This too will pass ....

What is it that keeps you going as you struggle with the breast cancer experience?

What get's you through when things seem overwhelmingly bleak?

We've put the first verse of the poem Invictus top right of this page - now made famous by the recent Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman film of course - but around as source of inspiration and courage to many for more than a hundred years. The words are great and if you don't know the poem you can read it and more about it here. William Henley didn't have cancer but he did suffer from tuberculosis in the bone and spent much of his life struggling to cope after having his leg amputated below the knee.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

There must be many other poems that reach into our lives and lift us up when we need it most.

Maybe for you it's a song - or a film? Or a book? Or a photograph .....?

For Marjory and I it's a pair of simple rings. We went out together and bought them about a week after the diagnosis was confirmed. They're engraved on the inner side of the band with the words

"This too will pass"

When things get tough we take them off and look at those words, and we remember how we felt and what our fears for the future were on the day we bought them.

No matter how dark the night is that covers you, there is and will always be light at the end of the tunnel. You just need to have faith that the bleak spell will pass and that the sun will shine again.

What do you do to keep your head "bloody, but unbowed"

Share your own experiences below. Reading how others cope is a great source of strength and comfort.

Be well

G and M