Reconnect with My Story

This article is part of the “Healing in Two Voices” series developed within the e-QuoL project, which brings together survivor voices and professional reflections on life after childhood and adolescent cancer.  In this series, professional contributions do not aim to add explanations or conclusions. They create spaces for reflection — ethical, psychological, and clinical — opened by the testimonies themselves.

1

I was treated when I was very young, and I don’t remember it.

I wanted to rebuild my story, to reconnect with it.
I had the feeling that some people knew things about me that I didn’t know myself.

Their way of looking at me was different, maybe intense.
I felt exposed.
It made me uncomfortable.

Especially my grandmother’s gaze.

My psychologist helped me understand what I was feeling.
Then I found the words to talk about it with my family, to open the conversation.

I went through phases of coma, intensive care, and extreme uncertainty.
I started to understand what my family had been through.

I explained to them who I am.
They also understood. They listened.

After that, things slowly changed.
Family gatherings became possible again.

Maybe… I’ll even be happy to see them all again at Christmas.

J, 17 years old

2

What you describe, J., is something we often hear from young people who were ill very early in life.
Beyond the visible after-effects, there is also a more subtle… but very powerful question: that of memory.

Some people keep very clear, sometimes intrusive images.
Others, on the contrary, are left with a kind of emptiness. And that emptiness can be unsettling.
As if a part of the story were missing… unable to be told.

In these situations, the body and emotions can hold traces, even when memory does not.
A sensation, a fear, a feeling of unease…
And sometimes this impression: “there’s something in me I don’t understand.”
Yet, to build oneself, we need to understand where we come from.

There is also another difficulty: feeling legitimate.
Legitimate in having questions, in feeling pain, in needing to understand.
Because you are “cured,” because you’ve been told to move on.
So some people keep everything to themselves.

And over time, this can affect self-confidence, self-image, and the ability to look ahead.
Some describe living on “autopilot,”
as if they had to keep going… without really feeling grounded.

And yet, something remains:
a need for meaning, for coherence, for connection.
Because this gap can be disorienting:
feeling things… without knowing what they are connected to.
Wondering whether it comes from within, or from something older.

But what many journeys show is that understanding your story matters.
Not just knowing the name of the illness,
but being able to connect the pieces, to make sense of it in your own way.

Talking with family can help, even if it’s not always easy.
Everyone has their own experience, their own emotions.
And sometimes it takes time for words to come.

Little by little, the story can become more livable.
Less heavy, less foreign.
Something that is part of you… without defining you entirely.

Taking care of yourself is not only about looking after your body.
It is also about taking care of your story.
Even when it is incomplete.

And sometimes, it is by beginning to talk about it
that something slowly starts to move again.

Louise Hinckel – Clinical psychologist in the long-term follow-up department at Angers University Hospital