These words, from Suleika, are really profound for all of us:

For the last few months, small joys have been my sustenance… Often these small moments fade from view with the passage of time. What makes it into our memory banks are the bigger things—either the zeniths or the nadirs—but what we end up longing for and leaning on in hard times are the little quotidian comforts and delights; they lift and carry us from day to day. Noting these joys is a muscle I’ve been consciously trying to exercise: training the eye to see them and training the mind to hold onto them.

I do want to make a distinction here between the practice of celebrating small joys and the culture of “toxic positivity,” where we’re told to be ever-grateful, to always search for the silver linings, to put a positive spin on all experiences, even the profoundly tragic. The author Barbara Ehrenreich has written critically about this cultural phenomenon with far more nuance than I can in this missive, but it’s a topic I’ve thought a lot about, especially in these last months. It’s easy to feel pressure to be someone who “suffers well”—grateful and graceful and stoic 24/7. But that doesn’t allow us to exist fully, to experience the full range of the human condition, from happiness to grief, from gratitude to envy.

I love observing tiny daily joys because it feels natural and easy, not forced, not pressurized, not all or nothing. And not only has the practice helped ease this difficult passage, it’s helped me identify what lifts me up, and then I can cultivate more of it.

I also think this, below is something many people could benefit from as a "policy."

A Few Requests & Ways to Help—

In sharing this news with the community, I’d also like to include a few of the same requests that I sent two years ago when I wrote about my relapse.

Please no pity, no advice, no unsolicited medical information, no dietary recommendations, no alternative cures from your great-grandmother’s guru. I appreciate the good intentions behind these impulses, but please know that (unfortunately) I have a lot of experience when it comes to cancer, and I’m choosing the right path for me.

What I do invite is love. I’ve been the very fortunate recipient of so much loving care. Yet there are many out there who are not so fortunate—and some of them are people in your own life. Reach out to someone you know who might need a little love or thoughtfulness. Everyone is carrying their own private struggle, and you never know how far your kindness will go.