Acknowledging Inner Strength

[Music]

have you ever asked yourself

how did i manage to get through that

it’s june 2019 and my wife and i

are sitting in the waiting room of a

medical center here in shenzhen

waiting for the results of my breast

biopsy

we were discussing going home the

following week to

canada and the united states to visit

our families as international teachers

do

during their holidays but that trip

would have to wait

you see one day my wife randomly found a

lump on my breast

and four to five weeks prior to being in

that waiting room

i had spent many hours

getting multiple tests done until we got

to the point

where we currently were i remember being

very anxious

very scared and telling myself

oh it’s probably nothing it’s probably

nothing honestly though

this was not denial because i was told

there was a 94

chance that i did not have cancer i was

told that was very uncommon in women my

age

i was 33 very active in the artist and

educational

community here in shenzhen i

felt and looked completely healthy it

didn’t make sense to myself

or anybody that i could possibly have

cancer

and then the doctor called us into his

office

we sit he pauses

i’m very sorry to inform you but you

have

triple negative invasive ductile

carcinoma

which is an uncommon form of breast

cancer

immediately i was in shock

i remember sobbing honestly the rest is

a blur

but i remember that my wife was

consoling me and writing down

everything we had to do moving forward

how did i manage to get through that

immediately when i asked myself this

question a flood of

overwhelming flashbacks come back to me

ones that were extremely tough

the new normal of being seen as a sick

person

not recognizing my mental and physical

self

feeling extreme pain after chemo

treatments

having this extreme hunger but at the

same time

it was hard to eat

apologizing for being sick

i’m canadian we apologize i guess we do

that

but the most traumatizing for me

was during this period my mother

was also diagnosed with cancer and

passed away and i was unable to be with

her

but after the tough memories subside the

wind of triumph come through

the ones that not only make me

acknowledge my family

and my community was here to support me

but also helped me to acknowledge my

sense of inner strength

and i feel like this is a product not

only

of circumstances and experiences i went

through before i had cancer

but also through the experiences of the

experience of having cancer

and this is not obvious to me it took a

really challenging time in my life

to realize this and it got me to

realize aha moments

that i was going through to connect this

to my inner strength

in 2018 or just

less than a year before i was diagnosed

i created this series called shadows

and here is shadows one to nine and it

was in reference to another challenging

time

in my life and

what it’s about is the idea that when

something happens to us it’s very

challenging

we hit the floor and get back up we come

back up

either stronger more fragile maybe even

a bit weaker

but we keep moving forward

what i find interesting about this piece

is that i created it pre-cancer

and started showing it and continued to

show it show it during my cancer

treatment

not only was it referencing what

happened to me in the past

but it was exactly referencing what i

was going through

when i was diagnosed i did not lose

sight of this

and this made me realize the inner

strength that i had to pierce

to persevere and to be very determined

i’ve always had this sense of intrinsic

motivation

to do what i love to do and through this

i took a lot of risks and i grew

when about 10 years ago

i took a job and came to china took a

risk

to teach art here and then about five

years ago

i became a founding member of an artist

community here in shenzhen

and through this community i was able to

network with other educators

other artists i was able to show my work

curate shows and eventually i was able

to put this experience into my classroom

and i spoke at conferences about it

during my treatment i took a giant leap

i decided to do more than just survive i

decided to

and within reason live my life as

full as i could under the circumstances

i was given

between chemo treatments i continued to

work as an educator i did not take your

traditional

sick leave i continued to show

my work and i continued to curate show

and i can tell you it took a lot of

willpower to do this and i would

constantly tell myself that i was strong

i was strong

i was strong

another thing that i did was during my

treatment i posted

about my journey and this was very

difficult for me

because it was something very personal

but

when i decided to have treatment in

china i wanted my friends and family

back home to know that i was going to be

okay

and i didn’t want them to feel sorry for

me

but in the broader sense i wanted others

to know that yeah you can be young and

you can have cancer

cancer does not discriminate

and i also wanted to share my story

through a positive lens

without losing

the hardships that i went through

through my posts i

was able to

do i post i was able to inspire many

people and i think that’s what i’m most

proud of

i inspired others to get medical checks

and go get mammograms i think all of my

friends got mammograms

like the next day honestly

i inspired other people who were going

through challenging times in their life

they saw what i was doing and they’re

like wow if she can go through cancer

and do that i can get through anything

i even mentored another foreigner here

in china

who had breast cancer and we became very

close friends

and most inspirational to me was i

inspired my mom

and it was crazy how that went down but

five weeks after i was diagnosed my

mother was diagnosed with stage four

non-hodgkin’s lymphoma and they found it

too late

and i knew it and my mom knew it but we

were positive about

it and through my posts my mom gained a

lot of strength to get through her

battle

and if you knew my mom like it’s the

other way around my mom gives me lots of

strength

this is my mom during her first chemo

treatment my mother passed away about 10

days later

due to complications she was just not

strong enough

ultimately this led me to acknowledge

the inner strength that i had

to be self-compassionate and to also

self-advocate and these are hard things

that we learn to do

or some of us just don’t learn it takes

forever

but i was always a compassionate person

but

having that sense for myself was just

something that i didn’t honestly really

think about

when you set high goals for yourself you

need to

understand your limits and through when

i was sick

i did still take a lot of risks but it

was filtered down into something more

manageable because i just couldn’t do it

and i think when i look back i think

that there was a lot of missed

opportunities that i had

but that was just the way it had to be

and i had to be okay with that

and i was in terms of self-advocacy

i learned to say no to a lot of things

i’ve always been a let’s do this kind of

attitude which is great

but you can only do that so much i

learned to be as clear and concise

as possible about how i was feeling so

people could understand

how they could help me when i was going

through this time i sought out

i sought out professional mental health

because it’s really impossible to go

through something like this without

having someone to talk to

and today these skills that i learned

through this experience

have really

have a big place in my heart because

they have made me stronger

when someone asks you how did you manage

to get through that

i challenge you to think about moments

in your life that were challenging

and i want you to think about the inner

strength you had to get through them

thank you