Why Me? Learning to Ask Better Questions

It's been a shitty year. Really, a terrible, horrible, deeply shitty, very bad year. 

That’s the best I can do to describe what our family has endured since last spring. From the spring of 2024 to spring of 2025, we’ve experienced what feels like decades worth of loss and struggle: my sister-in-law's sudden, excruciating death from cancer, our daughter's months’ long debilitating and life-threatening illness, and my beloved mentor's tragic accident and subsequent death.

And then, just when I thought we might catch our breath, one more very shitty thing: my breast cancer diagnosis, followed swiftly by a double mastectomy, and the prospect of radiation on the horizon.

None of this was seen coming. My brother and sister-in-law had sold their little house and launched into a semi-retired life of on-the-road and globe-hopping adventure. One winter in Costa Rica, one summer in the Canadian Maritimes, a diagnosis in November and she was gone by March. 

Our young adult daughter went into the ER with back pain on a Wednesday afternoon in early May. Then she was in the ICU for several days, touch and go, then admitted, discharged, re-admitted, surgery one, transferred, surgery two, discharged, re-admitted, again and again. And when the pain was unmanaged, or the meds mismanaged  … I can barely even allow myself to think about those days and nights. It was December before she began to emerge from the cocoon.

I was visiting a friend in Hawaii in February—a long delayed bit of vacation after so much trauma—when I scratched an itch in bed one morning. And then rubbed. And felt a little lump. My traveling buddy, a breast cancer survivor herself, assured me it was likely nothing—as most such lumps are—but we agreed I should get it checked out as soon as I got home. I wasn’t terribly worried, perhaps because, at some level, I didn’t really think I could get cancer. It seemed like something that happened to other people. How I thought this, given the number of beloved family members and friends who have fought, survived, or succumbed to cancer, is a mystery of magical thinking, but it did help me set the possibility aside and enjoy a week of kayaking, snorkeling, and soaking up the sun before reality hit.

A week later, lying on the examining table in my gynecologist’s office, I couldn’t even find the lump. Neither could my doctor.  She assured me it was probably nothing. But she bumped up my scheduled mammogram by a few weeks, and they made it a 3-D version to get a better image. And there it was. A lump at 3:00. Subsequent ultrasounds and biopsies revealed a total of 5 malignant masses in my left breast. I am fortunate that it was found relatively early—or at least is slow-growing—and is a very treatable sort of cancer … but, given the area involved, not without aggressive surgery and follow-up treatment. 

It feels natural to ask, “Why me?” in such a situation. Despite my early blithe denial, though, I somehow never did. Maybe because I’ve seen so many others suffer much worse. 

But I’m also learning that this particular question isn't very helpful. It assumes there's some cosmic accounting system where suffering is distributed according to merit or meaning. It presupposes that there should be a reason tailored specifically to me—as if the universe were a personalized curriculum designed for my particular growth.

I was raised in a Christian evangelical tradition in Canada (a milder version than what many Americans are used to seeing today), where individual piety and a personal relationship with Jesus were paramount. I was taught, from a young age, that “God has a wonderful plan for my life”—and I understood that to mean there was a specific path of events and relationships mapped out for me, and I just had to be obedient and discerning to see this plan come to fruition. 

That was a long time ago. I still call myself a Christian, but I no longer believe that God or the universe is engineering and managing the details of what happens *to* me—or anyone else. The cancer cells multiplying in my breast weren't placed there as some divine teaching tool. The surgical scars on my chest weren't mapped out in heaven before I was born.

Instead, I understand myself as part of an unfolding system of life, in which I strive to see how I am connected to and contribute to its evolution. 

I believe that God—who is at the heart of the universe and which exceeds all the names and models my mind tries to impose—is also somehow with and in me. This Spirit is guiding, supporting, and whispering to me in the details of how I happen—how I respond, learn, grow, struggle, suffer, fail, and rise again. What happens *in* me matters more than what happens *to* me.

So I'm trying to ask better questions.

One alternative to “Why me?” is, of course, “Why not me?”—which is fair enough, and helps me understand that I am granted no exemption from suffering. But it also maybe suggests that randomness is all there is, and that both life and suffering are pointless. If there is no “why,” is there then no meaning or purpose? 

That’s not where I’ve landed. Instead of "Why me?" I'm asking: "Who am I becoming? Who shall I become through this? How shall I become more of who I am capable of being, perhaps meant to be, in the grand purpose that lies at the heart of my first unfurling from that miniscule fiddlehead?" Purpose, direction, and meaning may be latent in all life, in all matter, and it is ours, as humans, to discover, ascribe, and fulfill. 

As I navigate my treatment and recovery, I've been thinking a lot about my daughter’s journey. In one of our conversations last fall, she said something that lodged itself deep in my soul: she wouldn't undo what has happened to her. Despite the prolonged life-threatening condition, the painful treatments, the isolation from peers, the derailment of her plans, the trauma to her body and mind—despite all of that, she wouldn't erase this chapter if she were given the chance. The changes it has wrought in her—the losses and the gains—have enabled her to move closer to the person she wants to be. And closer to us, her parents, in the process. There is so much wisdom in this. 

I’ve read about research studies with people surviving life-altering illnesses and disabilities who would not undo their diagnosis, and some who would not even choose a medical cure—because of the transformation, the clarity, the gift that somehow coiled itself inside the loss. The paradox of gratitude, not for the pain itself, but for what it made possible.

I feel grateful that this possibility was somehow apparent to me from the very first moment of my own diagnosis. Maybe this was one of the gifts coiled in my daughter’s suffering - a gift to me. So I didn't ask, why me? Instead, I started asking better questions.

Not "Why me?" but "What now?"

Not "How could this happen?" but "How shall I respond?"

Not "What did I do to deserve this?" but "What might I discover through this?"

I don't wish for shitty things to happen to me or others. But I also don't need or want for all my wishes to come true. I want to grow, evolve, and be ready when the opportunity to more fully flourish, to bloom, presents itself. I am trying to nourish my own roots, resilience, and evolvability.

When I look back at my life's winding path, I see that all the things I've failed at—the opportunities that didn’t pan out, the plans that were foiled, the grief, misery, and anxiety I've endured—have made it possible for me to be where and who I am now. Each apparent setback or disappointment somehow contributed to the mosaic of my current life—a life that, despite this newest challenge, I cherish.

Here are some possible questions to explore in this vein: 

Would you delete a difficult career path that forged the skills and insight you developed in navigating it?

Would you go back and undo an unhappy marriage if it meant not having the *particular* children whom you love with all your being?

Would you remove all your loved one's flaws so that you didn't have to work so hard to love them and they were less uniquely themselves? (If yes, you may be primed for an AI life-partner!)

Would you undo your own struggles so you could be happier and more light-hearted, but less strong, sturdy, empathetic, insightful, vulnerable, and complex?

There are situations and periods of life I’d never want to relive (junior high school comes to mind!), but I also wouldn’t exchange them. 

This has still been a shitty year. I'm still grieving and processing and healing. But in the midst of all this, I'm learning to welcome the questions that open rather than close, that invite rather than accuse, that create space for growth rather than constrict with fear.

And maybe that's not just a better way to face cancer, but a better way to face life itself.

Like the bison in my dream from a couple years ago—that massive, powerful creature that both terrified and fascinated me—this cancer is both danger and presence. I can run from it in fear, or I can try to understand what it might be bringing into my life. Not because cancer itself is a gift—it's not—but because my response to it might be. Even as my body faces this new threat, I feel more at home in myself than I did before I scratched that fateful itch.