Why I won't use "fight" to describe cancer
Referring to cancer as a fight is now the ultimate insult for me. Even seeing the word cancer fighter has the opposite effect it's meant to. Instead of creating empowerment, it creates pain.
With this logic my son is a loser or it implies he didn’t fight hard enough because he lost the battle. He died.
Cancer is not a fight. It is not black and white, with a winner and a loser as the word fight would suggest.
Cancer is a part of you; something that is within you and to wage war on yourself would be counterproductive. Xavier was never a fighter. He would choose love over war any day. Encouraging my child to fight was the complete opposite of the values we wanted to instill in his short life.
In times of absolute fear, we used the word fight. But most of the time we stayed present. We taught him to listen to his body, focus not on a fight, but on love. We would tell him it’s not fair, he didn’t have to like what it was doing to him, but to love your life, cancer and all. He was so accepting of all he went through. And together we made choices to best manage his disease throughout his seven years of life.
I never wanted him to feel weak, or that he was still sick and dying because he just wasn’t’ fighting hard enough. I didn’t want his energy spent fighting. I wanted whatever energy he had to be surrounded by and accepting of love. And that’s why I told him weeks before he died that it was ok to let go. If he felt he needed to go live with Jesus we understood, even though we would miss him like crazy.
I didn’t want him to spend his last moments here on Earth in war against himself or fighting for us. Fighting ignites the brain’s stress response. We didn’t need any more stress. I wanted us as to be in the present to share and enjoy each other’s love.
Being positive was important to our mental stability, as was having hope. But the journey was never a fight. We could be positive and hopeful without fighting. We breathed life into him through our loving embraces and support. If he was too sick and felt like giving up, then we let him feel that way. We still loved him and let him know. He didn’t have to fight. He just had to live in love.
Life is not a fight. It is a journey. Cancer is just part of that journey.
If you want to live life like it’s a fight, for your brain to constantly be in survival mode and on the defense, it will make you sick. You will miss out on the love we were created for. And it is love that carries on forever.
I am not alone in my thoughts about the inappropriate use of “fight” now so entrenched in describing people with cancer. Others before me have described it better than I can. Please have a look at some of the links below: