Your Personal Oasis: Creating a Refuge in the Middle of the Hard Stuff
A practical guide for cancer treatment, surgery recovery, chronic illness, caregiving, or any season when your body needs a soft place to land.
Whether you're walking through treatment right now, recovering from surgery, managing a chronic illness, or looking back on a season that changed everything — this one’s for you.
I remember the entry I wrote on my CaringBridge journal during the weeks leading up to my first chemotherapy treatment. I was trying to get my life in order before everything slowed down again.
I was anxious.
I was scared.
And I was married to a man who, instead of saying, “You’ll be fine,” decided to do something about the space around me.
He built me an oasis.
Right there in our living room, Ferlin created something I hadn’t thought to ask for — lush green plants, a small waterfall, soothing music, blankets, and books.
It wasn’t a grand gesture.
It wasn’t expensive.
It was intentional.
It was love with a place to sit down.
I wrote at the time that I was “hoping like anything” that I wouldn’t have to use it much.
Spoiler: I used it a lot.
But the fact that it was there — waiting for me, prepared for me — told my anxious heart that someone had thought ahead to the hard days and made ready a soft place to land.
That first chair was a beige chaise lounge, long and low, the kind of thing that let me lie down without quite lying down. It held me through triple-negative breast cancer, through sixteen rounds of chemotherapy, through radiation, through every nausea drug they tried on me, and through the months I spent learning what fatigue really meant.
That chair eventually wore out, chairs do, when you use them the way I was using mine.
We replaced it with a leather recliner. And that chair has been with me through everything else: DIEP reconstruction surgery, the sepsis that nearly took me, both knee replacements, a broken foot, and now twice-daily lymphedema pump treatments that take about an hour each.
Plus the 2 a.m. nights when pain wakes me up and I can’t get back to sleep, so I come downstairs, sit in the recliner, and wait the pain out until morning.
It’s been seventeen years since Ferlin built that first oasis.
Two chairs.
One corner.
One consistent role:
Somewhere to be while my body is doing the hard thing it has to do.
If you’re in a hard season right now, I want to help you build your own version of that.
Not because a chair fixes everything.
It doesn’t.
But sometimes, when life is hard and your body is tired, having one place that says, “You can rest here,” matters more than we realize.
What a Personal Oasis Actually Does
This isn’t about making your couch prettier.
A personal oasis does something specific: it gives your body and soul a signal that it’s okay to stop and rest.
When you’re fighting illness, managing fear, recovering from surgery, or just trying to survive the next treatment, your nervous system can feel like it’s stuck on high alert. Having a place — a corner, a chair, a whole room if you’re lucky — that is visually calm and intentionally prepared can help your body exhale.
I’m a nurse. I can tell you that rest isn’t passive.
For your body to heal, it needs your brain to cooperate. An environment that says, “Rest is allowed here,” matters more than we often give it credit for.
A quick note before we go further: this is not medical advice, and every body and recovery is different. Please check with your care team about anything related to surgery recovery, circulation, lymphedema, heat, mobility, or medical equipment.
Also, some links in this post are affiliate links, including Amazon links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. I only share items I personally use, would use, or genuinely recommend.
Okay.
Let’s build your place.
Start with the Chair
Everything orbits the chair.
Don’t skip this and try to make your couch work if it isn’t working for you. Couches can be too long, too soft, too low, or too far from everything you need. You may end up cold, uncomfortable, and unable to reach your water without standing up.
And standing up, after surgery or during treatment, can feel like its own kind of impossible.
What you’re looking for is a chair that lets your body truly rest.
For some people, that may be a recliner that fully reclines — not just leans back, but goes nearly horizontal when you need it to. A footrest that lifts your legs can be helpful for rest, circulation, swelling, lymphedema, or post-surgical recovery.
If you’re recovering from abdominal surgery — DIEP reconstruction, hysterectomy, or any of the bigger ones — a power lift function may be worth every penny. Standing up from a deep chair after that kind of surgery requires help, leverage, or a chair that does some of the work for you.
My current recliner is wide enough that I can curl sideways on the hard days, with my knees up and a pillow under my head.
If a full recliner isn’t in the budget right now, a chaise lounge may be a good alternative for shorter recovery seasons. That’s what started this whole thing for me in 2009.
The point is not that it has to be fancy.
