Grand Canyon and Cancer

MAliceR · November 2015

We just got back from a trip to Las Vegas. While there we took a day and went up to the Grand Canyon. I have been there a few times, but not in the last few years. Not since my first cancer diagnosis a little over 4 years ago. As we stood at the top, the snow at our feet, nothing but silence and the wind in the trees, I was struck by the splendor of it all. For the first time, I viewed it through the eyes of someone who many times over the last few years has considered herself broken by cancer. What struck me was that the canyon itself is there because it was "broken" by the elements. The river eroded it over time. It is what it is today, its beauty created by something that some might consider damaging. I looked at the majesty of the canyon and felt at one with it. I realized that the erosion that created the canyon is a lot like cancer. They both change something. They leave their mark. They make permanent changes, but that doesn't mean those changes make it or us less than what we were, different sure, but not less. How can anyone look at the Grand Canyon and think it is less because of the erosion? It is truly magnificent. We are not less because of cancer. We may have been eroded by cancer and sometimes we might feel broken by it. But for each of us who have spent hours, days, minutes, weeks, months and years living with cancer, either in treatment, in tests or hoping we are free of it. We are like the canyon, irreparably changed and truly superb. We are not broken, just a little eroded, forged by cancer and as grand as the canyon.