Still Here: Learning to Live, Learning to Let Go

by Jessica Swan

At 31, I reached a point where I knew I could no longer live the way I had been living. Drugs and alcohol had become a way to cope, to escape, and to quiet things I did not yet know how to face. What I once believed was helping me had begun to take away the very life I was trying to find.

Getting sober and living a life of recovery was not simply about putting down drugs and alcohol. It was about learning how to live. It was about transformation—finding myself, finding my voice, and learning how to use it.

In early recovery, I thought sobriety would be the destination. I eventually learned it was only the beginning of a much larger journey. I had to learn how to sit with uncomfortable feelings instead of running from them. I had to confront shame, grief, fear, and the ways trauma had shaped my relationships. I had to learn that asking for help was not weakness. Most of all, I had to learn that recovery was not something I did once—it was something I practiced, one day and one decision at a time.

Over the years, recovery gave me a life I could not have imagined at 31. It gave me relationships, purpose, work I care deeply about, and the opportunity to help other individuals and families affected by addiction. It taught me that healing is relational—that we heal in connection, with other people, with ourselves, and, for many of us, with something greater than ourselves.

Then, this past year, I was asked to learn those lessons all over again.

I was diagnosed with stage 4B cervical cancer.

There is something profoundly disorienting about hearing the word cancer. For someone who has built a life around recovery, resilience, and helping others find hope, I discovered that knowing the principles of recovery and actually living them in the face of your own mortality are two very different things.

Cancer took away my illusion of control.

I had to surrender to days when I was exhausted, treatments I did not want, uncertainty I could not resolve, and questions for which there were no immediate answers. There were moments when I was afraid. There were moments when I was angry. There were moments of deep sadness when I wondered whether, after everything I had already survived, I would actually survive this. Grief and loss came in a nebulous form, settling over me and eventually pushing me into a depression.

And yet, somewhere in that darkness, I recognized something familiar.

Recovery had prepared me for this.

I had learned at 31 that I could survive a day I did not know how to survive. Cancer reminded me of that truth. I had learned that I did not have to know how everything would turn out in order to take the next right step. Cancer reminded me again. I had learned that accepting help was an act of courage. Cancer gave me countless opportunities to practice it.

Most of all, recovery taught me that hope can coexist with darkness. Cancer taught me that lesson all over again.

Hope does not require us to know the ending. Sometimes finding it requires us to give up the need to know anything at all. Hope is simply choosing to believe there can still be more to the story.

Even in the idea of death—in the ultimate act of letting go—I found a strange comfort, a kind of freedom. I found hope there, too.

These two journeys—recovery from addiction and recovery through cancer, with grief and letting go woven through both—have changed me and deepened my understanding of faith. I have come to believe that faith is not having all the answers. Faith is being willing to take the next step when you cannot see the whole path. Faith is sitting quietly. Faith is accepting love. It is letting go of the demand to understand why and asking instead, How can I trust in this moment?

Today, I see my two recoveries as deeply connected.

Getting sober taught me how to live. Cancer taught me not to postpone that living—and not to judge what that living looks like.

I have learned that resilience does not mean being strong every minute. It means allowing ourselves to be human and still moving forward. It means knowing we can be frightened and hopeful at the same time, exhausted and grateful at the same time. We can grieve what has changed while still feeling excited about what might come next. We can dislike the present moment and still stay present for it, knowing it will change.

All this transformation and change has forced me into a place of accepting. Accepting I do not know what comes next, and I am learning to be at peace with that. Accepting what is, just as it is, and becoming comfortable in the unknowing…

But I know this: I am still here.

I am still learning. Still healing. Still loving. Still serving. Still becoming.

After everything life has asked of me, I have come to believe that the greatest gift of recovery is not simply getting our lives back.

It is learning how precious a life can be—and choosing, every day, to live it.

Jessica Swan is a person in long-term recovery, an advocate, educator, and founder of Recovery Consulting, where she works to support individuals and families affected by addiction. Her personal experiences with recovery and cancer have deepened her commitment to resilience, connection, hope, and helping others discover that healing is possible.