My Story is My Story

 One of the things I think about a lot is whether I can claim something as part of my story. An example is childhood cancer. I stopped posting and raising awareness on this blog in college, but was active in the tumblr community for a while after that. I really stopped when I became friends with a survivor who didn't want to talk about it, and I became embarrassed to be putting up more of a show than they were. That it wasn't enough of my story to justify my activism because I was "just" a sibling, not a survivor. That it wasn't even that bad, because my brother is a long term survivor with minimal side effects. Cancer is not even a topic that we talk about regularly in my family, it's been so long.

But I've come to the conclusion that I can't let others get in the way of claiming my story. I am a sibling to a childhood cancer survivor. I come from a community of cancer fighters. I have a right to be vocal. I have a right to speak out, to affect change in whatever ways I can. I get to use my voice on behalf of those who cannot. Because it is part of my story, and nobody can change that.

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