One of the deepest lessons on my cancer journey has been this: Life isn’t here to give you what you want. It’s giving you what you need to wake up.

At first, that truth hit like a betrayal. I didn’t want cancer. I didn’t want to lose Marilisa. I didn’t want to feel the pain, fear, and disorientation that came with all of it. But the further I’ve walked this path, the more I’ve seen—life is not working against me. It’s working with me. It’s just not playing by the rules I thought I got to set.

I used to try to control life. Bargain with it. If I do all the right things, I’ll get the outcomes I want, right? But I’ve realized real trust isn’t about believing life will deliver my desires. It’s about knowing I will be there for myself no matter what life brings. That’s the trust that matters.

Instead of demanding certainty, I’ve started to meet life on its own terms. That’s when things started to soften. That’s when I could actually let love in again. When I stopped fighting the reality of my diagnosis and the loss of Marilisa, I found something unexpected—I started to love them. Not in a romanticized or resigned way, but like loving a child. Tenderly. Fiercely. Without needing to change it.

This kind of love—of what is—opened something in me. A new kind of strength. A new kind of softness. I’m learning to trust the resilience of who I’m becoming, not the outcome of my story.

To support this new phase, I’ll be taking two weeks at a wellness retreat—just me, myself, and the intention to go inward. No adventures to check off a list. This time, the exploration will be internal. I’ll be detoxing, eating clean, practicing meditation (consistently, I hope), resting, listening, and being in nature. I’ve never done this before, and honestly, it feels a little scary to be this still. But I also feel ready.

I’ll share how it all goes once I return. For now, I want to leave you with this:

Life won’t always give you what you want. But it will always give you what you need to wake up. Trust that. And trust that you—not the outcomes, not the circumstances—are the one you can count on. Always.

Here’s to meeting life as it is, and trusting who we’re becoming.