I didn’t notice it was gone until it was gone.
That’s the thing about emotional weight. You carry it so long it starts to feel like part of you. Like if you put it down, something would be missing. You get used to the resistance. You mistake it for strength.
Earlier this year I was deep in it. Things were getting better by most measures — I was healthy, I was building, I was showing up. But there was still this weight underneath everything. Like a low hum you stop noticing because it never stops.
Cancer does that to you. Not just during treatment. After. Long after the scans come back clean and people stop asking how you’re doing. The weight doesn’t follow the timeline of recovery. Nobody tells you that part.
And then this week — sitting down to do my daily ritual, doing what I always do — I wrote something that surprised me: “I’m no longer carrying the emotional weight I was earlier this year. It got to be so heavy even when things were getting better it was still there. It’s finally clear and I’m so grateful that it’s gone.”
I had to read it back twice.
Gone.
Not managed. Not handled. Not white-knuckled into submission. Actually gone.
I want to tell you what I did to make that happen, but honestly I can’t point to one thing. I kept moving. I played tennis. I showed up to work. I did the ritual. I built things. I stayed in relationship with the people I care about. I let good weeks be good weeks without waiting for the bottom to drop out.
I went to watch my sister play tennis this weekend and somehow ended up as the team’s unofficial coach — until they literally came over and told me to stop coaching from the sidelines 😂 I popped champagne in the parking lot. I felt like I had value. Not because I earned it or forced it. Just because I showed up and was myself.
That’s what the weight had been stealing from me. Not my function — I was still functional. Not my output — I was still producing. It was stealing the lightness. The ease. The ability to just be in a moment without that hum underneath it.
You might be in the hum right now. The diagnosis is behind you but the fear isn’t. The relationship ended but the grief still shows up uninvited. The job changed but the identity loss didn’t get the memo. You’re doing the work and it’s still heavy and you’re starting to wonder if this is just who you are now.
It’s not.
The weight doesn’t lift on a schedule. You don’t get to plan it or force it. But it does lift — if you stay in the systems, stay in the movement, stay connected to the people who pull it out of you.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to feel light to keep moving. Move anyway. The lightness follows.
Just. Keep. Moving.