[Guest blog by Marissa Rusnow]
There is life after cancer, but it may not look like the life you imagined while you were fighting to survive.
No one really prepares you for that part.
During treatment, everything is clear: appointments, scans, protocols, next steps. My job was to show up, endure, and keep going. There is a structure to survival, even when it’s hard. People check on you. You’re allowed to be tired, scared, and focused only on getting through.
Then treatment ends and emotional whiplash begins.
You’re told to celebrate, to be grateful, to get back to normal. But your body feels unfamiliar. Your mind doesn’t trust peace yet. The world expects you to move forward, while part of you is still standing in the ashes of what you lost; your health, your sense of safety, the version of yourself that existed before cancer came into life like a storm.
This is the part we don’t talk about enough.
Life after cancer isn’t a finish line. It’s a threshold.
For me, survivorship was disorienting. I had survived a three-year cancer journey, yet I felt reborn. I wasn’t the same person I had been before, I was transforming into my authentic self. There was grief mixed with relief, fear layered over hope. Words fell short of rationalizing what I was experiencing.
That’s where therapeutic collage art entered my healing.
I didn’t come to collage to “make art.” I came to it because I needed a way to process what my nervous system was holding when my mind couldn’t organize it yet. Collage offered something gentle and non-demanding. There was no pressure to perform, explain, or fix anything. Just images, textures, intuition and permission to listen inward.
Through collage, I began to see what I couldn’t yet say out loud.
Pieces torn, layered, rearranged. Images of strength beside images of exhaustion. Space for contradiction. Space for becoming. The process mirrored survivorship itself: not linear, not polished, but deeply honest. It helped me externalize the internal, giving shape to emotions that felt too tangled to name.
What surprised me most was how regulating it felt. My body softened. My breath slowed. For the first time in a long time, I felt present with myself rather than bracing against what I’d been through.
That experience changed everything.
Today, when I speak with cancer survivors, I often remind them: struggling after treatment does not mean you’re doing survivorship wrong. It means you’re human. It means your body and mind are still integrating what you lived through. Healing doesn’t end when treatment does, it simply changes form.
Therapeutic collage art is one of the ways I now support survivors to navigate that transition. It’s accessible. No artistic experience required. There are no right answers or perfect outcomes. Just an invitation to explore identity, resilience, boundaries, and hope in a way that feels safe and authentic.
For many survivors, collage becomes a mirror. A way to witness themselves with compassion. A reminder that they are not broken for needing time, support, or softness after survival.
There is life after cancer, but it’s different. Slower. More intentional. It asks for patience. It asks for honesty. It asks you to release the idea of “going back” and instead allow yourself to rise into something new.
Survivorship is not about returning to who you were before cancer.
It’s about becoming who you are now, with everything you’ve lived through woven into you.
And like the Phoenix, that rising doesn’t happen all at once. It happens piece by piece. Layer by layer. Image by image. Until one day, you realize you are no longer standing in the ashes, you are building from them.
After navigating a three-year cancer journey, Marissa experienced firsthand the complex realities of survivorship; grief, anxiety, disconnection, and the pressure to “move on” or go “back to normal.” These experiences shape her work helping others understand that healing doesn’t end when treatment does. Her talks integrate lived experience, insights, and therapeutic collage art—an accessible creative practice that helps survivors process emotions beyond words. This gentle approach supports nervous system regulation, self-connection, and emotional integration during recovery. Like a phoenix, survivorship is not about returning to what was lost, but rising into a new self. You can find Marissa here.
Marissa is part of the Official NCSD Speakers Bureau Roster.
