Embracing Slow Living & A Season of Rest When You Have Cancer
I woke early, as I often do now, a restless quiet settling around me in place of sleep. The valley outside my window remains unchanged: still mountains, still sky, stillness itself, and I have grown accustomed to meeting it each morning with something that might be acceptance but feels closer to resignation. Cancer teaches you resignation, but it is a resignation edged with a tender relief. The relief of simplicity, of fewer decisions, fewer obligations, fewer possibilities to disappoint myself.
The kettle whispers steam into the chill of my kitchen. Tea has become a deliberate act rather than a mere habit. Watching the water boil, steeping herbs I've come to rely upon—rituals now imbued with significance because everything slows when the prospect of ending speeds forward. I am learning what it means to savor.
Slow living was never something I embraced by choice. Busyness was a badge, worn proudly, proof of my worth, evidence of a life well-lived, or at least vigorously pursued. There was prestige in exhaustion, a currency in saying, "I simply haven't had the time." Cancer, ruthless teacher that it is, strips away those illusions mercilessly, until all that's left is clarity—painful, blinding clarity.
The bath, a warm sanctuary in an otherwise harsh reality, envelops me each evening. Water swirls gently around my limbs, carrying away worries and offering a quiet reprieve. I watch the reflections ripple across pale skin, shadows and light mixing softly—moments of strange, unexpected beauty amid the stark, sterile landscape of medical terminology and appointments penciled into calendars with hopeful caution.
I moved to Swan Valley for quiet, believing perhaps that silence could heal or at least temper what doctors quietly and diplomatically refer to as my prognosis. Swan Valley, population 204, does not disappoint. Here, isolation is the norm, solitude not merely an indulgence but a condition of existence. In its emptiness, I discovered fullness—the gentle presence of absence, the profundity of nothingness.
Visitors come less frequently now, relationships distilled into their most potent essence: who stays, who goes, who becomes unbearable in their discomfort, unable to sit silently beside uncertainty. I welcome the thinning of my world, seeing clearly those who love without condition, who do not demand comfort or predictability from me.
Slow living when cancer is your companion means surrendering to cycles of energy and exhaustion. I write when strength comes, pause when it departs. I no longer fight my body's quiet insistence on rest, having learned to hear its whispers before they become screams. Each moment of stillness, each surrender to rest, feels less like defeat and more like gentle triumph. Quiet victories, unnoticed by anyone but me.
In this new slowness, amid the vast openness of Idaho, I find myself grateful—not in spite of cancer, but because of it. It has taught me things that frantic years could not: patience, humility, the strange and exquisite pain of clarity. Cancer invites rest, commands presence, and in doing so, reveals a depth to life previously uncharted, profound enough to hold both grief and joy simultaneously.
My tea cools quietly beside me, a tiny cloud of steam dissipating into nothing, a simple reminder of impermanence, of fragility. I lift the cup, sip slowly, tasting each moment, learning finally how sweet it is to savor.
If you feel shame in slowing down, know this: rest is not a concession to weakness, but an act of profound courage. Embracing stillness is not failing—it's healing. It’s reclaiming dignity in your quiet moments, giving yourself the grace your body asks for, and discovering a strength that thrives quietly beneath the surface.
A blog post by Rachel Smak on grief, loss, and lessons from stage 3C rectal cancer
