It was 2017 when my wife’s cancer finally showed up. We’d been expecting it, in a way. Her type of thyroid cancer runs in her family. Honestly, it felt like something that came with an invisible countdown; always present in the back of my mind.
We weren’t surprised when the tests came back. It felt like the end of waiting. We already knew the plan: surgery to remove her thyroid, a careful regimen of pills to balance calcium and hormones, and a shift toward a healthier diet to help her heal.
We were lucky because we had doctors who were watching for it and already knew what to do when it arrived.
The plan worked. She’s been healthy ever since.
What I’ve come back to over and over recently, though, is this: the path on the other side of adversity isn’t adorned with roses and rainbows. If only it were that simple. I wish. There’s a notion in “overcoming” that it represents some kind of finish line that you cross, but the truth is, there’s no tape at the end. There’s just more life again — even when someone might be missing from it. Life with scars and bruises, with new worries, and life that looks the same on the surface but may be unrecognizable underneath.
For years after her surgery, we were diligent. Then she was diligent. We cut so many things out of the diet. We exercised more. Sometimes, we even managed to cook together. For a while, it felt like adversity had given us a gift; a reason to be more intentional, more connected, and more alive.
But old habits have a way of creeping back in. Late nights never stopped, but the fast food started making an appearance again. There were an increasing number of days when sitting on the couch is mentally easier than going for a run or even taking a walk.
I consider every day I have with my wife a blessing. She’s now six years older than my mom was when she died. I carry around this constant fear in the back of my mind of doing life without my wife. It’s a bit like humidity hanging in the air and we live in the tropics. Always present.
I’m not trying to be dramatic. It’s true. Adversity doesn’t disappear once you’ve survived it. There’s a lingering echo, and sometimes, it teaches you something you don’t know you needed to learn.
I’ve often joked, a bit darkly, that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or leaves you permanently maimed.” I sometimes laugh about that, but there’s truth there. We don’t get to walk or crawl through hardship and come out the other side untouched. There’s always some part of us that’s different — more tender, maybe. A little bit bruised in places no one else can see.
But, you know, that’s not the same as being broken.
And even if you’re broken, that’s sometimes okay.
What I’ve learned in the years since my wife’s diagnosis is that adversity tests you but it also teaches you how to see. It shifts the way you look at the world. It also has the potential to deepen small joys: being with your children, enjoying a favorite meal with little conversation, and the way laughter can break open a room that felt too heavy to breathe in.
Adversity also teaches you that you can’t do it alone. That you’re not meant to. My wife’s doctors, the friends who showed up with meals and prayers, the late-night conversations when we admitted we were scared — all of that matters. Much as it hurts my pride to admit it sometimes, we’re not built to carry the weight of the world — or even our lives — on our own. We’re meant to lean on each other, to offer what we can, and to accept what’s given.
The last one’s the hardest for most people. Struggling through on our own is a mark of our bravery, right?
Wrong!
There’s an inevitable fork in the road on the other side of adversity. One path leads to bitterness — a hollow resentment for the things we’ve had to endure and perhaps feeling that we were slighted because “we didn’t do anything to deserve this.” The other path? It leads to a different kind of strength. It’s the strength to hold the soft things — the fragile, fleeting moments of love and grace that make life feel like it’s worth fighting and living for.
I haven’t always taken the second path. That’s normal. There are days when the old fears still show up unbidden and unwanted, days when I’m tired and resentful and wondering if I’m really up to the work of living without burying my head in the sand. But more and more, I’m trying to walk along this path in the canyon while saying: this moment is enough.
That doesn’t mean pretending everything is perfect. It means honoring what’s real — my wife’s laughter-turned-tears when she’s tired, my own stubborn heart that’s learning to believe in hope again, and the small, daily choices that stack up to a life worth living.
Resilience isn’t always about bouncing back or getting up, and it’s never about charging forward like nothing happened. It’s about staying present when it would be easier to “numb out.” It’s about being willing to look at our scars and say: yes, this is part of me now. It’s about letting those echoes of the past be reminders, not shackles.
Much as we’d like to, we don’t get to choose what trials come to us. But, we do get to choose what we carry forward. We get to choose how we love, how we rest, and how we build something that matters — even if it’s small, even if it’s messy.
And for me? That’s enough.
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