For years I’ve been pressured to find silver linings. Recovering from serious illness is in my opinion not a victory.

The grief that came from learning to walk while my friends finished college without me was deeply painful. On top of that, I was supposed to be grateful for it.

I refuse to be grateful for enduring some of the most extreme pain that exists. I’m not grateful for the tubes running through my body, for waking up every 4 hours for months (years later I still wake every 4 hrs), for the internal screaming while waking up on a paralytic.

I im not grateful for the nightmares where my lungs fail again and I either die or have to endure it all again and maybe still die. I’m not grateful for the nightmares remembering my family cry as I drifted in and out of sedation, trying to tell them I was there. But I couldn’t.

Meanwhile, my friends finished their degrees, traveled, got their first jobs. I was sick and broke from medical bills.

It’s not that I can’t find silver linings. It’s that it’s not my job to. I am overwhelmingly, indescribably grateful for the love and commitment poured into my care. But I would’ve rather graduated with class, lived my early 20s, not heard my mom cry & scream in fear of my death.

f you are still asking people to be grateful for serious illness, please take a moment to evaluate what you want us to be grateful for.

Here is something I wrote years ago, because this request truly isn’t original. It’s a painful one. https://www.stbaldricks.org/blog/post/a-survivor-speaks-dont-find-my-silver-linings-for-me