By Linda Athanasiadou
When cancer enters your life, everything stops. Plans, work, travel, routines—even small daily pleasures. It's like someone hits the pause button, but only on your life. The rest of the world keeps moving. Deadlines still come. Bills still need to be paid. People still post photos, go on vacations, get promotions. Meanwhile, you're at a standstill, living from appointment to appointment, from test result to test result.
I felt this deeply. One moment I was making plans for the year. The next, I was cancelling everything. Trips, projects, dinners with friends. My calendar emptied overnight, replaced with hospital visits and treatment schedules. It was jarring—and incredibly lonely. No one prepares you for how isolating it feels when your world contracts so suddenly.
The disruption goes far beyond logistics. Cancer invades your sense of identity. I didn't just lose energy and hair—I lost the rhythm of who I was. The part of me that thrived on creativity, movement, connection. Even conversations changed. People didn't know what to say. Some drifted away. Others wanted updates I wasn't ready to give.
At first, I fought the pause. I tried to keep up—writing emails between treatments, showing up to calls even when I could barely keep my eyes open. I was terrified of becoming irrelevant. But eventually, my body made the choice for me. I couldn't push anymore. And in that forced stillness, something unexpected happened: I started to hear myself again.
In the quiet, I found space to reflect. To ask different questions—not “What should I be doing?” but “What do I need right now?” And the answers were simple: rest, softness, truth. I stopped pretending I was okay when I wasn't. I allowed myself to grieve what I was missing, but I also began noticing the things I still had—my daughter's laugh, a hot cup of tea, a sunrise on a slow morning.
What helped me keep going wasn't productivity or positivity. It was presence. The small, ordinary anchors in each day. The people who kept showing up. The reminders that I didn't have to earn rest or prove anything to be worthy of care. Cancer paused my life, yes—but it also showed me what parts of it were truly mine to hold onto.
If you're in that in-between space—between who you were and who you'll be—I invite you to read my blog where I share how learning to meet myself where I was helped me begin to move forward.
Life may be on pause, but it's not over. There's still breath, still love, still meaning to be found—even here.
