4- I Don't Feel Brave

I've spent my whole life hearing the same thing: how brave you are.

And I've never fully believed it.

My therapist asked me recently: "What does being brave mean to you?" And the image that came to mind was a warrior who, facing danger and injustice, throws herself alone, sword in hand, into killing monsters, and survives.

That image doesn't match how I see myself. There's no epic music, no woman gazing at the horizon knowing exactly what she's doing.

There's survival. There's a there-was-no-other-option. There's, if I'm honest, more fear of the uncertainty of when the monsters will come than any desire to go out looking for them myself. I think that's my real motivation for facing things the way I do: not a raised sword, but not knowing what else to do besides staying on my feet. And probably not just for the photo either: I wouldn't last a second holding up a sword forged in iron, unless it was made of cardboard.

That word touches something in me, though. It bothers me a little, and for a long time I didn't quite know why. I think I'm starting to understand: when someone tells me "how brave you are," part of me hears, without anyone actually saying it, something like "you can handle this," "you can always handle it," "you don't need anything from me." An old, familiar idea shows up there: that "brave" can be a way of keeping distance. That maybe my circumstances, at a given moment, are too much for other people, and that's why, whatever it is, I have to solve it on my own. That asking for help would be asking too much of someone.

That's what stays with me every time someone calls me brave: not the word itself, but what it might be hiding, on both sides.

Needing, Missing, and a Different Kind of Loneliness

I ask myself something, more and more often now, as the surgery gets closer: who do I really need, and who do I miss without needing them? I think it's the same underlying question of this whole post, just disguised differently.

Having survived a lot of things doesn't mean I'm not afraid. Knowing how to hold myself up doesn't mean I don't want someone close by, or to be asked if I want help. Being able to do it alone doesn't mean I'd rather do it alone.

When I ask myself that question of who I need, the answer is this: I'm going to need my friends, my family, my community. This process has been showing me that for weeks now: they're the ones who have held me up. I haven't needed a partner.

But, if I'm completely honest, I have missed one, in scattered moments. Which is different, I think. I can do it alone. And still, I miss it: the company of someone who's there, without taking it for granted, but without having to ask for it every time.

The nuance becomes clearer to me all the time: missing isn't the same as needing. The line can be confusing, very thin, but it's there. And yet, it is a different kind of loneliness.

A kind of being alone I didn't know.

I feel at peace, I feel comfortable, within the range of what's possible.

Every day that passes without the hospital calling, on one hand I breathe with relief. But on the other, I want to get this out of me as soon as possible.

This wait, even so, is letting me see such beautiful things, feel such new things, that I don't know how else to put it: it's showing me how loved I am, how much I love the people who are showing me their affection, their support, their love. At the same time, it's teaching me to hold myself up, to let go of so many things I thought were impossible to let go of.

I trust that my mind, my spirit, and the love I'm receiving, are going to help me get through this in the best way possible.

I realize this distinction matters to me right now, in this stage I'm entering. There are going to be moments when I'm going to NEED, in capital letters, and others when I'm just going to miss. I need to keep clarifying for myself which is which, because I know both are going to show up, and I'm going to have to say them out loud.

What I will say is that "needing" becomes, for me, a small mental trap. That's where the fear shows up: that they'll get tired, that they'll stop wanting to be there.

That's the same shadow that follows me all the way to my recovery.

What Keeps Turning Over in My Mind About Recovery

Thinking about after the surgery, the pain and discomfort terrify me. I'm not going to pretend I'm heroic about pain: I know I'm not. But that's not what scares me most. I'm not even that scared of depending on others physically. I think it's something older: needing something, and seeing in someone's face that what I needed was too much for that person.

My therapist told me something recently that landed deep: "It's not going to be a walk in the park, your recovery, Andrea. Nobody's going to have a great time. And it's not your job, it doesn't depend on you, whether the people who come to take care of you are comfortable, or have a good time."

And she's right. It's going to hurt even to go to the bathroom. I'm going to feel like a rag. It's going to be uncomfortable, both for me and for whoever takes care of me, because nobody likes seeing someone they love in pain, or unwell.

There's a part of me that wants to help, the one that makes the coffee or the tea, that doesn't want to be a problem, that wants people to be held up by me more than I am by them. A fun, kind, calm part, even now, right before an operation that's going to hurt, that's going to make me depend on someone for at least a few weeks. That part is horrified by that image.

I'll have to learn to let the people who come to take care of me be, feel, whatever they need to feel. This time it's my turn to worry only about myself.

Those are words that are hard for me to write, even now.

From there comes a question I still don't fully know how to answer: can I be sick without, at the same time, making sure everyone is comfortable with my illness? If someone is sad, they're sad. If someone needs to rest, they need to rest.

If someone has less capacity on a given day, they'll have less capacity. Maybe it doesn't have to do with me. And if it does, I'm going to have to learn to let it be, and let them work it out themselves.

This part is very old, I've carried it with me for as long as I can remember. It's just that now it's become a lot more visible, and I can see the weight it creates in me, and how bothersome it can be for the people close to me.

Damn it, my homework is piling up! And I'll tell you one thing: I do not want to repeat this course!

