Behind the Book: Why Emotions Instead of Stages

When I first began writing Faces of Cancer, I knew I wanted to write about the parts of cancer we do not talk about enough.

Not the medical parts. There are already people far more qualified than I am to explain chemotherapy drugs, surgical procedures, blood counts, and scan results.

I wanted to write about what happens inside us.

The shock. The fear. The anger we may not think we are allowed to feel. The grief that sneaks up while everyone else is celebrating good news. And eventually, sometimes, the hope and joy we are almost afraid to trust.

But as I began putting the book together, I kept running into a problem: emotions do not behave themselves.

They do not arrive in a nice, orderly progression. They do not wait patiently for us to finish with one before handing us the next. And they most certainly do not stay in the chapter where we put them.

Cancer Did Not Feel Like a Series of Stages

We often hear about the “stages” of grief. And there can be something comforting about having words for what we are experiencing. I am not suggesting those stages are wrong or that they have not helped people.

But my experience with cancer did not feel like moving from one stage to another.

It felt more like fear, grief, gratitude, anger, hope, and joy all climbed into the car together...and none of them agreed on who should drive.

One day I was scared to death of chemotherapy.

Another day I was laughing with my family while we picked out a wig.

Then I was sitting in a hospital room with an extremely low white count, frightened by how quickly things had changed.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, I could still look out a window, see a hot-air balloon floating through the sky, and feel reminded that God was near.

The joy did not cancel the fear.

The fear did not mean I had lost my faith.

They were both there.

I Could See It in My Old Journal Entries

While writing this book, I returned to the CaringBridge journal I kept during treatment. Reading those entries years later, I could see the emotions changing from one paragraph to the next.

Before chemotherapy, I wrote:

“To be honest, I am anxious to meet her and get a plan in place...but scared to death of chemo...so mixed emotions.”

Mixed emotions.

That may be one of the most accurate descriptions of cancer I have ever written.

I wanted a plan, and I was terrified of the plan.
I was thankful for treatment, and I did not want to need it.
I trusted God, and I still had questions.

A few weeks later, when my hair began falling out, our family gathered for our traditional Friday-night pizza. My children helped shave my head. After they left, I had what I called “one of the hardest cry fests of my life.”

I wrote that I was not feeling sorry for myself. I was grieving.

Cancer had already taken my breasts, disrupted my work, sent me into the hospital, and confined me to the house because of my blood counts. Losing my hair felt like one more piece of myself being stripped away.

That grief did not follow shock because it was the “next stage.”

It arrived because I stood in front of a mirror and no longer recognized the woman looking back at me.

And it did not disappear after that night.

Years later, I grieved again when I faced a hysterectomy. I grieved the loss of more body parts. I grieved what cancer had changed and what could never be restored exactly as it had been.

Grief did not stay in its assigned place.

Neither did fear.

Long after treatment ended, I wrote that fear was a companion I carried in my back pocket. Most of the time, I could sit on it and keep it contained. But sometimes—usually at night, when the house was quiet—it escaped.

That is not a stage you finish.

That is an emotion you learn to recognize and carry.

Some Emotions Arrive Uninvited

During the editing process, my editor helped me notice something about the emotions in this book.

Some of them come uninvited.

Shock, fear, anger, grief, overwhelm, guilt, loneliness...we usually do not wake up and decide to feel any of them. They simply show up, sometimes before we even have words for what is happening.

Other emotions and ways of living may need to be nurtured or chosen.

Trust.
Courage.
Gratitude.
Joy.
Hope.

But even that distinction is not perfectly tidy.

I do not believe we can manufacture hope by trying harder. And telling someone to “choose joy” while they are frightened, sick, or grieving can add another burden they were never meant to carry.

Sometimes hope is a choice.
Sometimes it is a gift.
And sometimes hope looks like letting someone else hold it for us until we are strong enough to hold it again.

This is why Faces of Cancer is not a roadmap.

There is no roadmap for cancer. Every journey is its own.

You Are Not Failing Because an Emotion Returned

I think we can unintentionally turn emotional healing into one more thing to accomplish.

We believe we should be “past” the anger by now.
We thought we had dealt with the grief.
We wonder why fear returned when the scan was clear.
We feel guilty because everyone is celebrating the end of treatment, but we feel frightened and strangely alone.
We tell ourselves we should be more grateful, more positive, more faithful.

But emotions are not evidence that we are failing. They are evidence that something has mattered deeply.

Fear often points toward what we love and do not want to lose.
Grief tells us there has been a loss, even if no one else recognizes it.
Anger may reveal that something feels unfair—because, quite honestly, cancer is unfair.
Overwhelm may be our mind and body telling us that this is simply too much to carry all at once.

Naming an emotion does not give it control. Naming it helps us understand what we are carrying.

That is what I needed when I was walking through cancer.

I did not need someone to tell me how I was supposed to feel about what I was feeling. I needed someone to sit beside me and say:

This part is real.
You are not making it up.
You are not failing for feeling this way.
And God has not forgotten you in the middle of it.

Faith Can Hold All of It

For a long time, I believed strong faith should make some emotions disappear more quickly.

If I trusted God, should I still feel afraid?
If I was grateful to be alive, did I have the right to grieve what survival had cost?
If I believed God was good, was I allowed to be angry?

My answer now is yes.
Faith does not require us to deny what is happening inside us.

In my CaringBridge journal, I wrote honestly about frustration, tears, fear, discouragement, laughter, and joy—sometimes all in the same entry. Looking back, I do not see a woman without faith.

I see a woman bringing her whole, messy heart to God.

There is no emotion cancer brings up in us that faith cannot hold.

God is not frightened by our questions. He is not disappointed by our tears. He does not step away when our faith and fear occupy the same room. He meets us there.

Read the Chapter You Need Today

That is why Faces of Cancer is organized around emotions rather than stages.

You do not have to read it in order.

You can open to the chapter that names what you are carrying today. Tomorrow may be a different chapter. Three months from now, an emotion you thought had left may return.

Come back when you need to.

This book will not tell you when you should be finished grieving, when fear should disappear, or when you should feel hopeful again.

It will simply sit beside you and remind you:

What you are feeling is real. It is valid. And you are not alone in it.

Because cancer is not a straight line.
Healing is not a straight line.
And hope does not wait at the end of a series of stages.

Hope lives here.

Right now. Right in the middle of all of it.

Faces of Cancer: The Emotions No One Prepares You For, and the God Who Meets You There is coming this October. If you would like to be among the first to know when it is available, you can join the book notification list here.