The point is that it has to hold you.
Add a Table Within Reach
You need a flat surface within arm’s reach.
Not a coffee table you have to lean forward for.
Not something across the room.
Not something that requires you to negotiate with your body every time you need a sip of water.
A side table you can touch without moving much is one of the highest-leverage pieces of the whole setup.
This sounds small. It is not small.
The number of times I wouldn’t have drunk water because I couldn’t reach the glass, wouldn’t have taken a medication because I couldn’t reach the pill bottle, or wouldn’t have checked my phone because it was on the wrong side of the room — that adds up.
What goes on the table?
Your water bottle.
Your phone.
Your medication.
Your reading glasses.
The book you’re maybe reading.
Scripture cards or a devotional.
The remote.
Lip balm.
Anything you’d otherwise have to stand up for.
Look for something sturdy, easy to wipe down, and preferably with a slightly raised edge or enough room that things don’t roll off when you bump it half-awake at 2 a.m.
Keep a Basket Nearby
Everything else lives in the basket.
Extra medications.
Tissues.
A heating pad.
A small first aid kit.
Hand cream.
A backup phone charger.
An eye mask.
Hand sanitizer.
The lip balm that disappeared three days ago.
I learned this trick years into my journey, and I wish I’d had it from the start.
A basket beside the chair turns, “I need to get up and find that,” into, “I need to lean over for ten seconds.”
On chemo days, surgery recovery days, or chronic pain days, that difference is enormous.
Look for a basket with a flat bottom. Round baskets are pretty, but they tip, and that’s the last thing you want during a middle-of-the-night fumble.
Pretty is nice.
Functional is kinder.
Choose a Blanket That Lives There
Don’t put the throw away.
Let it live on the chair.
Cancer, surgery, chemo, low blood pressure, medications, dehydration — they all conspire to make you cold even when the room is warm. You will reach for the blanket constantly.
If you have to get up to find it, you’ll be cold for an extra five minutes every single time.
So leave it there.
My CaringBridge entries from chemo days mention blankets over and over. They were always within reach. I had the heavier one for the really cold days, the soft fleece for naps, and the lighter cotton one for warmer afternoons.
You don’t need three throws.
You need one that is the right weight, the right size, and machine-washable.
A weighted blanket may help some people with anxiety or sensory comfort. A soft throw can feel like comfort made tangible. A heated throw can be a genuine quality-of-life upgrade, especially if cold or pain is part of your story.
Just be sure to check with your care team if you have lymphedema, neuropathy, circulation concerns, surgical healing, or any reason heat might not be recommended for you.
Use Warm, Gentle Lighting
Overhead lighting is brutal when you’re not well.
It’s harsh.
It’s clinical.
It can make your own living room feel like a waiting room.
You need a floor lamp or table lamp next to your chair with a warm bulb. Think soft, warm light — not the bright white kitchen kind that feels like it’s interrogating you.
Dimmable is even better, because the light you need at noon when you’re reading is different from the light you need at 3 a.m. when you’re waiting out a wave of pain.
This is one of those small things that changes the whole feeling of a room.
Warm light says, “You’re safe here.”
Keep Water Within Reach
Hydration is half the battle of recovery, and you will not get up to refill a glass of water as often as you should.
A large insulated water bottle or tumbler that holds enough for several hours is one of the most underrated items in my setup.
Mine sits on the side table at all times. I refill it when I do get up, and I sip from it constantly when I don’t.
If you’re going through treatment, recovering from surgery, managing medications, or dealing with fatigue, make this as easy on yourself as possible.
Straw lid.
Handle.
Large capacity.
Easy to clean.
This is not about aesthetics.
This is about not having to negotiate with your body every time you need a drink.
Add Scripture or Meaningful Words
That’s part of why I created Words for the Journey — a collection of scripture and prayer cards — because I needed scripture I could see on the days I couldn’t focus enough to read.
Chemo brain is real.
Post-surgical fog is real.
Pain that takes all your attention is real.
There were stretches where I could not have read a full Bible passage if my life depended on it. But I could see a card. I could read one line. I could let one verse sit on the table next to me as a quiet reminder that something bigger than my body was holding me.
A small set of scripture cards on your table or in your basket — even if you don’t pick them up — can be a quiet act of resistance against the smallness of a hard season.
