Everything is different, and the same.

Michael Himbeault/Wikimedia Commons

It’s going to be a while before things get to normal, if they ever do. It’s more like the future will become the normal.

The only thing in my experience I can liken it to is my cancer survivorship: you start living your life again, but everything is different. Priorities change. Your sense of safety never fully returns, yet because of this you become more purposeful in living: time matters. It’s as though you go on living, but learn a new way to do it.

There’s actually a sense of freedom accompanying the realization that nothing/no one lasts forever.

Finding a middle ground.

After I completed treatment, I watched the Jeff Bridges film Fearless (1993). His character is a survivor of a horrendous airliner crash, and he develops a sense of invincibility as a way of coping. I understood his character really well. You either hide in fear, or you go forward as if you are invincible. Eventually, you discover a middle ground.

An almost universal experience among cancer survivors.

I was very successful as an oncology nurse navigator with this understanding, which I shared in different ways, gauged to individual needs and stress levels, with my patients as they completed treatment. It’s almost universal among survivors, especially as their hair grows back and they return to their jobs and previous roles. They’ve had this profound, life-changing experience, but are expected to get back to it before they’ve had time to process what’s happened to them. It’s very odd to watch the entire world learning to navigate this, twenty years after my personal experience.