So this is 49.
It's hard to think that there was a moment where I never thought I would make it to this spot. To be honest, I'm overwhelmed with the gratitude that I am here, still able to have an impact with this story.
A little over four years ago when I started this journey, I had no clue that this might be the best adventure of my life. There's a lot of heavy weight that comes with being told you have seven months to live. It felt like the end of a journey at first, but then I quickly realized it was the beginning of something entirely different.
Cancer wasn't happening to me. It was happening through me, waiting for something to crack me open.
I've been reading Joseph Campbell lately, and his work on the Hero's Journey has given me a framework for understanding what I've been through. Campbell identified a universal pattern in all great stories: the hero receives a call to adventure, often disguised as a crisis, loss, or complete disruption of everything they thought they knew about their life.
This diagnosis was my call.
Campbell teaches us that the Hero's Journey starts with what he calls "the call to adventure." It's rarely a pleasant invitation. More often, it's a crisis that forces us out of our comfortable, known world into something uncertain and terrifying.
Being Hyper-Aware means recognizing when life is calling you to a deeper journey, even when it looks like destruction.
Staying Open-Hearted means saying yes to the adventure, even when you can't see the path ahead.
Being Persistent means continuing the journey when everything in you wants to turn back.
Being Empowering means returning with something to give, sharing the treasure you found in the cave.
Now I'm not trying to position myself as some hero, but I do realize that we can be the hero of our own story. And that story doesn't begin with the happy ending. You become the hero because something happens to you, then you go out into the world and the world cracks you open. Through that evolution, you learn the lessons.
Campbell taught me this profound truth: The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
My cave was that hospital room, those scan results, those moments when hope felt impossible. But inside that cave, I found something I never expected. I found that hope isn't a passive wish. It's a strategy. I found that impossible is optional. I found that being broken open isn't the same as being broken down.
Campbell also writes about "the return with the boon," that moment when the hero comes back from their journey with something to give. The gift isn't just for them. It's for everyone who's still walking through their own dark forest.
At 49, I'm not the same person who received that diagnosis at 45. That person almost died so this person could be born. That person had to let go of who he thought he was so this person could remember who he's always been.
This is what the Hero's Journey really teaches us: You don't come back the same. You come back remade. You come back with medicine for a world that's still sick.
Campbell also talks about "the refusal of the call," that moment when we want to stay in our comfortable, known world instead of stepping into the unknown. For four years, I've watched people refuse their own calls to transformation because the journey looks too scary, too uncertain, too impossible.
But here's what I know now: The impossible is just possibility wearing a disguise.
Your setbacks aren't breaking you down. They're breaking you open.
You just need to remember what it feels like to be the whole version of you and then do that every day. The more you focus on what you can control and realize that happiness isn't a place to go but a motion that happens inside of you, life gets a heck of a lot easier.
Sharing that joy with other people is how healing is done. It begins by thanking your setback instead of cursing it.
What cave are you being called to enter? What adventure is disguising itself as a crisis in your life right now? What if the thing you're most afraid of is actually the doorway to who you're meant to become?
The hero's journey never really ends. It just prepares you for the next adventure. Each challenge, each setback, each moment when you think you can't go on is actually preparing you for the treasure that's waiting in the cave.
So today, on my 49th birthday, I'm not just celebrating another year. I'm celebrating the death of who I was and the birth of who I'm becoming. I'm celebrating every person who's walked this journey with me, every person who's found hope in my story, every person who's discovered that their own impossible is optional.
Hope isn't a passive wish. It's a strategy. And sometimes that strategy means entering the cave you fear most, knowing that's exactly where your treasure is waiting.
The best adventures are still ahead. For all of us.