And if your faith tradition is different, or if you’d prefer secular language, the principle is the same.
Keep something nearby that speaks life over you.
A quote.
A prayer.
A photo.
A note from someone who loves you.
A sentence you need to remember when the fear gets loud.
Something visual.
Something meaningful.
Something that says, “You are not just a body in a chair.”
Add Something Living
Fresh flowers when you can manage it.
Even just one.
Ferlin filled my original oasis with plants in 2009 because he understood something I had to learn the hard way: when your body is fighting, you need things around you that are growing.
Something alive.
Something quiet.
Something that is not about your illness.
Plants don’t ask anything of you. They just grow quietly and add life to a room.
A low-maintenance plant like pothos, snake plant, or ZZ plant can survive even when you forget to water it for a while.
You don’t need to turn your living room into a greenhouse.
One small living thing can change the whole feeling of a space.
Add Something Beautiful
A candle.
A photo.
A small piece of art.
A favorite mug.
A soft pillow.
Something that has nothing to do with being sick and everything to do with being you.
This is the item people skip, and I don’t think they should. It’s the difference between a corner that feels medical and a corner that feels like yours.
When your life has been taken over by appointments, medications, symptoms, scans, treatments, and recovery instructions, beauty matters.
Not because it fixes anything.
Because it reminds you that you are still a person who gets to enjoy beautiful things.
A Note for the Caregivers Reading This
If you love someone going through cancer, surgery, chronic illness, grief, or any kind of hard season and you don’t know what to do — this is something you can do.
You don’t need a lot of space.
You don’t need a lot of money.
You just need to pay attention to what brings them peace and gather a little of it in one place.
Ferlin didn’t ask me what I wanted my oasis to look like.
He knew. And he built it before I needed it.
That’s the other thing about a personal oasis: sometimes the most healing part isn’t the plants or the sound of the water or the blanket or the chair. Sometimes the most healing part is the fact that someone thought ahead to the hard days and decided to make ready a soft place to land.
If you are the caregiver, don’t overcomplicate this.
Think about the person you love.
Do they like quiet?
Music?
Books?
Plants?
Soft blankets?
A certain candle?
A certain chair?
A place near a window?
A place away from noise?
Start there.
Love often looks like paying attention.
A Few Final Things I’ve Learned
Don’t try to build it all at once.
Start with the chair. Add as you go. Some items will turn out to matter more for your body than I could predict. Others won’t fit your life. That’s okay.
The setup is allowed to evolve.
Mine has been adjusted, replaced, and rearranged dozens of times over seventeen years.
What I needed during chemo in 2009 is different from what I need now, managing lymphedema and recovering from surgeries my forty-one-year-old self couldn’t have imagined facing.
The oasis evolves with you.
And don’t apologize for the setup. People may see it. Some people may not understand why you need a place like this. That’s okay. They don’t have to understand it for it to be valid.
You are building a sanctuary for a body that needs holding, and that is good work. You’re allowed to have this place. You’re allowed to take it seriously. You’re allowed to spend money and space and care on building a square footage of your home that exists for the version of you that needs holding.
The chair I’m sitting in right now is the second one. It has seen me through more than I ever would have believed was coming.
And the corner itself — the actual physical space where Ferlin first placed plants and a waterfall and a stack of blankets and books — has now held more of my life than I ever expected.
I still need it.
I’m starting to suspect I always will.
And I think that’s okay.
A Few Resources Worth Having
While you’re here, these may be helpful for you or someone you love:
Words for the Journey Scripture & Prayer Cards
For the moments when you need truth you can hold in your hands.
Click HERE
Prayer Shawl
Made with prayer and intention for someone walking through something hard.
Click HERE
How to Actually Help Someone With Cancer
A free guide for the people who love someone in treatment and want to help in practical, meaningful ways.
Click HERE
More Hope Lives Now Reflections
For the days when you need encouragement, faith, and hope in the middle of real life.
Visit my journal on this site, or subscribe to my Substack.
What’s in your oasis?
I’d love to hear. Leave a comment below — whether you’re building one now, creating one for someone you love, or remembering a place that helped hold you through a hard season.
This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only share items I personally use, would use, or genuinely recommend.
If this resonated with you, I’d love to have you join me on Substack. Every Tuesday and Friday, I write about faith, survivorship, and finding hope in the middle of hard seasons.