Journal entry by Beth Hoffman —
CANCER, such a small word with such a big impact. It hits like a ton bricks. You feel like your drowning and you can’t catch your breathe.
I cant stop saying, “I’m so scared”.
My husband tells me to write a journal, it will help. My family has a plan for the fight.
I find myself crying in the car thinking, I have an expiration date and now I have to spend the rest of my life fighting it until I’m tired and I just can’t keep fighting it.
You see part of my job is to sit with people and see them at their worst of times and some at their bests; Births, divorces, college and deaths.
Finance follows you every where, I’ve learned this and in my time helping people with their finances I have sat and spoken with so many people that they can’t help but tell me their stories. I can’t tell you how many cancer widows I’ve sat with in last 3 years.
My journal should have started years ago when I was 9 and found my self working after school every day trying to pay the light bill. My journal could have started when I was 12 working after school until after the sun went down selling football game tickets and chocolates to warehouse workers and office buildings just so my biological mother would take every cent. The senseless beatings were countless. I’m then 16 and my journal continues while I’m homeless and eating ice chips and leftover bread from the bakery in Hialeah for dinner while sleeping in a tennis closet at a local park. I join the USMC hoping that I could be more than what I am and end up injured with a hardship discharge. I end up in the same place I started and only end up sinking into somewhere worse praying I’ll survive with my baby.
Now my journal continues as a mother of 3, married to whom I can only explain to be God’s way of equipping me with the strength I need to fight this; my husband.
He gives me so much strength and my babies are all the proof i need to believe in God. A God that put me, as a child, straight until adulthood through a lifetime boot camp just to break me down and build me back up through my family now. Break me down all so I can now fight this with thicker skin and a reason to fight.
With a everyday I get worse news, Cancer.. Stage 2 borderline 3... estrogen positive... her2 positive making it more aggressive.. and all I can think is ,
I’m so scared.
I cant stop saying, “I’m so scared”.
My husband tells me to write a journal, it will help. My family has a plan for the fight.
I find myself crying in the car thinking, I have an expiration date and now I have to spend the rest of my life fighting it until I’m tired and I just can’t keep fighting it.
You see part of my job is to sit with people and see them at their worst of times and some at their bests; Births, divorces, college and deaths.
Finance follows you every where, I’ve learned this and in my time helping people with their finances I have sat and spoken with so many people that they can’t help but tell me their stories. I can’t tell you how many cancer widows I’ve sat with in last 3 years.
My journal should have started years ago when I was 9 and found my self working after school every day trying to pay the light bill. My journal could have started when I was 12 working after school until after the sun went down selling football game tickets and chocolates to warehouse workers and office buildings just so my biological mother would take every cent. The senseless beatings were countless. I’m then 16 and my journal continues while I’m homeless and eating ice chips and leftover bread from the bakery in Hialeah for dinner while sleeping in a tennis closet at a local park. I join the USMC hoping that I could be more than what I am and end up injured with a hardship discharge. I end up in the same place I started and only end up sinking into somewhere worse praying I’ll survive with my baby.
Now my journal continues as a mother of 3, married to whom I can only explain to be God’s way of equipping me with the strength I need to fight this; my husband.
He gives me so much strength and my babies are all the proof i need to believe in God. A God that put me, as a child, straight until adulthood through a lifetime boot camp just to break me down and build me back up through my family now. Break me down all so I can now fight this with thicker skin and a reason to fight.
With a everyday I get worse news, Cancer.. Stage 2 borderline 3... estrogen positive... her2 positive making it more aggressive.. and all I can think is ,
I’m so scared.
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