If I close my eyes, I can still feel the buzz of the party around me. The loud laugh of one of the guys as he slapped another on the back, the glug of prosecco into glasses, the multi-colored lights twinkling on the tree in the corner, and the feel of the cool air on my neck as I inched closer to the gas fireplace – seeking out any warmth I could find as the rain lashed sideways outside. 

It was New Year’s Eve, 2011. The first time I had seen many of the people at this party since I’d emerged from the throes of chemotherapy and my double mastectomy a few months earlier.

Somehow word had spread that I was nearing the end of my cancer treatment. Like a kid getting asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, people peppered me with the same question all night. “Are you excited about your final surgery?” 

I could feel the frustration pulsing through my limbs. I wanted to say, “Would you be excited to check into a hospital, watch an IV get laced into your vein, count backward until you lose consciousness, and then wake up feeling like you have been run over by a bus after having a knife cut through your flesh?” 

Instead, I pasted a plastic smile on my face as I mumbled responses like, “Sure, I guess.” “Oh, yeah. For sure.” “Definitely.” 

Before I could escape and refill my glass, the conversations would continue. 

“You must be so excited to have cancer almost behind you. I bet you can’t wait to get back to normal.” 

At the time, I didn’t have the language to explain that normal no longer existed. I had earned a one-way ticket out of my former life. I had to figure out how to live in the midst of the wreckage. I had to choose what I would abandon and what I wanted to rebuild. 

I also didn’t know how to articulate that an experience like cancer affects everyone differently, and just because their third cousin bounced right back, it didn’t mean I would. 

I know their words were well-intentioned. I also know that when faced with other people’s pain – people often don’t know what to say. 

I see so many parallels between the confusion and overwhelm I felt then – as I navigated the aftermath of cancer treatment – and what we’re collectively facing now. So many of us are caught in the “in-between”. There is no clear path to getting back to normal (whatever that means) and depending on where you live in the world, the timeline to being able to return to life still feels bleak. 

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about this quote by Sonya Renee Taylor: 

“We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.”

Normal never was. 

We can’t go back. And in so many ways, we might not want to. So, what if we could stop trying? What if we could acknowledge whatever we’re feeling right now and just sit in the present with those emotions? We might be optimistic, anxious, grateful, sad…maybe even all of these things wrapped up together. We’ve been through a lot and we’re still going through a lot. Even after the physical and logistical challenges are behind us, the emotional fractures will still need time to heal. And maybe, in the midst of our collective wreckage, we can seize the opportunity to choose what we might want to abandon – and what we want to rebuild.