D-Day, the Anniversary Effect, and Reclaiming Identity in the Face of Disease
There’s this duality in the chronic illness world where we either have to celebrate the day we received a life-altering diagnosis or pretend like nothing ever happened. There’s this unwritten expectation that we feel grateful or nothing at all.
It’s a very disjointing and disintegrating reality.
And as I approach multiple D-Days this month and throughout the summer, I find myself diametrically opposed to this reality.
See, our bodies carry two calendars – the physical one that tracks time and the emotional one that stores experiences.
Experiences like being diagnosed with a life-long, incurable illness.
Our psyche records significant emotional moments, good and bad. It serves a physical purpose – to train our survival responses – and a spiritual one – to remind us that we are creatures in need of a Creator. Trauma occurs when we do not process these moments.
This creates what we call the “Anniversary Effect.”
Psychologist Dr. Deborah Serani defines this as a “psychological experience made up of a unique set of unsettling feelings, thoughts, memories, and physical strain that occur on the specific date of a significant trauma.”
And reactions to this Anniversary Effect are as varied as the people experiencing them. Complete emotional shut-down. Re-experiencing the event. Helplessness. A desire for solitude. Forgetting all about it. Throwing a party. Moodiness.
Our reactions and responses to the Anniversary Effect are a direct result of the healing we’ve been able to engage in with our trauma.
Many traumas (miscarriage, death, accident, divorce) can be “put away.” While it stays with a person, there’s a distance that can be obtained from the event. Looking away is possible.
Chronic illness is unique in the fact that a person cannot look away. “Putting away” that trauma would mean forgetting or ignoring the disease, and when we do that, we die.
For the chronically ill, managing our trauma becomes as necessary as managing the disease itself.
And diagnoses anniversaries can throw this delicate balance into a tailspin.
I can tell you in detail the moments leading up to every diagnosis. I can tell you the song on the radio every time I left the hospital complex. I can re-trace my steps to the room(s) in which I lay post-diagnoses, post-surgeries.
I’ve been observing these dates for 15 years, and I’m still never quite sure how to handle them. The intricate feelings are something that few seem to understand.
Many of the people closest to me do not even know my anniversary dates! It’s something I don’t share often. It is a deeply personal and wildly intimate space. I don’t do feelings well, and I certainly don’t invite others into feelings I myself do not understand.
And friend, perhaps that is exactly the point.
Maybe I need to invite you into my anniversaries and be gentler with my reactions. Maybe you need to be willing to hold that day tenderly and hold space for me, too.
I don’t have the privilege of a break from my diseases. Many in the chronically ill community do not. Every single day, we confront the diseases waging war on our bodies. And we make a conscious decision to fight back.
Our diseases have molded and distorted every part of us at one point or another. Many times, we lose sight of the parts of ourselves that feel familiar. We have been robbed of carefree living. Our life began to revolve around doctors’ appointments, medical tests, treatments, and battles with insurance companies. Our hopes and dreams had to be revised and redirected. We lost people and were abandoned along the way.
"You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be." Nigella Lawson
It is easy to become caught up in that grief. It is easy to forget to celebrate the life I have.
In the past six months, my health journey has entered uncharted waters. Doctors don’t know what to do with me. There is no literature. There is no science. There is no precedent.
So I threw out the rulebook, and I started making it up as I go.
Fitting that I should do that with my anniversaries this year, too.
I’m going to savor this day that only I understand. I’m going to be soft with the memories that surface. I’m going to feel every emotion, foreign and hard and difficult. I’m going to sit with what I have lost, and I will mourn it, too.
And I’m going to feel the gratitude. For what I have learned. What I have gained. For what I still have.
I’m going to embrace this day that my life changed. I will celebrate all I have done, and I will remember all that has been done for me.
Reclamation is a powerful thing. It’s evidence of restoration, and that’s beautiful. A miracle, in fact. Celebrating that which should have destroyed me and instead made me stronger is a miracle.
I am going to spend my diagnoses anniversaries celebrating – not the disease, but me. My ability to move forward. My ability to let go. My determination in the face of adversity. My dependance and surrender that has enabled flourishing. My compassion for the overlooked and silenced. My voice.
I’m going to celebrate that I am so much more than my diagnoses.
On these diagnoses anniversary dates, I will raise my voice, and I will roar on these special days.
Because I am still here.
Thriving. Fighting. Rejoicing.
Against the odds, I do these things.
And against the odds, I will continue to do these things.
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