When Cancer Is Not the Only Thing Going On

Danielle Ripley-Burgess is a two-time colon cancer survivor first diagnosed at age 17. Check out Danielle’s blogs here!

I’ve taken a writing hiatus the past few years. I went from publishing many articles and devotionals, even my memoir, “Blush: How I Barely Survived 17,” to nothing. The well of words ran dry as a new chaotic situation in my life stirred up.

As an adoptive family, you never know what’s around the corner. For us, it became an addition to our family and a journey through the foster care system. If you’ve ever known anyone involved in foster care, they’ll probably say the same thing as a patient with cancer: It’s hard. Like, really hard.

In many ways, becoming a foster parent felt like getting a cancer diagnosis, at least in our case. Unlike some who take classes, get licensed and prepare for the undertaking, we were thrown in due to unique circumstances. One text message changed everything. Life stopped for a second, and then it started again… differently. For the past three years, that’s where I’ve been: taking things day by day. Reminding myself to breathe and that no situation lasts forever. Hoping and praying for light at the end of a dark tunnel. Thankfully, in March 2024, we found our relief.

If you think there’s a steep drop-off when you end treatment and enter follow-up survivorship cancer care, that’s nothing compared to having a foster care journey conclude. After years of training, licensing walk-throughs, visits, paperwork and check-ins, you walk into court as a foster family, and you walk out as a legal family. That’s it, it’s over. No follow-up visits. No more check-ins. No more making sure the alcohol and medicines are locked up. No more requirements for fire extinguishers. Everything just stops. It’s taken me months to come out of the fog and reorient myself. “What did I just live through?” I continue to ask myself this every day. I’m sure my kids and husband are asking themselves too, in their own way.

Obviously, I’ve returned to writing to get these feelings out. And one thing I’ve recognized is how survival skills apply to any traumatic situation. I’d like to think I’m holding up emotionally and physically because I used what surviving cancer taught me and applied it to foster parenting. I sent out regular updates to a group of people because I knew we needed support. We sought therapy and spiritual counsel to help us get through it. I let myself get attached to our case worker and parent aide, much like I had with my chemo nurses. And those relationships carried me through our really hard days. I also gave myself permission to feel all the feelings: the good, bad and the ugly.

I remembered something cancer taught me: It’s OK to not be OK. In fact, I must not be OK in order to get back to being OK. I also recognized the fostering situation made cancer take a back seat; surviving cancer wasn’t the only thing on my plate.

I’m not yet to the point where I can list off a long list of good things I’ve seen come from our experience, except the obvious: I now have a son, and I cannot imagine our lives without this precious boy. In some ways, our whole family is still recovering, and it may take years or even the rest of our lives. But I do see a gift tucked into this whole experience of foster parenting, and that is experiencing and remembering there is life outside of cancer. There are other hard things happening in the world that have nothing to do with cancer cells. Somehow that realization helps give cancer less power. It doesn’t always control the show.

My family and I have fought through cancer, and now we’ve made it through the foster system. Heaven forbid, we can get through whatever comes next. I know we’ve got the survival skills in place, and they work. But if I’m being honest, I’d love to put those skills on hold. In light of all that life’s thrown at us the past few years, we would love a little break.

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