My Body Remembers The Way Home
All of a sudden, I realized I had stopped looking at my body. Not out of vanity, but out of distance. Somewhere along the way, it had become a thing I carried—not something I truly lived inside. It wasn’t intentional, nor an act of rebellion; it just… happened.
In the years after my diagnosis, my body became a vessel—something I moved through but no longer inhabited, carrying me from one shadowed place to another.
I didn’t want to look at it. I was angry at it. It had betrayed me, hadn’t it? Grown something inside me that could take me away from my children. Altered itself without my permission. Changed the trajectory of my life in ways I could never undo.
So, I stopped listening. Stopped feeling. Stopped being inside it. I lived from the neck up. And for a while, that felt like survival.
People speak of cancer as if it transforms your body into a savage battlefield—fight, battle, warrior. But those words never resonated with me. A battlefield suggests enemies, factions, and conquest. My body never felt like a battleground. It felt more like a place I was exiled from—stranded and lost, with no idea how to find my way back.
The strange thing is, even when I abandoned my body, it never abandoned me.
It stayed.
It kept going. It kept holding. It kept remembering—everything I could not.
My body remembers being a girl. Soft and open, wild in ways I didn’t yet have words for. It learned early how to tighten, to brace, to leave itself when things felt too overwhelming. The first time disappearing felt safer than staying.
My body remembers the experience of becoming a mother. The gentle weight of a newborn resting against my chest, the quiet, steady rhythm of breath meeting breath. The way it instinctively knew what to do without asking permission—how to grow, how to hold life, even as parts of it were being taken away.
My body remembers the day the doctor said the words: breast cancer. The suffocating stillness that settled in, the way the room seemed to tilt just slightly, as if the ground beneath me had shifted and no one else could feel it. It remembers how everything inside me went quiet all at once.
My body remembers the surgeries. The ache, the scars, the slow, invisible work of healing. The way it kept repairing, cell by cell, even when I resented it, even when I turned away.
My body remembers the ocean. Cold water against skin, the shock of it, the surrender—the moment when resistance yields to something deeper: buoyancy, trust, being held.
My body remembers the mountains. The burn in my legs, the thinness of the air, and the quiet voice that says, keep going. The knowing that I can do hard things, even now.
For a long time, I thought healing meant learning to love my body again—seeing it differently, accepting its changes, and making peace with the scars. But that never quite resonated. Love felt like too big an ask for something I still didn’t trust. What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t being asked to love my body. I was being asked to return to it.
It happened gradually. Not in a mirror or during a sudden moment of revelation, but through small, almost imperceptible ways. In the rhythm of my breath during a hike. In the sensation of my feet crossing uneven terrain. In the way my body responded to cold water, to movement, to stillness. In quiet moments, when I stopped trying to control it and began to simply notice it. Sometimes through writing—giving language to what my body had been holding all along.
I don’t think cancer disconnected me from my body. I believe it revealed how much I had already drifted away from it. And then it left me with no choice but to find my way back—not through force or discipline, but through remembering.
Slowly, I began to understand something I hadn’t before. My body wasn’t something to fix, conquer, or even fully understand. It was something to move through. Something to listen to. Something that changed with me—beneath me, around me. Some days it felt steady, other days uncertain. Some days it felt familiar, other days unrecognizable. But it was always there—shifting, responding, carrying me forward in ways I was only beginning to notice.
My body isn’t a battleground. It’s a landscape.
I still have moments when I leave it—moments when fear takes over, when I scan for symptoms, and when I wonder what lies beneath the surface. Living with cancer means living with uncertainty. But I am learning that I don’t have to abandon my body to survive it.
I can stay. I can listen. I can walk through this landscape, even when I don’t understand it.
And now, slowly and gently, I am remembering the way home.🌿
Gillian Lichota
Marine biologist turned founder of the iRise Above Foundation. Diagnosed at 35 and 40 with Stage III then Stage IV breast cancer.
A mother, marine biologist, sacred space-holder, and thriver, Gillian creates environments where young women can alchemize pain into power and reclaim their wholeness. Her work connects science and spirit to explore the depths of the human soul.
“My Body Remembers the Way Home” is published in Wildfire Journal’s 2026 “Body” issue. Print copies available for order until June 29, 2026 here. After that, order a digital copy of the full issue in our shop. Available in the subscribers’ library as well.