I Cried in the Shower So Nobody Would Hear Me

On carrying your mother's cancer diagnosis when you have already used up everything you had.

When the call came I was in shock.

Not the kind of shock that makes you go quiet. The kind that makes your whole body ask the same question on a loop, how can this be happening. This happens to other people. This does not happen to us. This does not happen now. Not after Josi. Not with my father-in-law already dying. Not now. Not my mom.

How long do we have to figure this out.

That was the first thought. Not what do we do. Not where do we start. Just, how much time do we have, and is it enough.

 I Put Everything Else Down and Picked Her Up

Whatever I had been carrying, the grief for Josi, the grief for my father-in-law, the fog I had been living in, all of it got pushed aside. There was no room for it anymore. There was only my mom, and what came next, and making sure I was the person she needed me to be.

I saw the fear in her eyes. Real fear. The kind she couldn't contain and couldn't hide, and that I had never seen in her before. My mom is the woman everyone turns to. The founder of Kindertown. The person who built something from nothing and held our entire family together while doing it. She is not someone who shows fear.

She showed it then. And I tried everything I had not to show her mine.

I shut down everything I was feeling and made getting her better the only thing that mattered. It was the only way I knew how to cope.

My husband was at his father's bedside. His dad would be gone by February, the day after my son's birthday. I believe he waited. I believe he held on just long enough. And husband was there, holding that, while I was here holding this.

My brothers were emotionally shut down. Dealing with the news the only way they knew how, which meant I couldn't reach them either.

I had no one.

 I Wrote Messages to Josi Knowing She Wouldn't Answer

At night, when the house was quiet and I had nowhere left to put any of it, I would lie beside my three year old as he fell asleep and I would fall apart in the dark. I cried in the shower so nobody would hear me. And I wrote messages to Josi.

I told her my fears. I told her how scared I was. I told her how much I needed her. I knew she wasn't going to answer. I knew that. But she was still the only person I wanted to tell, and writing to her was the closest thing I had to being heard.

There is a particular kind of alone that comes when you lose your person and then life hands you something that would have been exactly what you needed her for.

During the day I showed up to work. I went through the motions. I pretended I was present when I was somewhere completely else. Nobody needed to know. Nobody could know. Because if I let it show, it would become real in a way I wasn't ready for.

So I kept it contained. And I kept moving.

 Her Refusal Became My Direction

My mom had her own kind of clarity in the middle of all of it. She refused to lose her breast. She was not willing to accept the conventional path without exploring everything else first. That refusal was not fear, it was conviction. She knew what she was and was not willing to do, and she held that line even when it would have been easier to let someone else make the decisions.

Her certainty gave me somewhere to put my energy.

I went on a mission. Appointment after appointment. Test after test. Every possible solution, every doctor, every method and remedy and protocol I could find. I researched until I understood things I had never thought to understand before. We found people who spoke about the body differently, about what it carries, about what that carrying does, about how healing actually works when you stop fighting the body and start trusting it.

With every ultrasound and test result that showed it was working, something in me shifted.

The fear was still there. The question I couldn't silence , was I leading her to her own death, was the trust she had placed in me more than I had earned, that didn't disappear. But the evidence kept coming. And my mother kept showing up for every single thing we asked of her, without complaint, without wavering, with a discipline I have never seen matched.

Her strength fuelled mine. And somewhere in that year I stopped performing strength and started actually having it.

 She Kicked Cancer's Ass. On Her Own Terms.

One year later, my mother is cancer free.

Not just surviving. Healthier, happier, and more fully herself than she has ever been. She did it without losing what she refused to lose. She did it by trusting her body, doing the work, and never once letting doubt become the loudest voice in the room.

She is a champion. I knew that before. I understand it differently now.

And I understand something about myself that year cracked open, that the strength I thought I was faking was always real. I just hadn't been pushed far enough to find it yet.

I also learned that what we carry emotionally does not stay separate from what our bodies do. That grief and fear and suppression are not just feelings, they go somewhere. Understanding that changed how I see everything. It changed how I work. It is part of what Veracia is built on.

If you are the one holding it together right now, crying where nobody can hear you, writing messages to people who can't answer, showing up to your life while quietly falling apart inside it.

I see you. I have been exactly there.

You do not have to be okay. You just have to keep going.

The strength catches up. I promise you it does.

Written by Angela Valeri | Founder, Veracia Life Coaching

If you are carrying something with no room to put it down, Veracia works with women who are ready to understand what they are holding — not manage it, understand it.