It's a common question in our culture to ask what is next. Especially when you move through a big life event. Part of my overachieving and people pleasing make-up a feeling of anxiety sits.

I don’t know how to put this other than cancer is my clean slate. Showing me my life hasn’t been on hold. In fact, it is beautifully creating something new.

I have felt this in my body before and it is unsettling. Everything around me doesn’t seem real. I feel like molasses in a parallel universe of observation.

When I first found out about the cancer, and the statistics about my diagnosis, I saw images of a memorial service for me. It became a reality and put me at the forefront of reflecting on my own mortality.

There are things they tell you to expect when it comes to all of this and the different types of symptoms that show up. But I truly don’t know how I will wake up feeling. It becomes a game of symptom roulette.

In my quest to remove you, I sacrifice my body to you. All I knew about my body will be stripped away. I know it won’t be mine, and perhaps it never was. I thought I knew, but honestly I don’t.

I read somewhere that some of us are destined for more challenges in our lives. It was the life path we chose. Choice or not, it can be hard to see the perspective in it all.

Vulnerability is this raw exposé that opens you up in a way where it feels as if your insides are out for all to see. Like you are showing your cards before the hand is called.

I can’t fully understand the worry in people’s eyes when they ask me how I am doing. Because I know I am not my physical body. Yes, it is this vessel that so beautifully moves me through the world, and keeps me safe in a lot of ways. But, it is not what defines me.

I am trying not to touch my head because every time I do, hair gets caught in my fingers. If I make a full sweep of my head, hairs seem to naturally be drawn to my hands. Where I don’t feel scared of it, it is unsettling to so easily pull hair out.

This whole concept of vanity has been sitting with me as of late especially as I start to move into the process of letting go of my hair. My hair has always been an identifier for me. It’s how I imagine people describe me, “you know, Kim, tall and skinny with brown curly hair.”

The unknown is so unsettling. Especially when it comes to putting my trust in others to care for me. The idea of submitting to the process and giving up the need to control it. Because frankly, what is happening inside my body, happened without my control

Realizing for the next 9 months of my life, my body will no longer be my own. It will be at the mercy of my medical team in collaboration of how to treat the cancer. Feeling the lump in my right breast, it feels almost foreign. Like I know it is all there, yet I am separate from it in some way.

The first week of May of this year I woke up from a deep sleep and felt a tingle in my right breast. My hand instinctively moved to where I felt the twinge and there was a small lump. And something in me knew my life was about to change.