As this year comes to a close, I keep searching for the right words. Not the polished ones. Not the inspirational clichés. Just the honest ones.

This was the year cancer entered our lives through our child’s name.

The year that split time into before and after.

The year that tried—over and over again—to take us out.

There were days when survival was the only goal. Days when celebration felt impossible, inappropriate even. Days when joy felt like a foreign language we no longer spoke. We learned quickly that cancer doesn’t just live in hospital rooms and lab results—it seeps into your bones, your marriage, your parenting, your sense of safety, your future.

And yet… here we are.

Still standing.

Still breathing.

Still together.

This year forced us to remake who we thought we were. The parents we imagined we’d be. The life we assumed we were living. It stripped us down to the rawest version of ourselves and asked us to keep showing up anyway—terrified, exhausted, heartbroken, hopeful, all at once.

We learned how to celebrate differently.

We learned that celebration doesn’t always look like balloons or parties or big wins. Sometimes it looks like stable labs. Sometimes it’s a laugh in a hospital room. Sometimes it’s simply making it through the day without falling apart—or falling apart and getting back up anyway.

We learned how to find our footing on ground that keeps shifting beneath us. How to live in the in-between. How to hold grief and gratitude in the same breath.

This new life isn’t the one we planned. It’s quieter in some ways. Heavier. More fragile. But it’s also more intentional. More honest. More awake. We notice things now—small mercies, fleeting joys, ordinary moments that feel anything but ordinary when you know how easily they can disappear.

So as we close the door on this year, we aren’t celebrating because it was easy.

We’re celebrating because we’re still here.

We’re celebrating because love held when everything else felt like it was breaking. Because our daughter fought with a strength we never should have had to witness—but will forever be in awe of. Because we learned we are capable of surviving things we once believed would destroy us.

This year tried to take us out.

But it didn’t.

And that is enough reason to celebrate the end of it—with tenderness, with gratitude, and with hope for whatever comes next.