I feel like surviving cancer or living with cancer comes with some unwritten conditions and expectations. If I am to survive cancer I must never not be grateful for every... single... day. If I am to be granted a long life with cancer I must never not love my body. This is bullshit. And it plays into how honest cancer patients feel they can be about the realities of the disease. It doesn’t give space for the shit days, it makes us “fight” when all we want to say is “enough”. It creates annoying terms like “warrior” and it erodes a persons truths. Why am I saying all this? Well, this photo has been brought back into my consciousness (thanks @landandwater_ 😉) and the reason I didn’t share it when it was taken (last summer) is because I didn’t like how my body looked. When I re-shared a post from Land & Water the other day on my stories, that used this photo, a few of you told me how stunning it was. It made me look at it again, properly. My body changes constantly because of different treatments and so does my love for it. When I first saw this picture last year I didn’t like it. Sometimes it takes other people to show you what you can not see yourself. Sometimes it just takes time. I can be grateful to not be dead and still not love my body and how it looks every day. The great thing about us humans is that our thoughts and feelings about things can change, so I can hold on to the belief that I won’t always feel the way I do in that moment. Ultimately, there are no rules to surviving cancer or any sort of turd. In fact cancer likes to make up the rules as it goes along so WE CAN TOO. 📷 the photo was taken by @dannynorthphoto for @landandwater_ . I loved this shoot and I love Danny and today I love my body. Tomorrow I might not like my body and I might think danny is a knob.