Small Grief's Along the Way (Part 2)

Part 2: Loss of Safety
The second subconscious loss was related to the first, but also slightly different, and that was the loss of simply feeling safe in her body.  Like maybe most cancer patients, Kim became aware that there was something deceiving, devious in her body. Her body was naturally producing something that was unnatural, that was wrong. Something that, if not treated, was seeking to kill her. The enemy was within; the call was coming from inside the house.  It felt like her body was no longer a safe place.
 
But in addition to this, it was not just that her own body was trying to attack and kill itself, but in order to try and stop this, to restore safety back to her body, she was going to have to willingly inflict violence on her body–surgery–and willingly poison herself–chemo–to try and get rid of this innate intruder. The natural flow of how the body was created was being reversed on her. Usually, infections inflict themselves on the body from the outside. They get in and then it is the body’s natural homegrown immune system that seeks to fight it off. With cancer, it was developing through the mutations of what once were normal cells on the inside. And then to kill these naturally reproducing mutated cancer cells, she was now needing outside help. Violence and poison from the outside to kill what was happening within. The body created to protect her, to give her everything she needed to live in this beautiful and at the same time threatening world, was in itself now carrying the very danger it sought to protect itself from. There was no fight or flight from this danger. Her body itself was the point of danger.
 
Cancer takes so much from us, so many small griefs inflicted along the way that it is impossible to deal with them in real time. Maybe they register in the brain in a passing moment of lament, but for the most part, when the diagnosis is as serious, and comes on with as much speed and immediacy as Kim’s did, there was no time to stop and grieve them one by one, which was probably a good thing. But all the early, little losses that cancer inflicts on life, they all accumulate over time to make a difference, to erase a comfort, erase a sense of safety and sureness you once had. Of course, these losses all pale in comparison to the existential threat that cancer presents, a fight often between life and death. Yet, all of these little losses, though not always acknowledged or put into words, are all experienced and bring with them their own lament and grief.
 
Kim lost the capacity to allow her body simply be her body, for it to move and adjust and heal itself in its usual subconscious way. She lost the safety and homeness one should be able to feel in their own skin.
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