Radiation Therapy: Embracing Raw Emotions and Healing

September 1, 2025, A Journal Reflection

Thirteen days of radiation in a row… with 3 left to go. At this stage of cancer treatment, I feel different, I feel as if I’m walking through fire with tenderness instead of armor now. Does that say something about the shift of courage, of surrender?

This shift from the hardness of chemo to the emotional rawness of radiation. It feels powerful, in a sense I suppose, yet there is a different kind of vulnerability that I’m experiencing.

Chemotherapy, provoked a hardness and resistance from me. Radiation is different. It’s slower. Steady. Like sunlight and exposure. It seems to burn away not only cells but layers of protection. And what remains, what’s left in me is a tenderness that’s sacred, beautifully undone.

The question, “What is this that stands before me?, now feels less like a philosophical pondering and more like a living, breathing heartache. The ache of uncertainty. Of feeling fragile in the face of my own life. Of realizing that even good news doesn’t come with a road map. Only a mirror.

Below is a journal reflection that I thought I’d share in the Yoga thru Cancer Series.

Journal Reflection
Day 13 of 16: Radiation

Radiation doesn’t flatten or wipe me out me like the chemotherapy did. It doesn’t make me feel invaded. It makes me feel… raw, exposed. Not just in the skin, although there is a bit of that with daily breast exposure and the touch of a strangers hands, but mostly I feel exposed in the soul. Something about this treatment leaves me tender. Unarmored. It makes the question echo louder.

What is this that stands before me?
And maybe more haunting…What is this that remains within me?

Ozzy screamed it into the dark, confronting a demon “with eyes of fire”
I whisper it into the light, asking Life. This Life.
With its brilliance and heaviness. Its absurdities and its rhythms, its fuckery and its beauty, It’s grief and rebellion. It’s mystery and breath.
What is this life that still stands before me?

I’ve been given a good outcome. A solid prognosis. People say, “You must be so relieved.” And I am.

But also, I am cracked open. Wide open, exposed, raw and alive.

Suddenly life feels more fragile than ever. Like a butterfly in my hands. Like something that could disappear before I understand what it is that stands before me. Life, It feels shorter than I remember it to ever be. Mysterious. Sacred in a way I haven’t known before.

During chemo, I felt fierce. Defiant.
Now, I feel soft. Lost. Wide open. Exposed. Raw and Running on borrowed time.
Not in despair, so not in despair, but in some deeper field of my own existence. A field without signs or direction. A place where navigation doesn’t reach… only those of trust, grace, lessons, and experiences learned lead the way.

And maybe, just maybe it’s the raw tenderness of my soul that is actually the light of the path now.