‍It was a warm June afternoon. I was in my new therapist’s carefully curated, sunlit room. It was our first session. After I had given her an outline of my cancer story, and she asked me when it was, I had started to feel well.

I groped for an answer I knew wasn’t there. I stared at the window, as if the answers to this question were hidden somewhere in the white venetian blinds. They were not. The truth, I quietly realized, is that I had not been feeling well, had not been living well. When I went back to work full time two years ago, I gave everything I had—and more that I didn’t, to my work, grateful to be alive. Ignoring my body. I had recovered enough to function. But four months ago, I started having debilitating panic attacks at work.

The river was frozen, massive chunks of ice floating silently between the large boats that sat in the river separating my hotel from the touristy shops across the way; the ones selling homemade dish towels, chocolate balls covered in sprinkles, and pomegranate juice. Stockholm in the winter shared the gray skies of the East Coast cities I was used to, but there was an understated glamor threaded through the cold winds, every window above the sidewalk revealing a curated cozy interior, heads bent over books placed under glowing table lamps, candlelight flickering on the sills.

I was there for a medical conference, sent overseas by my job to present an academic poster.