How do I ‘holiday’ with cancer?
How do I ‘holiday’ with cancer? Discuss….
Here’s another question for us to chew on; a juxtapose from my ‘happy little home hermit’ post a couple of weeks ago nicely illustrating my wildly oscillating happy/ sad brain ….welcome to the world of cancer 🤯
I’m interested in how you holiday
You know….with the worry of being ‘away’
A Greek island sounds appealing until you feel ill and need a day in bed
Eating out taverna-style sounds delightful until stomach and bowel movements prevent anything but marmite on toast being acceptable
Go for it? Why bother? Stick to the UK? Brave the plane? (but ‘oh sh*t’ what happens if ‘oh sh*t’ actually happens on the plane 😳?)
So how do YOU holiday with cancer?
I haven’t been abroad for 2 years and 2 months
And I miss it
Beautiful hops to Devon, Cornwall, Wales and Scotland have kept me sane
But the adventure and the promise of warmth beckons
Historically
Pre cancer
I lived for our family holidays
Prided myself (in a most un humble way)
On holidays that had a sense of adventure
An edginess
Living in a very small Surrey town travelling became a mission as a family
It all began in the Lake District. The girls were 3, 5 and 7 and whilst sailing across Derwentwater we cast our eyes up to Catbells. Foz and I, with our sensible parenting heads on, decided we should climb it. The girls had crocs on, we had 4 polos (yup someone missed out) and 2 small water bottles and the dog. And it was REALLY windy. But we did it and the girls’ sense of achievement and ours was out-of-this-world.
We swiftly followed this with climbing Snowden, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis
Pioneers I thought in our ‘holidaying’ No centre Parks for us. Nope. No Nielsen package deals. Nope
No hotels even (have since realised ALL these things have a place 🤣, I mean really, get over yourself Helen)
Then to the Australian Outback: trekking, stars, campfires, dingoes, eating weird things, and wild swimming
Morocco: trekking in the mountains, sleeping on villagers floors, tagines galore, sand surfing in the Sahara, sight of Rosie on a mule climbing mountains, sensory overload of the ‘old quarter’, edgy and unplanned, wildly exciting, the people we met
Sri Lanka: temples and the untamed East coast, tea plantations, diving, turtles and sharks, lost at sea, the people we met
Thailand: beaches, long boats, temples, kayaking, the food, the elephants, the home stays, the people we met
High adventure and unchartered terrain was our Fozzy Family holiday USP
Experiencing the ‘new’ together
Testing our resolve at times
But oh so many magical memories made (Rosie was so young she annoyingly says she can’t remember most of them - the experiences will have seeped into your soul my Ro)
But here we are now
Living with cancer
Holidaying looks different
And it’s mentally hard to reframe
So grateful we didn’t ‘wait’ to travel till they were older
But I’m only 50
There is still the African Safari, Katmandu, Norway, Tibet, Canada……
Or is there?
I’ve reframed my life in so many areas
And have a perspective that has enabled me to let go of so many things or just do them differently, to take up new things
Working out gently what my new ‘truth’ is
BUT this travelling question stings
I’ll get there
I know I will
The answer will unfold
Just wondering how you guys do it?⭐️
Love from, the Happy little Home Hermit ….still with a travelling soul 🤗