I am now 55

Happy Birthday to me!

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Today I turn fifty-five.

It is not the birthday I once imagined.

There will be no dinner out, no candles, and no chorus of “Happy Birthday" sung by friends and family.

Instead, I will spend the day in a chemo chair, watching a slow drip of medicine travel through an IV line into my body. The steady hum of the infusion pump will set the rhythm. Around me, nurses will move with the calm precision of people who work where the stakes are always high.

Through the window, I might catch a patch of blue sky or the sway of a tree branch, but inside, the work will be quiet and deliberate.

Eight months ago, the word cancer redrew the map of my life. My days shifted from work and family plans to treatment schedules, scan results, and fluctuating blood counts. Life’s rhythm became cycles of chemo, recovery, and waiting for news.

This year has taken pieces of me I will never get back: strength I once carried without thought, plans that will not unfold as imagined, and time now surrendered to waiting rooms and treatment chairs.

Yet it has also reshaped me. I have learned to find victory in the smallest milestones: walking to the car on my own, hearing that a scan shows even a small improvement, waking up with the energy to be present with the people I love.

With the good news there have been tough moments. My body has stumbled, lost ground, and slowly rebuilt itself. I have mourned the person I was before all this began, but I am starting to recognize the person I am becoming: one tempered by endurance, shaped by gratitude, and more certain than ever about what matters.

Light still finds me.

It is in Maria’s hand closing over mine when words cannot reach.

It is in my sons’ laughter, echoing through the house.

It is in friends who send a perfectly timed message, drop off a meal, or share a joke that lets me forget, for a moment, what I am facing. I am especially grateful for my Dungeons & Dragons crew who allow me to escape reality for a few hours each week, their friendship has helped me along, more than they know.

So...

My birthday wish this year is to step into the life I can still see ahead of me, even from this chair. I imagine mornings that begin without a calendar full of appointments I did not choose, days shaped by joy instead of lab results, and evenings where laughter carries us late into the night. I will meet each day with patience and purpose, holding steady until I can live that life fully again.

When that day comes, I will fill it with the people and moments I love most: Maria’s smile across the table of some new hole-in-the wall we found, my boys’ stories tumbling over one another, the warmth of friends gathered around a camp fire.

I will chase seasons instead of symptoms, savoring summer fruit on sunlit afternoons and the scent of woodsmoke in crisp autumn air.

Every birthday from now on will be more than a date on the calendar; it will be a reminder that this fight led me somewhere worth arriving, and that hope, when held onto, can carry you all the way home.