This is a guest post by Prudence Sinclair.
Photo Attribute: Ryan Zipp Photography https://www.facebook.com/ryanzippphoto
Hello, lovely you.
Welcome to week 2 of our 8-week spiritual series — Spiritual Lessons to Create the Life of Your Dreams.
In the days and weeks after my surgery and diagnosis, life looked strangely normal from the outside. People still went to work. The grocery store was still full on Saturday mornings. The rubbish trucks rolled down the street, and neighbors waved like always.
Inside me, though, nothing was normal.
Everything I thought I knew about my life had been shaken loose. And yet the world kept moving like nothing had happened.
That disconnect does something to you. It creates a quiet space where the truth starts to rise up. Not the inspirational truth people like to post on social media, but the uncomfortable one. The one that lives in your body before it ever forms into words.
The Part No One Wants to Talk About
After a diagnosis like that, people expect you to be brave. They tell you to stay positive, fight the good fight, and to keep your spirits up. And I understand why. Positivity feels safer for everyone involved.
But positivity can quietly become a hiding place.
For weeks I kept myself busy. I researched overseas cancer treatments at the local library and made appointments. I was a regular at the local bookstore, reading self-help books. I talked about plans for the future. On the surface it looked like strength. Underneath it, I was avoiding something.
Fear.
I didn’t want to sit with my fear, so I tried to outrun it.
Most of us do.
The Night I Stopped Pretending
One evening I found myself in my kitchen. I was holding a mug of tea that had already gone cold, listening to the deep silence of living alone. That deep silence that only happens when the rest of the world is fast asleep.
And something in me cracked.
Up until that moment I had been trying very hard to keep everything together. I had lost my dad two years before my diagnosis. He was killed by a 17-year-old driver under the influence while working an engineering surveying job in my hometown in New Zealand. I had not allowed myself to grieve the loss of my rock, my dad. And then the grief I had buried alongside it came flooding in too — deep sadness about his death and my six-months-to-live cancer diagnosis, all at once. I was alone and scared out of my mind.
Dark thoughts began to swarm me. My first instinct was to push them away, like I had been doing for weeks. But that night I didn’t. I think maybe I was simply too worn out to fight them any longer.
The tears came before I could stop them. My shoulders shook. My face felt numb. My chest hurt from crying harder than I had in years. It was messy and raw and completely unfiltered.
And something unexpected happened in the middle of it.
Nothing broke. I didn’t break.
The fear I had been avoiding did not destroy me when I finally let it surface. It moved through me. It was intense and raw.
That moment changed something.
The Truth About Healing
You cannot heal what you refuse to feel.
I had spent weeks trying to manage my emotions. Stay strong. Stay positive. Keep everything under control. But healing was not asking me to control my feelings — it was asking me to face them.
Fear was there. So was anger. Some days grief would show up out of nowhere and sit heavy in my chest.
I didn’t like those emotions. I wanted the inspiring version of the story. The strong survivor. The woman who handles everything with grace and gratitude.
Instead I was a woman sitting on the kitchen floor some nights because it felt like the only solid place in the room. And slowly I realized something important: that honesty was not weakness. It was the beginning of healing.
When You Stop Fighting Yourself
Once I stopped pushing my emotions away, something shifted. Fear didn’t disappear, but it stopped controlling me from the shadows. When I allowed it to exist, I could actually see it. I could notice when it showed up and I could hear the stories it was trying to tell me.
Grief would come too. Sometimes suddenly, sometimes quietly. But when I let myself feel it fully, it didn’t stay stuck in my body all day. It moved through like a passing storm.
There is a strange kind of relief in emotional honesty. Not because it feels good — most of the time it doesn’t. But because pretending is exhausting. Trying to hold yourself together all the time takes more energy than simply telling the truth about how you feel.
Where Real Change Begins
Spiritual growth isn’t about floating above the difficult parts of life. And it isn’t about forcing yourself to be positive when your heart is breaking.
It begins somewhere much quieter.
It begins the moment you stop turning away from what is actually happening inside you. The moment you let the fear speak and let the grief move through your body instead of locking it away.
The moment you tell yourself the honest thing, even if no one else ever hears it — that is where something real starts to form. Not the polished version of healing, but the kind that begins when you finally allow your feelings to sit down at the table with you.
A Quiet Invitation
If you have been pushing your feelings aside just to get through the day, I understand that instinct. Sometimes it feels like the only way to survive.
But at some point, when you feel ready, give yourself permission to pause and sit quietly for a few minutes without distracting yourself. Notice what is actually there beneath the surface. Maybe it is fear. Maybe it is grief. Maybe it is anger you have been trying very hard not to acknowledge.
You do not have to fix any of it right away. Just let the feeling be present. Let your body recognize it. Let yourself breathe inside it instead of turning away.
That small act of honesty is often where healing begins.
Next week, in Week 3 — Borrowed Time is a Myth — we’ll explore what becomes possible when you stop pretending life is indefinite and start living with the freedom and urgency that comes from truly embracing impermanence.
Prue – https://pruesplace.org
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