Self-care in the cancer journey

Nadia Booysen advocates how self-care can save you from yourself during your cancer journey and allows you to rebuild the self.

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In modern society, self-care has become a buzzword encompassing the usual suspects: meditation, being still, and yoga. Using these words so freely causes them to lose their real value to contribute to life, and it almost feels like you can slide them in between daily activities without giving it much thought. Similar to a health app that reminds you to breathe or drink water. 

In contradiction, this quote sets a whole different take on self-care; it reads, “True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake. It is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.” This implies that there should be a permanence to self-care, which infiltrates and changes your life to a state where you are content.  

Being realistic would be to try and combine both into our worlds as best we can. The truth though is that if you are not used to this, self-care initially is something you actively have to apply your mind and body to until you become accustomed to the experience and truly reap the rewards of gratification. 

Rebuilding the self

As with most human interventions, you not only want to address the symptom but the cause as well. So, idealistically you should aim to build that life you don’t need to escape from often. But while you work on that, you need additional self-care routines to get you through. This can include exercise, meditation, hot baths, and long walks. Whatever makes you feel lighter, things that uplift your spirit and give you energy to get up the next day and face the world. 

Initially, it might be hard to work this into your routine. You may be so depleted that you truly feel too overwhelmed to start, especially during a cancer journey. 

Because cancer sometimes causes weight loss or gain, surgery scars, hair loss, malformation, you may become more reserved and have a higher need for privacy, and this often turns into isolation. 

Self-care can become almost a life-saver to rebuilding the self; feeling better, de-stressing, and learning to love yourself again in the present state that you find yourself in. Sometimes you need someone to fuel this process, as energy and motivation might be low. Self-worth often declines with these unfortunate changes in image and identity which makes the desire to focus on yourself even less. 

You may often also feel guilty for needing so much help or time that your sense of guilt is increased even when you are doing something for yourself. The unfortunate reality is that you need to take care of yourself to stay strong, to recover, and to give yourself the best chance to be there for your loved ones in the future. 

Self-care becomes imperative at some stages, and not an additional add-on any more, where it once might have been a convenient choice. It becomes imperative for emotional survival. 

Even though you can’t take the cancer away, you and your medical team can put all efforts in reducing trauma, helping you and your family get to the other side in the best emotional state as possible. Self-care plays a big part in that. 

The other side

Remember, when you get to the other side, you want to live. Treatment shouldn’t end with the intention to escape death but to allow you to have an abundant life, live. As a big shift as that is for many, for some it might start like the app reminder to drink water or breathe. For others, it might be reconstructing a new world. Regardless of how you get there, big or small, self-care can save you from yourself in the most significant ways if you let it. The key is not only to be physically healthy but also to be mentally free. Life is to be lived and lived in abundance. 

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