My biggest fear is being nothing more then a memory to my daughter when she looks at a old family photo. My biggest fear is that cancer will rob me of the most precious years of life of my daughter or me not being there when she is becoming an adult and needs motherly advice, my fear is not living long enough to age where she doesn’t need me anymore, however I’m not sure what that age would be as I’m 33 and still need my mom everyday. My fear was that cancer would rob me of these things I love, leaving me with a future full of emptiness and a sadness that I could not overcome.
My future is brighter, my time will not be wasted with meaningless people or meaningless actions. The things I love doing and the people I love will be priority. I have learned that I’m stronger then I could ever imagine and day by day, breath by breath I’m learning how to conquer my fears. My future is knowing that there are going to be days I can’t sleep, there’s going to be nights I can’t stop crying , New worries of every lump and pain I feel in my body but that’s ok because there will also be times where I laugh so hard , places I will go that I would have never seen if it weren’t for these life lessons. The hardest thing about my future would be letting go of the life I had planned and accepting the one that is present and easiest thing about my future is I will be living my best life and looking for rainbows, even in the storms.”
– Aliyah Rafman, Program Participant