Cancer and Awakening

I’m a cancer survivor.

And while I didn’t fully awaken during that chapter,

I now see how the experience cracked something open in me.

A slow and sacred unravelling began —

one I wouldn’t recognise until much later.

Because when the body breaks down,

when survival takes centre stage,

something ancient begins to stir beneath it all —

a remembering.

And for some of us, that remembering becomes impossible to ignore.

We wake up.

Not just to the reality of illness,

but to something bigger.

We start seeing the cracks in the world we lived in before.

We start hearing the whispers of something deeper.

And we begin to realise: this isn’t just a physical healing journey — it’s a spiritual one.

No one warns you about that part.

There’s no leaflet that says,

“By the way, after your diagnosis, you might start questioning the entire matrix of reality.”

And so when it happens…

you think you’re losing your mind.

You start noticing synchronicities.

You get extra sensitive to energy.

You cry more.

You start questioning systems, people, food, media, time.

You feel detached from the version of yourself that once just “got on with things.”

And it’s terrifying.

Because not only are you trying to survive

you’re also seeing differently.

And it can feel like madness.

And for many, this is where the awakening gets dismissed.

Not because it isn’t real — but because the system is already overloaded.

There’s too much grief. Too much fear.

Too much mental noise and emotional chaos to hear the soul speaking clearly.

And that makes perfect sense.

Speaking as someone who’s walked through cancer,

I don’t know how I would’ve managed a full-blown awakening in the middle of that shit storm.

When you’re facing mortality,

when the fear of not being here becomes your daily companion,

there isn’t always space to entertain the spiritual.

Survival is the spiritual work in those moments.

For a long time, I rejected what was trying to awaken in me. I kept brushing it off. I convinced myself that people facing life-changing experiences would grab onto anything to stay afloat — and that a spiritual awakening was just another kind of distraction.

But still… the night before my surgery, I found myself standing outside under falling snow. Thick, gentle flakes floated down through the moonlight, and something in me softened. I didn’t hear a voice. I didn’t have a vision. I just knew I was going to be okay.

That knowing — that quiet presence — was always there. I just hadn’t been ready to listen.

So to anyone who does awaken while their world is being torn apart —

I see you.

I take my hat off to you.

Because it takes unimaginable strength to open to the light

while walking through the darkest valley.

But if your awakening came later —

in the aftershock, in the rebuilding, in the quiet that follows —

that’s sacred too.

Sometimes the soul waits until the body can bear it.

Because awakening doesn’t need to happen in the fire to be real.

It just needs to happen when you’re ready to rise from the ashes.

You’re not crazy.

You’re cracking open.

And there is beauty on the other side of this strange, luminous pain.

When the time is right for you, let yourself unfold.

Let yourself question everything.

Let yourself become.

Even if the world doesn't understand yet —

you will.