People ask me all the time, “How did you make it
through? The chemo, the surgery,
the fear, the pain. I don’t think
I could do it.”
There are lots of tools in our arsenal that help us deal
with adversity. One of my
favorites is good old-fashioned humor.
Anyone who knows me personally knows this all too well. I may cry and bitch a little, but then
there is always that joke that gets me through the day.
I lost my ‘other’ job yesterday. For the past year, while I have been working as The Cancer Coach,
I have had another job. It’s not
uncommon that those of us who choose to leave the corporate world to pursue our
dreams can’t make the leap in an instant.
There are mortgages, car payments, groceries and yes, our social lives
to think of. So we carve out time
in the rest of our days and weeks to follow our passions. I have wondered for the longest time
how I would ever find the courage to walk away from the paycheck, and
yesterday, the paycheck walked away from me. It stung, I will admit that. As miserable as I have been for the past few years, I worked
hard for that company. I have
willingly taken on the tough assignments, the ones that they couldn’t give to
co-workers who made more money than I did because I was the only one who could
put aside my ego and handle the tough client, the tough conversation. It was hard to have my favorite
executive read me the standard ‘layoff speech’ instead of telling me how much
my hard work has meant to the company and how much he wishes it could be
different.
But this morning, I woke up laughing. Today is the first day of the rest of
my life, I can sleep as late as I want, and I woke up at 6 am even though I didn’t
have to set the alarm. For the
first day in 12 years, I woke up excited and refreshed and ready to take on the
world. I honestly find it funny
that it took a bitch-slap from the universe to make me happy. It’s ironic, yes, but also hilarious.
It reminds me of how I used to tell me people that my biggest fear from the
cancer was that when I went back to work after medical leave, I might come in
to the office, sit down at my desk and take off my top, because that’s what I
had been doing everywhere else for the last six months. Or how I proclaimed only minutes before
my surgery that once this was all over, no one was going to touch my boobs
again unless they bought me dinner first.
This isn’t one of those ‘if I don’t laugh I will cry’
situations. It’s my choice to find
the humor and the joy here, because that’s how I move forward with life. Since cancer, I only grieve true
losses. I put this one in the win
column - especially since I am now available on a full time basis to
help any one of you do the same.
