Many people write to me with big, vulnerable questions. One email I received about life after cancer recently felt so powerful that I knew I had to share my response more widely, because it’s something so many of us wrestle with after illness, loss, or major life upheaval.
Here’s what this subscriber shared (anonymously):
“I’m at a stage where I can’t find a purpose to live my daily existence. I feel empty and have no vision and no enthusiasm for anything. I’m grateful to still be here after surviving lung cancer, but I really want to start living. I want to love and be loved, to enjoy life in every way, and to make an impact on my kids and grandkids. I don’t want to have regrets. Can you help me?”
Let’s dive in. Read the article (below) or watch the video (above). Enjoy!
Feeling Empty Is Part of the Path
First things first: feeling empty, lost, or without purpose doesn’t mean anything is wrong. This is the path. Every spiritual journey includes seasons where vision, drive, and enthusiasm drop away.
The invitation? Surrender to it. Open to it. Meet it with love. This season won’t last forever, but while it’s here, there’s medicine in learning how to savour even the emptiness.
How we meet what arises IS the magic & the medicine.
Gratitude as Grounding
This subscriber already knows one essential truth: gratitude shifts everything. After surviving lung cancer and a major surgery, they wrote, “I AM HERE AND HAVEN’T GIVEN UP.”
Yes. That’s it. Pause in that luckiness. Sit in the awe that you are still here. Feel the respect that rises when you acknowledge what you’ve lived through. Gratitude doesn’t erase emptiness, but it gives you a powerful frame to hold it.
Feel them both, appreciate and savour them both.
Love Starts With You
A big longing in the email was clear: “I need someone to love me the way I deserve to be loved.”
Beautiful. And the truth is, it always starts with loving yourself as you are. When you wake up, ask: What would love do for me today? Maybe it’s making a coffee exactly the way you like it. Maybe it’s running a bath, reading a book, or cooking a nourishing meal.
As you love yourself fully, you begin to embody the very love you wish to attract. Life itself becomes your lover. And yes, that’s when partnership is more likely to show up — because love attracts love.
Life after Cancer • Expect It All, In the Best Possible Ways!
This subscriber worried, “I often feel I expect too much.”
No, you don’t. Expect it all. The key is to expect with trust, not with fear. When you expect love, joy, and purpose to unfold, you relax. You act from faith rather than doubt.
Expectation rooted in fear feels desperate. Expectation rooted in trust feels expansive. Practice the second one.
Has Your Time Passed? Absolutely Not.
At one point, the subscriber confessed, “I feel at times that my time has passed.”
No. That’s cultural conditioning talking. We live in a society that worships youth and sidelines age. But real power comes with life, experience, and years walked.
There are countless stories of people beginning new passions in their 70s, 80s, and beyond. Your time hasn’t passed. Life is always now. Always this moment. Always fresh.
Your Purpose Is Already Here
At the very end of their message, the subscriber wrote: “Until I can no longer breathe, I want to live the remainder of my time making an impact on others’ lives, especially my kids and grandkids.”
There it is. Purpose revealed.
You don’t need to go searching for some grand cosmic assignment. You’ve already named your purpose: to live fully, to savour life, and to impact your loved ones through the way you show up each day. That’s everything.
Life after Cancer • Living With No Regrets
The subscriber ended with, “I do not want to have regrets.”
Here’s the truth: regret is just energy leaking into the past. What’s done is done. You can’t undo it. What you can do is choose, right now, to savour this breath, this day, this week.
Enjoyment is never about circumstances. It’s a choice. You can enjoy sitting in traffic. You can even enjoy how much you hate being stuck in traffic. The shift is in opening to what is and finding the aliveness in it.
That’s how you live with no regrets.
Life After Cancer • Final Encouragement
To anyone in this place — post-cancer, post-crisis, post-loss — hear this:
- You’re not broken for feeling empty. It’s JUST part of the both, open to it with loving-awareness.
- Gratitude helps, and can co-exist with emptiness.
- Love starts with you.
- Expect it all, from life.
- Your time has not passed, ever!
- Your purpose may already be whispering in your words.
Live it. Savour it. Love yourself, love your people, and trust that joy can be found in every single moment. And if you need support navigating one of life’s big transitions – I’m your woman! Send me an email and let’s chat.
