Happy 4th of July everyone! I hope you’re all having a wonderful holiday. It’s a holiday that I’m making sure to really celebrate because it also feels a little melancholy for me this year; this is the last holiday I’ll be celebrating whilst feeling “normal” and healthy for a while. Chemotherapy will be starting on the 17th of this month… And continue for 8 months.

It seems like an impossibly long time. It’s obviously nothing compared to the time I’m fighting to regain but it is a long road to stare down. It’s a very overwhelming, daunting, impossible feeling to process.

Approximately 8 months. 34 weeks. 238 days. 7 holidays. 28 infusions. 5 trips to Houston. 5 scans. An unknown amount of blood draws, injections, infusions, and appointments.

But, breaking it all down like that, it becomes clear to me that is isn’t actually impossible. Still overwhelming, but doable. Each one of those can be reduced to a checkbox on a list, a day on a calendar. And with every X or checkmark, I get closer to the end, to putting this phase behind me.

So, if you are facing an impossible thing in your life, don’t let it win. Break it down into parts and pieces, a list of simpler things that you can easily manage. Don’t focus on the whole, just the tasks that it’s made up of. As you check off each one, you’ll make it through almost without realizing that you’ve conquered that impossible thing.

As I make it through each infusion, every appointment, and whatever hiccups that come up along the way, I’m going to look at myself in the mirror and smile because I’m stronger than the cancer. My reflection may change over the next months, but my smile never will. Because I’m a survivor. A fighter. A warrior.