their bucket list and live happily shortly after. We mock the idea that that is possible or we even assume that this way of thinking could only possibly happen in movies. That it’s an absurdity – but what if it isn’t?

My mum has made it clear several times that she has accepted her diagnosis, “that’s life” she says, however she can’t fully embrace the change, in a way in which she re-adapts her old version of herself, her old life, and makes a new life out of the new person she’s inevitably becoming. And in all honesty, I haven’t fully either – I have felt stuck in different levels of my life, not understanding how to move forward without looking back; wanting to be two different versions of something I no longer am. Life has changed. I have changed. It sucks. We have to adapt. 

And we either become hopeful change optimists or we become bitter and anxious. 

In a time where so much has changed, where the world has changed, I hear comments like “Can’t wait to “go back to normal” – what’s normal? The old? Can’t we move on and adapt to something new, the normal is the present. Why don’t we embrace the goodness that has come out of it to then move on and be ready for future global changes? It is only that way that we can truly potentiate our minds, in a healthier wired way of thinking – and therefore, being slightly less worried about looking back and more excited about what’s to embrace.