If you haven’t seen Nightbirde’s golden buzzer performance of this song on America’s Got Talent, are you even on social media??

A couple of weeks ago (yes, it’s taken me this long to make time to post) I overheard G listening to something on his phone in another room. I wasn’t able to make out the words, just a soft melodic voice floating into the kitchen from the lounge room, and as I walked in to where he was sitting to find out who it was, all I could hear was “it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok if you’re lost, we’re all a little lost and it’s alright…”

Later that night, I googled it for myself and sat in bed listening to the voice of someone still battling cancer telling me that it was alright.

When G was first diagnosed with a rare and aggressive lymphoma last year, I spent hours telling other people that bad things happen to good people and that there is no rhyme or reason as to why some people develop cancer; one in two men will develop some type of cancer in their lifetime, as will one in three women. All the while, I was running through a list in my head of all the possible ways I was responsible for his cancer–everything from physical (I must have weakened his immune system by giving him HIV even though I don’t have HIV), to spiritual (God is punishing me for not believing in God anymore), to psychological (if I don’t perform certain rituals and compulsions then bad things happen to people I care about).

Being responsible for it meant that it was possible that I could resolve it, fix it–maybe–or at the very least, I was to blame–and that life wasn’t as uncertain as it felt when the outcome of this disease was entirely out of my hands. It’s not that I’m a doctor. I just feel like I should be able to fix everything for those I love. Because although G was the one with cancer, he wasn’t the only one impacted.

In Nightbirde’s AGT introduction, when she explains she still has cancer in her lungs, liver and spine, one of the judges says “oh, so you’re not ok?” and she replies “not in every way, no.” And then she says the thing I’ve spent the last year trying to teach and learn at the same time…

“It’s important that everyone knows I’m so much more than the bad things that happen to me.”