Emily Dickinson said hope is “the thing with feathers.”
It carries us through adversity and asks nothing in return.
I used to believe that. When I was an oncology nurse, we spoke of hope as a lifeline. The worst thing a clinician could do, we said, was to strip a patient of it. Hope, we believed, kept people alive. Without it, they would die.
In early 2021, I became a patient. I lived in a constant state of fear that first year. Then, in 2022, I underwent high-dose Cytoxan followed by a stem cell transplant. It kicked my ass. The fear drained away, along with hair and my vitality. And hope? Hope hadn’t carried me far. I began to question its very nature.
The problem with hope is that it’s slippery. Too easy to ignite. Too easy to snuff out. When people say, “I couldn’t live without hope,” they usually mean hope for something better than this. Better than this pain, this diagnosis, this present reality. We hope we’ll get the job. We hope our children will thrive. We hope the cancer will go away.
But hope, as we typically hold it, is passive. It’s a wish cast into the wind, dependent on forces we can’t control. It rests on the shoulders of others — doctors, partners, political leaders, the divine. And that makes it dangerous. Because when hope shatters, we’re left holding sharp edges.
So, for the last three years, I’ve asked myself: what does it mean to live without hope? I decided it wasn’t so bad. I’d cultivate faith instead.
Not religious faith, but what the Jungian psychologist James Hillman called “animal faith.” The kind your feet have when they carry you across the floor. The kind your hands have when they reach for the coffee mug. The faith that the ground will be there when you take your next step.
The kind of faith that doesn’t ask for promises, doesn’t look ahead. It lives in this moment, and the next, and the next. It says: I am here. I will make breakfast. I will feed the dog. I will take a walk in the sunshine.
And slowly, those small acts of faith, practiced in the shadow of uncertainty, build a life.
This week, I am in remission.
After four years of never quite getting there — of grinding through treatment after treatment, of the relentless progression of a destructive disease — I am MRD negative. That means there is no detectable cancer. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I should be soaring.
Instead, I’m stunned. Like someone who’s been trapped in a cave for so long they forgot what daylight looked like, I’m squinting into the brightness, not sure what to do with it.
Next week, I start CAR-T therapy. My own T-cells, collected, modified, and frozen, are ready to return to my bone marrow and begin the task they’ve been programmed for: to seek out and destroy myeloma cells.
The hope is that they will deliver a long remission. But I’m already in remission. What if there’s no cancer to destroy? What if the treatment brings harm instead of healing?
The what-ifs buzz around me like flies.
And yet, I’ve decided to do it.
I eat borderline leftovers because I believe nothing good should go to waste — not food, not effort, not life. It’s my way of honoring what sustains us. I feel the same about my engineered T-cells. They’ve been prepared for a purpose. They’re sitting in some cryogenic fridge, waiting. How can I walk away?
Besides, life on Talquetamab means living tethered to clinic visits, side effects and constant vigilance. CAR-T holds the promise of being untethered. No treatment. No clinic. Freedom.
Which brings me back to hope.
Despite everything, I feel it creeping in. The faintest outline of possibility. Could this be the start of something different? Could I plan a future? What would that future look like if I had time?
And honestly? That scares me, more than a little.
Because to hope is to risk. To hope is to make room for heartbreak.
But maybe, just maybe, I’m ready.
Maybe I don’t have to choose hope or faith.
Maybe I can weave them together.
Faith for the step I take today.
Hope, faint and feathered, for the ones I’ll take tomorrow
“Hope” is the thing with feathers By Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me
Thank you, Thank you for this! this fills me, nourishes me deeply
And I am so deeply grateful for your remission
Sending love
What a deep and utmost human writing! I am so happy that you are winning not just over your illness, but also over that debilitating fear. God is with you, always.