After difficult life experiences, we like to tell stories of growth.
Someone burns out and says that it finally taught them to set boundaries. Someone lives through a difficult period and says that they value life differently now. We often hear: ‘Everything happens for a reason.’
Such stories can be completely true.
The problem begins when we turn a possibility into an expectation.
When a person becomes ill, they may find themselves facing yet another unusual task: they have to turn their illness into something good. They are expected to learn something from it. To become stronger because of it. To find new meaning. To be grateful for the lessons it brought them.
But what if they are not grateful?
What if the illness has simply taken something from them?
Chronic illness can be difficult, unfair, boring, limiting and heartbreaking. It can take away work, relationships, sport, spontaneity, financial security, or the future we had imagined.
Not every loss has to come with a lesson.
That does not mean a person cannot, over time, live well again. They may discover new interests, change their priorities, or take something important from the experience. They can learn to live with illness and at the same time be genuinely happy with their life.
But something good we have created despite illness is not necessarily proof that there was something good about the illness itself.
Sometimes it is important to allow a simpler truth too:
‘I wish this had not happened to me.’
This is not a failure to accept illness. Nor is it pessimism.
A person does not have to turn their loss into a life lesson before they can make it part of their life.
Perhaps the greatest achievement is not becoming grateful for illness.
Perhaps it is enough for illness to remain something we did not want, while we still find things that make us want to live.