Letters from Laryssa

  Hello my beautiful friend,                   Sometimes when we get a diagnosis of cancer, we may feel like our lives are over. After going through chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormone therapy, and suffering the aftereffects of those treatments, we may feel that our lives are no longer our own. That we are a shadow of what we used to be. Despite my own struggles in coming to terms with my “new normal”, I choose to turn them into a positive. I allowed those experiences to refine me, not define me. Having gone through those experiences have allowed me to pinpoint exactly what I want out of life and given me the courage to pursue new opportunities that I wouldn’t have dared to dream for myself.                                 Recently, I have gone through a season of change. I decided to pursue continued education with the goal of being able to work fro...

 Hello my beautiful friend,    I am so sorry I have been MIA for so long. It’s been a very busy couple of months, but I am excited to get back to sharing my story.   You know the saying, "Comparison is the thief of joy?", its a cliché, but its true. This is something I am currently struggling with. While on treatment I compared myself to friends who had fought cancer before me who I felt did so much better than me. They were able to continue their routines without missing a beat. Meanwhile I was doing well to get out of bed in the mornings and I became very discouraged because of what I felt was a failure on my part.  Now that I am 6 months post all of my chemotherapy and radiation treatments I feel some resentment that I am not bouncing back quickly. I get angry that I still feel fatigue, that my weight loss journey isn’t going the way I want, and that I don’t handle stress as well as I used to. There are days where I feel like a shadow of myself and that ...