When hope is not enough

I have discovered that being hopeful is not enough. Having hope can be a positive thing, but when I 'hope' that I’m free of cancer, there is an underlying murmur that says, ‘because if I’m not.. dot dot dot…’

Two years ago I received a frightening diagnosis about my health. It shook me to the core and demanded my attention for the next year whilst I underwent treatment. Although people react differently to a cancer diagnosis, a commonly shared experience is feeling a cold shock of fear in your gut. I carried this cold fear throughout treatment and although I found ways of minimising the dread and ‘being positive’, once I had successfully completed the treatment, I discovered the fear hadn’t completely gone, far from it. There is no escaping the bombardment of information and stories about cancer; advertisements for cancer research, people who have survived against the odds, people who have faced sudden and unexpected diagnoses. I was ready to move on with my life, but my gut pulled me back to the place of fear way too often. 

‘I hope… because if not…’ is a little murmur, but it creates a big space for doubt and that doubt undermines the positivity of hope. One day I noticed how expressing my hopefulness in response to a friend’s delight that I was well again, actually made me fearful. Later that day I took myself to a quiet place and sat with that sense of hope and questioned it. 

‘What else is there if there isn’t hope?’ I asked.

‘There is knowing’, the answer came back. 

“How can I know I am free of disease? Suppose I believe that and then I’m not?’

‘Find a place you can visit where you can know for sure.’

So I did, I imagined travelling to a place where I sit on the edge of a rocky outcrop, my feet in the water, the sun warm upon me and the waves gently coming and going. In this place I can belong, I am not a tourist. Everyone else here has travelled from far, we all know that our journeys have been bigger and taken us further than we would choosen. Here in this safe harbour, there is absolute delight in what we know. I know I am free of disease, the knowledge flows through me, melts the fear and doubt away. It is the sweetest of sensations. I look around me at the others in the place and see they too have faced a lonely terror and now it has dissolved. We ask no questions of each other. I understand that I can rest in this place and gather resources for the continuing journey. I understand I can’t stay here because doing so would be driven by fear of the hurly-burly of our marvellous, unpredictable world.

But I can come back when I need to. 

I ask the question of the people here “Can I get back here when I’m out on the ocean again?’ “Can I summon up this safe harbour even in the middle of the wild seas?’ 

I know the answer is yes. And that the wilder the seas, the harder it will be to reach my safe harbour, but it will never be impossible. 

Feeling that sweet sensation of ‘knowing’ rather than hoping, is a practice that I know will guide me on my continuing journey.  A practice, not only of using imagination to experience the ease of sitting in a quiet place for peace and respite, but a practice that responds to necessity, and the challenge to rewire fearful patterns of thinking. 

To remind me how to find this place of knowing, to accompany me as I face recurring fear and doubt, I turned to two figurative illustrations from An Inside Story (www.an-inside-story.co.uk) and named them as my guides. They remind me to fear less and trust more. 

#facingfear #beingwell #selfhelp #mentalhealth #cancerrecovery