5 Years - And Greatful…
Five years ago today, my life split into a “before” and an “after.”
Glioblastoma.
Three syllables that tore through the future I thought I had.
In an instant, normal plans became questions:
Would I see the end of the year?
Would I watch my boys start high school?
Would I grow old at all?
No one understands the weight of that word until it’s sitting in their own brain scan. These five years have held some of the hardest moments of my life.
There has been fear—of scans, of symptoms, of the moment something changes. Fear of leaving my boys too soon, of not being there for all the things I still want to teach them, all the ways I still want to love them.
You don’t get used to that kind of uncertainty. You just learn to carry it.
There has been loneliness too.
This diagnosis builds a wall not everyone can climb. Some people drifted away quietly. Others left loudly. I’ve grieved people who are still alive but no longer here in the ways I needed. I’ve learned not everyone is built for the long haul. One of the deepest losses was my marriage. When I was diagnosed, I thought I knew who would stand beside me. I thought we would face the fear together.
We didn’t.
Losing a relationship while facing a life-limiting illness is a different kind of grief. I wasn’t only mourning what cancer might take—I was mourning the life we had planned. Some days, that loss felt as heavy as anything happening in a hospital.
That chapter closes for good this month.
It’s not the ending I would have chosen. But neither was a brain tumour.
What these five years have taught me is this: life doesn’t ask permission before it changes. All we can do is grieve what’s lost, honour what was good, and keep moving forward carrying both.
And somehow, I did.
I showed up—to appointments, to treatments, to ordinary days. I learned to hold terrifying information and still pack school lunches. Being strong isn’t about being unafraid. It’s about being terrified and doing the next thing anyway. There were days getting out of bed was the win. And days I managed work, parenting, and medical chaos like a quiet kind of survival no one saw.
Along the way, there were people who mattered.
Medical teams who treated me as more than a tumour. Friends who stayed. People who showed up—with meals, messages, lifts, and care. The ones who didn’t disappear when things got hard.
And then there are my boys.
In these five years, I’ve watched them grow into themselves—their humour, their interests, their kindness. We’ve had trips, ordinary nights, arguments, laughter.
Those ordinary moments are everything.
Every eye-roll, every cuddle, every shared joke is time I wasn’t promised.
I’ve lived with a kind of double vision: one eye on the present, one on the shadow of what might come.
GBM is ruthless.
The statistics are not kind.
And yet—here I am. Five years on.
It doesn’t erase the fear. It doesn’t promise tomorrow. But it matters.
This isn’t just about survival.
It’s about what survival has required.
Courage when I wanted to stop.
Grief for the life I thought I’d have.
The end of a relationship I believed would last.
Rage at the unfairness of it all.
Gratitude for stable scans.
And the stubborn decision, again and again, to keep living.
Five years of fear, hope, grief, heartbreak, and resilience.
Five years of learning that life can be both fragile and beautiful at the same time.
I don’t celebrate this because I’ve beaten something. Glioblastoma doesn’t allow that kind of certainty.
I celebrate it because I am here.
Here to watch my boys grow.
Here for ordinary mornings and loud laughter.
Here for the people who stayed.
Cancer took away the illusion that tomorrow is promised. But it sharpened my appreciation for today.
A good scan matters.
An ordinary day matters.
Love, in all its small moments, matters.
I don’t know what the next five years will bring.
But I know this has asked more of me than I thought I could give. It has taken things I wasn’t ready to lose. It has broken my heart more than once.
And it has shown me strength, love, and connection I might never have known otherwise.
Today, I am grateful.
Grateful for the people beside me.
Grateful for the care that got me here.
Grateful for the memories made—and still to come.
Most of all, grateful for time.
Five years ago, I didn’t know if I’d have it.
Today, I do.
And that is everything.