Because of Childhood Cancer

I am making a new life.

Because of childhood cancer

I am making a new life after spending my entire youth fighting for the life that I was promised.

Because of childhood cancer

I am making a new life after my illness took my breath away.

Because of childhood cancer

I am making a new life after being told I am in remission. After being told I relapsed, after being told that again once more. After being told that although I don’t have cancer anymore, all they can do for me at this point is prolong my life.

Because of childhood cancer

I am making a new life after being robbed of the one I was promised in the beginning, the one I worked so incredibly hard for.

Because of childhood cancer

I am making a new life after missing out on almost all my high school, after losing my hair again and again, after scream crying in the mirror because my face was so swollen from the steroids, after being in 3 comas, after having intrathecal chemo in my spine, after having radiation to my brain, after a stem cell transplant, after a bone marrow transplant, after making wonderful friends, after reading their obituaries, after being too weak to cry but feeling it in my heart, nonetheless, after struggling to breathe day by day, after losing my independence and then gaining it back just to lose it again, after all the years of living under the traumatizing illusion that I have to be brave, after all the years of being afraid to the point where my fear only presents as numbness now.

Because of childhood cancer

I am making a new life.

After realizing that there will never be an after fighting for this one.

- Novie Ridley