Letting Go Before Surgery

Two days before surgery, sleep was average at best. I'd stopped all supplements and vitamins. Small instructions, but each one made what was coming feel more real.

I found myself grieving something I didn’t expect.

Not just the fear of pain or recovery - but the quiet goodbye to a part of my body that had been with me for decades. A symbol of familiarity. Of womanhood. Of identity.

Grief doesn’t always arrive loudly. Sometimes it shows up as stiffness in your neck. As disrupted sleep. As a hospital letter that changes plans at the last minute.

My hospital admission time was brought forward. A minor logistical change, but it meant my mother and my children wouldn't be able to see me off.

The practicalities took over quickly - logistics, childcare, packing a hospital bag. Life doesn’t pause for emotional processing.

But beneath the planning sat disbelief.

Cancer, at this age.
Surgery as the solution.
And the hope - quiet but steady - that the surgery would be the end of it.

I wasn’t panicking. I wasn’t calm either.
I was somewhere in between - learning to sit with loss before it fully arrived.

What I realised then is this:
Letting go is not weakness.
It’s preparation.

There is strength in acknowledging what is ending, without letting it eclipse what remains.

That night, I didn’t ask for certainty.
I asked for peace.