I Am Still Here

STILL STANDING. STILL BECOMING

Photo by Juliet - Wonder Loves Photography

This morning, I woke up to Brodi, his sing-song whine, his shameless insistence on breakfast, his absolute refusal to let the day be anything but ordinary. I looked across at Bayan. He leaned over, whispered Happy Birthday, and kissed me tenderly, the way you kiss someone when you know what it cost to get here. To be here.

I got up. Fed the dog. Made the tea, made the coffee. Carried it back to bed.

And then I just lay there. In the quiet. In the white. In the weight of four words, I have never meant more in my life.

I AM STILL HERE.

Today I am 54. I wasn't sure I'd see it. Not in the way people say that casually, the way we all pretend time is infinite until suddenly, terrifyingly, it isn't. I mean, I genuinely did not know. It did not matter what I wanted; there was science. The scans, the odds, the words that landed like stones in still water. Stage 4. Aggressive. Spread. Those aren't words you walk away from unchanged. Sometimes they're words you don't walk away from at all. It is impossible to go through that journey and be the same person who started it.

But here I am. Hair growing back soft and new, like something tentative and brave. Body slowly, stubbornly returning to itself. Lying in white sheets on a birthday morning, so full of gratitude it feels physical, like a pressure in my chest, as my heart had simply run out of room to hold it all.

Cancer arrived in my life uninvited. Unwelcome. Unimaginable. At first, I saw it as the enemy, something to go to war with, to fight, to push out of my body with everything I had.

But somewhere along the way, something shifted. Not overnight. Not easily. But quietly, the way the most important things always do.

I never once asked, Why me?  I did start asking, What is it here to teach me?

And it taught me everything. It stripped the noise away. The rushing, the performing, the relentless filling of days with things that looked important but were just weight. What was left, when all of that fell away, was truth. It taught me to listen to my body, really listen. To honour rest, not resent it. To choose nourishment over punishment. To stop abandoning myself to meet the world's demands. To make better choices.

For the first time in my life, I began making choices not from pressure. But from alignment. Because it was right for me.

There is a quiet wisdom that comes from facing your own fragility. You realise that time is not infinite. Energy is not infinite. And neither are the chances to say what you feel, to do what you dream, to become who you are meant to be.

I have become more intentional. More protective of my peace. More present in my life. And perhaps most importantly, softer. Softer with myself. Softer with others. Softer with the unfolding of life. Because control was never real. But presence, presence is everything.

I used to think living fully meant doing more. More achievements. More plans. More perfection. Now I know that living fully is feeling deeply. Laughing loudly. Resting when your body whispers. Saying no without guilt. Saying yes with your whole heart.

It's sitting in the sun. It's holding the people you love just a little longer. It's finding beauty in the ordinary. It's being here. Simply, sacredly, stubbornly here.

And then there is Bayan.

I don't have the words, and I am a woman who lives for words, to fully capture what it is like to go through this with him beside me. Not behind me. Not in front of me. Beside me. Every single step. There were days I couldn't hold myself together, days I was frightened and fragile and not even close to the woman he married, and he never once looked at me like I was less. He looked at me like I was everything. He still does.

Life in its fragility is devastatingly short. Every morning I wake up next to him is a gift I no longer take for granted. Every cup of coffee. Every quiet evening. Every tender birthday kiss before the world begins. I think about a life without him, and there is a pain so deeply excruciating that it has no name. He is my anchor, my home, my greatest love. How extraordinarily lucky am I that I get to keep loving him? That I get this gift of a little more time.

And our children. My everything. My reason for being. The privilege of being their mother is not lost on me for a single second. I want more life with them. I want to be there when they need me and when they think they don't. I want to see who they become. I want to be the mother and grandmother who shows up and stays.

My family. My friends. My beautiful, fierce, irreplaceable women who held my hand through the darkest of it, who pushed me up the mountain when the next step felt impossible. Cancer gave me the gift of knowing how loved I am. Not as a eulogy. Not after. Now. While I am still here to feel it. The unconditional love of being there for me, for accepting me for who I am, perfectly imperfect. For trust and friendship, it's everything.

March is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. This year, it carries a different weight for me because I am not just aware. I am part of the story. I carry it in my body. In my scar. In my heart.

And with that comes responsibility.

To speak. To share. To raise my voice for every woman who doesn't yet know the signs, who is brushing off symptoms, who is waiting too long. Because if one woman reads this and goes to her doctor, if one woman catches it earlier, fights it harder, knows she is not alone, then this journey meant something beyond my own survival. Then it was worth every hard and broken day.

I am not naïve. The battle is not over. It may never truly be over. This can creep back, I know that. I carry that knowledge with me every single day, quietly, like something tucked into a pocket. It doesn't paralyse me. It clarifies me. It makes every birthday morning feel like a gift. It makes ordinary days feel like grace.

So here is the part I never expected to say: I am excited for the future. Not in a reckless, everything-is-perfect kind of way. But in a deeply grounded, I know what matters now kind of way. I am building. Creating. Dreaming again, with more clarity, more purpose, more intention than I have ever had before.

Because when life shakes you to your core, you stop building a life that looks good. And you start building one that feels right.

This birthday is not about candles or numbers. It is about presence. Gratitude. Resilience. It is about honouring the woman I was, embracing the woman I have become, and stepping forward as the woman I am still becoming.

Cancer didn’t take my life; it taught me how to live it