Originally on Instagram and Facebook.

Portrait of hygge.

One of the most challenging things about cancer is that there's so much waiting. Waiting for screenings. Waiting for results. Waiting for biopsies. Waiting for biopsy results. Waiting for a phone call to schedule a surgery, which you'll have to - you guessed it - wait for.

And in the meantime, you have to figure out how to live your life, business as usual.

Sometimes things seem so normal that you forget that your body has betrayed you, and that you have to amputate part of it in response. But most of the time, you're trying to go grocery shopping, format spreadsheets, and bake birthday cakes while attempting to ignore your constant state of anxiety and foreboding.

Last week I met with a friend of mine who was diagnosed with breast cancer at 30. The next day, another started chemo. Today, another was diagnosed. I don't understand what's happening to us or why. Why did another friend lose her life to this at the beginning of the year? We are young women in our 30s. This should not be something we have to fear. We shouldn't have to explain to our small children why we are going to the hospital to have our breasts removed. Deal with the devastation of amputating a huge part of who we are as women. Handle the fear of pain, sickness, financial ruin, and, for some of us, of leaving our children motherless.

And the waiting.

Waiting for what feels like decades to find out what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, and exactly how bad it is.

So that's where I'm at right now. Sitting in the unknown, trying to be patient, and trying not to think about the what or the how until I know the when.

Cancer sucks.