There is no easy way to put this, January was a pretty sucky month in cancer land. It seems like from the moment I returned from Epic some celebrity or another died of cancer. To top that off, at least a couple of bloggers died, and several others had disease progression. Closer to home was learning that a couple of the ladies from my support groups were diagnosed metastatic – one who followed me through chemo by about one or two weeks. In all accounts, there was a lot of sad news in cancer land.

However, I’m doing well. This is actually really hard sometimes. I’m doing well, but the people around me are not. There is that pang of survivor guilt that happens. I want to celebrate, to shout out, I’m having fun, I’m doing well, and yet, I’m surrounded by sadness. I feel guilty because I want to share the good things that are happening.

Now I’ve blogged before about how I think we need to remember to blog when things are going well. The breast cancer blogosphere is full of stories of the hardships of breast cancer. It is full of the authentic accounts that help us prepare, help us empathize, help us understand the real impacts of the disease. What is isn’t full of are the stories of people who are doing well – I don’t mean the feel-good stories. There are lots of she suffered, now she is cured, lift is a gift, rah rah rah stories that are designed to make people who don’t have cancer feel better. By the way, I learned a new term for that today “healthy privilege“, which is the view of the world from the healthy persons perspective. But I digress, my point is, I’m doing well and I want everyone who follows me to know about it.

I’m not doing great, and I’m not finished recovering, or any of that. But I’m not doing poorly either. My foot still hurts, I cannot exercise.  But my life is starting to fall back into rhythms that I enjoy. I’m teaching again and loving it. I’m back to school again and loving it. I had a great birthday party and was reminded of all the amazing friends I’ve made over the last two years. So, for right now, life doesn’t suck.