The Guilt of Surviving and the Courage to Celebrate Anyway - by Beatriz Costeira

First day in Trento, Italy | October, 2025

Hi, my name is Beatriz and I am in remission for Hodgkins Lymphoma for a year now. I have been writing about my journey since I first got diagnosed, and this is me releasing pieces of those chapters into the world, to help those who might feel alone in their journeys.

Sharing this Thanksgiving holiday spirit, I am grateful for everybody I have by my side, family, friends, medical team. I am grateful to be part of the amazing team that The After Cancer is, and to have the opportunity of helping so many others in the same place as me. I am grateful for being able to post about this and actually celebrate.

Entry date: November 28th, 2025

"Do I even deserve the luck I have?

Yesterday marked 1 year of my cancer remission. 1 year of hair growing back. 1 year of doing things that I probably wouldn’t if cancer didn’t happen at all.

But why am I scared of celebrating it? And at the same time, guilty?

The thought of being lucky enough to have a diagnosis that has one of the highest rates of survival lingers daily in my mind. But the thought of it coming back at any moment, or bringing a different diagnosis in the future haunts me even more. It’s a mix of“I deserve to be proud and celebrate” and “Am I even entitled to celebrate, when what I went through feels so small compared to what others have faced?”.

Happiness, relief, fear, guilt - dealing with the aftermath is trickier than the treatment itself, and this past year has been a full-on rollercoaster.

Everything I feel that comes close to what the cancer symptoms I had prior to treatments, scares me. I'm afraid I won't be able to tell the difference and let it linger for too long. I'm afraid I'll celebrate today, and next week my oncologist will tell me that it's back. I'm afraid I'm not enjoying life as I should be and then being too late. I'm afraid I am worrying too much about being scared and let the good things slip away. The truth is, I'm afraid because I can't control it.

Living every day to the fullest has been one of my goals during 2025, but well life still happens and not everything is great. Celebrating small victories is one of the coping strategies I found to not panic about the future, what's coming and what I can't control, but even that can get hard sometimes.

Learning how to be kind to myself is a very important part of the after cancer, and I know it's one that will lead everything else to fall in place. I know I still have a long way to go on that road, but I don't want to make giving up an option."

Reality is different for everyone and all realities matter. Regardless of the diagnosis, finishing a round of treatment is a milestone. Completing an entire protocol is another milestone worth celebrating. And reaching 1, 6, or 12 months of remission is yet another important milestone in our journey. Celebrating can be tough sometimes, and the after cancer journey is long and, let's face it, can be a b****. But I hope you can walk that road with me.