When the Body No Longer Feels Like You
- Jae Ross
- May 6
- 3 min read
Have you ever looked at something for so long
that you thought you knew exactly what it was—
only for something to shift—
the light in the room,
the angle of your gaze—
and suddenly
you begin to notice parts of it
you hadn’t seen before?
It doesn’t mean the object has changed.
But your relationship to it has.
And sometimes,
that changes everything.
For many people living alongside cancer,
the body becomes something they learn to see in only one way.
Through loss.
Through change.
Through what is no longer there.
Hair that once felt like part of identity—gone.
Skin that no longer feels familiar.
Scars that were not chosen.
Weight that shifts in ways that feel outside of one’s control.
A body that moves differently now.
Or doesn’t move the way it once could.
I sit with many people in this space.
And what I often hear, beneath the surface,
is not just grief—
but something quieter, and often harder to say out loud:
“I don’t recognize myself.”
“I don’t feel like me anymore.”
“I don’t like what I see.”
Over time, these moments can begin to settle into something deeper—
a quiet erosion of self-worth.
A pulling back from mirrors.
From photographs.
From intimacy.
From imagined futures that once felt possible.
The mind tries to make sense of this.
It compares—
to how things used to be.
to how others seem to look.
to an internal image that no longer matches what is in front of you.
And in doing so,
it often lands on a painful conclusion:
Something has been lost that cannot be replaced.
That conclusion makes sense.
It is the mind trying to create stability
in the face of something that feels profoundly destabilizing.
But it is not the only way to see.
Because over time—
sometimes slowly,
sometimes unexpectedly—
another kind of shift can begin to happen.
Not all at once.
Not in a way that erases what has been lost.
And not in a way that asks you to feel something you don’t feel.
But in small, often quiet moments,
people begin to notice something else.
The way new hair grows in—different, but still theirs.
The way a scar softens, and begins to carry a story instead of only an injury.
The way the body, even now, continues to move, to adapt, to endure.
Or something less visible, but just as real:
A deepening of patience.
A tenderness toward oneself that wasn’t there before.
An awareness of what matters that feels sharper, more immediate.
In my work, I’ve come to see that part of this process
is not learning to see the body as it once was—
but learning to see it more fully.
To notice what the mind narrows in on—
and how quickly it draws conclusions about worth.
And, over time,
to gently widen the lens.
To allow for the possibility
that this body—changed, unfamiliar, still becoming—
may hold more than one story at a time.
Because sometimes,
the shift is not in the body itself—
but in the way you learn
to stand beside it…
and, in time,
to find your way back
to standing within it.
Reflections on the inner psychological experience of living with cancer.
Jae L. Ross, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist who works with individuals and families whose lives have been reshaped by cancer, helping patients navigate the emotional challenges of diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship.
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