C is for Cancer
Yesterday I told almost 500 people that I had recovered from cancer. Most of them had no idea I’d had it in the first place.
How did this come about? Recently one of my former clients asked if she could interview me for her (awesome) newsletter WellWatching, an exploration of what it means to live well, and how society and industry can better support people’s wellbeing in future that she has set up to lay some foundations for the next phase of her own so-called career. Among my views on how we work, and why that is changing, I talked about how my personal experience of the last 15 months has changed how I work. In doing so, I was sharing something that the vast majority of my career community didn’t know, because I had, up until that point, chosen not to share it.
In asking people to read and share the interview without explanation, I felt like I was slipping something huge under the radar and doing myself a disservice in the process. So here it is...
Just over a year ago, after 6 months of tests and monitoring, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer, which had begun to spread. Within a couple of weeks which passed in a blur of tests and scans and tearful phone calls, I was undergoing an intensive regime of chemo and radiotherapy right in the middle of lockdown, and which, in one way or another, took up pretty much everything I had to give for the rest of the year.
It's been what I can only describe as a massive shitter, but I am delighted to be able to say that I have come out of lockdown cancer free, having been in remission since Christmas, but that experience is an indelible part of my story now, and has fundamentally informed how I chose to live and work as the world opens up and presents me with choices again.
One key realisation for me, is that despite having considered my work/life balance to be quite healthy since setting up my own business, there was definitely room for improvement. I treated my diary a bit like the stuff sack for a sleeping bag - there was always a bit of wiggle room if you squished down hard enough. I was pretty much always halfway to the next thing even when I told myself I was present, and while I was working with clients to help them find balance and build sustainable relationships with work, I was slowly but surely doing the opposite myself.
Coming out of lockdown I have made some commitments to myself which I intend to abide by.
No more rushing around like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.
No more making space for others by squishing myself down to the bottom of the sack.
Living well for me means living and working with both passion and responsibility, and while my work and this awesome business is my passion, my primary responsibility is to myself and my health as without one, there is no other.
I am far from the only one who has come through lock down with a story they are struggling to tell or an experience that may not be apparent, so as we open up over the coming months, please don’t assume you know someone’s lock down story based on what you see or assume.
Let’s make space for us all to be the version of us we are now, in all our imperfect glory and tell our stories in our own way and our own time.
This was the right time to tell mine.
Enjoy the sunshine, read the interview, and take care.
Penny.
About the author
Penelope Jones is the founder of My So-Called Career. She is a career coach and consultant who specialises in helping women in their 30s beat burnout and develop healthy, sustainable relationships with work.
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