I’m writing this inspired by sitting in a busy coffee shop on the first real “summer” feeling day of the year.

The patio is full. T-shirts, shorts, sunglasses, iced coffees and optimistic energy everywhere. You can almost feel people emotionally defrosting after winter. Toronto in the summer has a very specific personality trait: suddenly everyone believes they’re the main character again.

And honestly? I love that for us.

But sitting here brought me right back to my first summer after chemotherapy.

My hair had grown back a fair bit by then, enough that strangers probably wouldn’t immediately know what I’d been through. But internally, I felt completely disconnected from the version of summer everyone else seemed to be stepping into so naturally.

I’d lost so much weight from treatment that I barely recognized myself. And despite having had testicular cancer – a diagnosis that statistically has strong treatment outcomes with early detection – I still felt like an imposter in survivorship. Like I belonged to a “club” I understood almost nothing about yet.

I was afraid to go outside on so many levels.

Afraid of questions.
Afraid of pity.
Afraid of people not noticing.
Afraid of people that did notice.

Even sunshine felt exposing somehow.

The strange thing about summer is that it can unintentionally amplify those feelings. The season carries this unspoken expectation that we should be energetic, social, adventurous, spontaneous, and happy. Summer has branding. It’s marketed to us like a lifestyle campaign.

But cancer, and especially cancer-related fatigue doesn’t care what month it is.

A lot of survivors quietly struggle with this disconnect. Feeling pressure to “get back out there” while still trying to understand who they are physically, emotionally, and socially after diagnosis or treatment. Even when the body is healing, confidence sometimes takes longer to catch up.

Fatigue can make that emotional gap feel even wider.

Sometimes, survivorship in the summer looks less like a rooftop party, and more like sitting in the shade for twenty minutes before needing a nap. Sometimes, it’s cancelling plans because your body tapped out before your motivation did. Sometimes, it’s wanting desperately to participate, but not wanting to explain yourself while doing it.

And sometimes … honestly … it’s just surviving a humid day without wanting to choose violence against the sun itself. 😜

That counts too.

What I eventually learned is that these feelings do begin to find their place. Not because they magically disappear, but because over time you start reconnecting to yourself differently. The pressure softens. Your relationship with your body evolves. You stop measuring your healing against seasons, social expectations, or the energy level of the folks around you.

You realize summer doesn’t have to look one specific way to still belong to you.

Maybe your summer is travel.
Maybe it’s treatment.
Maybe it’s recovery.
Maybe it’s sitting quietly with a friend who understands.
Maybe it’s learning how to exist in your body again without apologizing for it.
Maybe it’s more.

All of it counts.

Maybe, that’s the real shift? Understanding that how we choose to be present says far more about who are than the season we happen to be in?

So wherever you find yourself this summer … exhausted, healing, hopeful, uncertain, social, withdrawn, thriving, struggling, or somewhere in between, try not to pressure yourself into someone else’s version of “summer mode”.

Just be present in the day.

That’s enough.

—- Written by: Peter Laneas
Advocacy & Engagement Lead
Cancer Fatigue Services