Turning Survivors' Guilt into Joy

Ruth Pennebaker's eloquent essay, Sisterhood of Memories, gives voice to the complex emotions that often accompany long-term survivorship.  

Pennebaker explains how after completing months of surgery, radiation and chemo, "everybody looked at me – like I was an intact person, the woman I used to be...They thought I should be happy! They told me I should feel lucky to be alive! They had no idea how damaged and crazy and isolated I felt."

Support group meetings provided an oasis of understanding where she felt normal and found renewed strength and hope. "Invincible, almost. We could handle anything, couldn’t we?..."

They gathered in commonality, but as comrades developed recurrences and died, reality sank in: "our fates were individual."

I choked up while reading "I think of Martha and Donna and Katherine and Clare and Kathleen and Cindy and Alice and too many others as I age. I see their faces, still young and unlined. I try to remind myself how fortunate I am to be growing older."

You see, I'm nearing my 25th anniversary of survivorship and remember my Ellens and others. Like Pennebaker, I try to live my best life every day to "honor them somehow. More than anything, I want them to know I’ll never forget them."

When survivors' guilt threatens to spoil good times, I won't allow myself that luxury. As I explain in Guilty, "the most powerful way for me to honor Ellen's memory is to delight wholeheartedly in all that is right in my world."

Comments

[Deb Konrad]

LOVE this! I look at my survivorship in the same way...the best way to honor those who have lost their lives to this disease, is to live my life to it's fullest. My son married 2 weeks ago,a joyous event that when I was diagnosed 8 years ago, I feared I would not live to see.

[Wendy S. Harpham, M.D.]

Congratulations, Deb. With joy, Wendy

[Ruth Pennebaker]

Thanks, Wendy. You've always been my inspiration as a survivor.

[wei chong]

Thank you for sharing Ruth's essay. Certainly eloquent, but also down to earth.