Control, and What I Can't Predict

It's another thing to let go of. What we let go of, mostly, is what we can't change. In this case it's control, or rather, the need to control what's going to happen: predictability, that feeling, often false, of knowing what's coming.

I realize this is the underlying theme of this whole process, disguised differently each time.

For example: my self-sufficiency was never just independence. I think sometimes it was also a way of knowing what to expect. If I do it myself, I know what's going to happen. If I depend on someone else, uncertainty creeps in: will they come tomorrow? Will they still want to come next week? Will they get tired? Will they change their mind?

I wonder if it isn't so much the care itself that's hard for me to receive, but the uncertainty that comes with it. This is clearly something I'm still processing to this day, because it's not new. It comes from past experiences, and some fairly recent ones, that my body is still digesting.

Even though I feel like I've been letting go of a lot of control, I still catch myself here: they're only going to give me five to seven days' notice before the surgery. So every day that passes without the hospital calling, I feel like I have one more day to get things organized at home, bills, letters. My list is already longer than my weekly grocery list.

Even the Nicest Tools

After years of therapy, of reading, of accompanying other people, I notice that sometimes another demand shows up, quieter than the others: "you should already know this, and be fine. You should have already learned to deal with this."

I think in my case there's an extra layer to it, one that has to do with being a therapist. I've spent years helping other people name exactly these things: the parts that judge, the parts that need, letting go, acceptance. I know the map by heart. That same familiarity, instead of helping me, sometimes turns against me: if I know all this, if I accompany others through it, why does it still get to me? Why am I still here, with this same question going in circles?

I learned the language of this whole line of work, and I use it every week with my clients. We talk about accepting, about letting go, about having compassion. And I wonder if sometimes I use that very same vocabulary, the one I use to hold others up, to tell myself, without realizing it, "still on this? You should know how this works."

I don't think this has to do with my abilities as a therapist, or with the kind of therapy I do. I see the results, people tell me, I feel it. I've learned to trust that I do good work. But what's becoming clearer to me is that even the nicest tools, the best ones, can turn against me if I don't take care of myself. That's where practicing what I preach comes in: I catch myself, when I'm not paying attention, getting carried away by those parts, those inner voices, that criticize with impatience. Maybe that's what I'm learning: that being the one who accompanies doesn't exempt me from needing to be accompanied too.

Sometimes I find myself talking to the universe as if it were another part of myself, trusting the process, trusting that nothing happens for no reason.

In Compassionate Inquiry, Gabor Maté talks about parts, sometimes, as if they were a bit clumsy friends: well-meaning, but not always right. For me, in this case, one of those parts is the universe. For others, it would be God. There I find myself negotiating: "Okay, you've got me where you wanted me. Now I need another week to get a little more organized, before you knock me out. So please, ask the gods, the stars, to give the lessons to someone else for a while, please."

Luckily, I have really good people around me in these inquiries, like my therapist, or my friends. They help me see, and they question me, the same way I question my clients. This, I think, is an inner work that never ends for anyone.

Not Everything Is a Magical Discovery

Since I was given this cancer diagnosis, I haven't stopped being surprised by all the beautiful things that keep showing up: the love, the affection, the support, the discoveries about myself, my own reactions, which have often been better than I expected.

Here goes something I keep repeating: one thing doesn't cancel out the other. On one hand, I'm intrigued, and somehow surprised, by all of it. On the other, there also has to be room for the fear and the anger, which come loaded with different layers, different experiences, different people.

I feel it in my body, and that bothers me. I want it out. I calm it with words and self-regulation exercises. And even so, it's still there. It won't leave.

The work is in letting it be, and in finding some way to release it. I'm still exploring those ways, and I'm not going to share them here. But I can say that they're very present lately, and that this same exercise makes me uncomfortable. And even so, I need, or want, to face it head-on before the surgery.

I think the surgery has become a new starting point. I need to get my affairs in order with myself, at least, and with the rest of my loved ones if possible. It sounds dramatic, but I think it's the end of a cycle. It feels like the end of many things, and the beginning of many others I still don't know, and clearly don't control.

What if I get worse after the surgery, and the last thing I did was get angry? What if the last memory people have of me is being angry, instead of everything else that always mattered more to me?

I don't know. These are reflections that aren't going anywhere yet. I just want to share that not everything is a "magical discovery," which is what I started calling all the beautiful things that keep appearing.

I Don't Know How Much Is Too Much for You

I'm not writing this because I have no filters. I'm writing trying to speak from where I am.

I know there will be those who think this is too intimate. Others will think it's brave. Some will feel uncomfortable. Others will cry without telling me.

I still don't know what my goal, or my role, is in all of this. Maybe it's simply to keep asking myself whether what I write is true for me, and to let each person do with these words whatever they can. Either way, whatever comes up, or doesn't, in each of you, is welcome. And if you want to share it with me, that's welcome too.

—

🎵 "Todo cambia" ("Everything Changes"), sung by Mercedes Sosa. [Paste your YouTube or Spotify link to the song here]

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In case you'd like to support me financially on this journey, I'm leaving a link below.

By bank transfer; 

Name: AP Porcelli Battilana

IBAN: NL75INGB0654822875

Swift/BIC: INGBNL2A

WISE: @andreap1845

REVOLUT: @andreaporcelli