We’re approaching a milestone.

You would think that word would feel lighter.

Milestone.

It sounds like celebration. Like a banner. Like exhaling. And in some ways, it is all of those things. We have fought hard to get here. Our child has fought hard to get here. There were days in the beginning when this point felt theoretical — too far away to even picture clearly.

And yet.

Here we are, approaching it… and I feel two completely opposite things at once.

I feel relief. And I feel the weight of forever.

Because a milestone in treatment is not the end of treatment. It’s not the end of fear. It’s not the end of scans, or labs, or chemo, or waiting for phone calls. It’s not even the end of that small internal flinch every time my phone rings from an unknown number.

It’s just a marker.

A beautiful, hard-earned, sacred marker. But a marker nonetheless.

When we first started this journey, everything was urgent. Every hour mattered. Every number mattered. We lived in crisis mode. There wasn’t space to think about “later” because survival was right now.

Now we are inching toward something that resembles stability. And stability should feel peaceful.

Instead, it feels unfamiliar.

Because when you’ve trained your nervous system to live in emergency mode, calm feels suspicious.

I find myself wondering:

Will there ever be a day when my worries revolve around normal childhood things?

Homework not turned in.

Friend drama.

Too much screen time.

A messy bedroom.

Will I ever lie awake at night because I’m worried about a middle school dance instead of blood counts? Because I’m thinking about driving lessons instead of long-term side effects?

Will my heart ever stop bracing?

People say, “You must be so excited to hit this milestone.”

I am. Truly. Deeply.

But milestones in this world come with fine print. They come with statistics and percentages and follow-up schedules. They come with the quiet understanding that we are not the same family we were before.

We’ve learned too much.

We know how quickly normal can shatter. We know the vocabulary. We know the protocols. We know what it feels like to sit in a room and wait for someone to tell you whether your world just changed again.

That knowledge doesn’t disappear just because we reached a date on a calendar. There’s also this strange grief that shows up around milestones.

Because hitting one means we’ve endured everything before it.

Every needle.

Every admission.

Every night on the hospital couch.

Every time our child did something brave that no child should have to do.

The milestone is proof of survival.

But it is also evidence of what survival required. And sometimes that makes it heavy.

I think what surprises me most is realizing that even as treatment shifts, the weight doesn’t automatically lift.

I thought maybe at this point I’d sleep through the night. I thought maybe my brain would loosen its grip.

Instead, I find myself staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m., wondering what the next year holds. Wondering what the next five years hold. Wondering if I will always measure time in follow-up appointments instead of school semesters.

Wondering if “after this” is real — or if this is simply the new shape of our life.

But here’s what I’m slowly learning:

Two things can be true.

We can celebrate and still be afraid.

We can feel grateful and still feel exhausted.

We can hit a milestone and still feel like we have a lifetime to go.

This isn’t ingratitude. It’s trauma. It’s love. It’s a nervous system that learned the hard way that vigilance feels like protection. And maybe healing doesn’t look like never worrying again.

Maybe healing looks like gradually making room for lighter worries alongside the heavy ones.

Maybe one day the thoughts that keep me up at night will be a mix — some ordinary, some not. Maybe the heavy ones won’t disappear, but they won’t be the only ones either.

Maybe normal doesn’t return all at once. Maybe it tiptoes back in quietly.

A forgotten lunchbox.

A last-minute science project.

A slammed bedroom door.

Maybe one day I’ll find myself awake at 2 a.m. worrying about curfew.

And maybe that will be its own kind of miracle.

For now, we are here. At a milestone that isn’t a finish line.

Still standing. Still loving fiercely. Still carrying both hope and fear in the same hands. And maybe that’s what strength looks like now.

Not the absence of heavy thoughts.

But the willingness to keep going — even when they sit beside us in the dark.