Elephants and Tea - December 2023 - 1

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Conversation
Rediscovery Is a Process
A
JOIN THE
CONVERSATION
s I move further into survivorship, it baffles me how my perspective on what it means
to be a survivor has evolved over the years.
By the time this issue is released, it will be five years since I finished treatment,
which simultaneously feels like it was yesterday and a lifetime ago.
Writing was a huge part of processing my cancer. I journaled throughout treatment
and began writing for Elephants and Tea in survivorship. My relationship
with writing and storytelling was strengthened by my diagnosis, which can be
hard to accept. I still find myself not wanting to credit cancer for any of the positive
things in my life. It's hard for me to take a step back and trust that there is purpose in the different
things that happen in my life, cancer-related or not.
For me, rediscovering myself after cancer has been a process over the past five years. I've learned a
lot about myself and about the world. There have been times of anger, times of disconnection, times of
frustration, times of gratitude, and times of community.
I struggle to put into words what rediscovering myself after cancer has truly looked like. It felt so much
harder and nearly impossible in the first few years after my diagnosis. I didn't know how I would feel at
home in my body again or trust the universe to send positive things my way after such a jarring diagnosis.
And now, five years later, I can't really tell you how I made it through that. I don't know when or how it
truly got so much easier. All I know is that it did. It took a lot of processing and a lot of writing-words
that I've shared with the world and words that will forever only live in my journals.
I'm incredibly bad at stopping and giving myself credit for my accomplishments. Sitting here, writing
this, I don't know how I made it to this place, but I'm so very grateful to be here. I have put in so much
work to process and rediscover things about myself, and while my work may not be done, here I am
today, seeing the fruit of that work.
The survivors, patients, and caregivers who have written in this issue share their stories of finding hope,
shifting identity, mixed emotions, and their changing bodies. These stories serve as a reminder that we
deserve to acknowledge our frustration with cancer, just as much as we are to embrace hope despite or
even because of our circumstances.
Regardless of where you are in your cancer experience, you deserve to find your identity again. To
process what you've been through and continue to go through. Of being gentle with yourself during such
a difficult time in life. Of finding glimmers of joy throughout the hard and the messy.
Rediscovering yourself after a cancer diagnosis sounds like a big undertaking, and whether you realize
it or not, you're already doing it. You continue to move forward, one step at a time. I hope these stories
give you peace and validation in the midst of your own rediscovery.
Holding onto hope for us all,
Rachel
RACHEL MIHALKO
IS THE DIRECTOR
OF CONTENT AT
ELEPHANTS AND TEA
AND IS A HODGKIN'S
LYMPHOMA SURVIVOR.
SHE TREASURES
SHARING HER
REFLECTIONS WITH
THE COMMUNITY,
ESPECIALLY BECAUSE
WRITING BRINGS HER
PEACE AND CLARITY.
SHE LOVES THEATER,
WRITING POETRY,
AND CRAFTING OF ALL
SORTS. READING HAS
FUELED HER PASSION
FOR WRITING, AND
YOU WILL RARELY
FIND HER WITHOUT A
BOOK ON HAND.
IF YOU WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUBMIT A STORY TO BE PUBLISHED IN
ELEPHANTS AND TEA, PLEASE CONTACT RACHEL@ELEPHANTSANDTEA.COM.
ELEPHANTSANDTEA.COM
DECEMBER 2023
1

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Elephants and Tea - December 2023

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