Like most people, I have survived my share of ups and downs. Deaths of people I love, terrible days at school and work and at home, coming to terms with the cultural divide on how I was raised versus how everyone lived, and financial stress.

For me, these traumatic events felt fleeting and intense. The daily business of dealing with the constant stress and chaos of my life made time seem to pass extremely fast. I just got on with it – I got good at constantly moving onto the next thing. I was strong and responsible. I could handle it. Each of these events and stresses were just a minor blip in an otherwise exemplary life.

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a TED talk given by this beautiful young woman, Suleika Jaouad, who talked about how she survived a near fatal illness in her early 20s. She talked about her treatment and all the time she spent between consultants, doctors, hospitals and short trips home. She spoke of her family, well-wishers and strangers who supported her through it all. She reflected on: how she wished for her old life, routine and friends; how she struggled with everyday challenges and the small chances for her recovery; how her treatment made life too busy to think too deeply; and how she knew that at any time she could get sick again, so there was no time to waste.

Everyone was ecstatic by the outcome – she had survived against the odds. And everyone, especially her, was waiting for the expected feeling of happiness to wash over her. But to her embarrassment, that didn’t happen. Instead, she found herself silently wishing she were sick again. Being sick meant that the outcome of her life wasn’t in her hands, and that was oddly freeing because she didn’t have to be anything she wasn’t. Her weakness and pain was understandable and seen as earned by everyone around her.

But she was one of the lucky ones.

She beat the odds and got to live. “Don’t be silly,” she would tell herself, “there is no time to waste.” “Hurry up” she would tell herself, but every instinct was telling her that no clock could tell her when she would become her old self again, or if it was even an achievable goal.  Suleika Jaouad called her new reality “living in the in-between.”

I couldn’t stop listening and unexpectedly started tearing up at her very intimate description of her life. And though, by most measures, my journey does not compare to this young woman’s, many of the emotions I have felt are the same.

My husband recently went through many years of cancer treatment and is one of the lucky few to have a positive outcome. We are so fortunate to have so many well-meaning and caring people in our life, supporting us through the hard stuff – willing us to be like we once were. And here we are in the “in-between,” life after cancer treatment and the quiet tug of the ticking bomb of it potentially happening again.

Some days are good, but other days we get really good at grasping at things to help make the hard emotions pass. Work can be an amazing distraction, as are sports and time with friends.

But these emotions feel different than before. Maybe it’s their cumulative impact over many years. Maybe my husband’s illness was more pervasive than any other before it. At times, some gentle pressure around us helps us get closer to living our lives like our old selves, but more often I am finding that we put too much pressure on ourselves to get there better and faster.

This need to be “normal again” has often made us more tense and more fearful that we somehow are failing to live our lives the way we should. We have responsibilities and a world we are trying to catch up to. It’s a cycle I continuously struggle with – it disappears for a while but it never really goes away.

Yet I live a life that in so many ways exceeds any of my childhood dreams and expectations; I clearly have more than most.

I’ve won, haven’t I?

Yet it’s so hard to find the peace and lightness I used to have. Resentment often surfaces when we’re surrounded by people who remain sheltered in the bubble of their life, just like I once was. They continue to feel joy and trust so easily. I envy their ignorance, especially when, in spite of trying, I can’t join in, feel what they feel, or be as free as them.

Personal growth has come, but it is slower than I had hoped. Often it still feels foreign and selfish. I hope with continuous practice, I won’t go back to my old habits of ignoring my inner voice and of pushing forward, exhausting myself, and repeating the cycle over and over again.

But at those times that I do achieve those moments of lightness, my “in-between” life seems so much clearer and self-prioritization becomes so simple.

Toni Morrison said it best: “If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”  So I’m trying to surrender to appreciate those fleeting moments when I can enjoy living in the in-between.

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