There are moments when the rules change without asking our permission. Something enters your world unexpectedly, rearranges your priorities, and makes you question what you thought you knew about tomorrow.
I have been thinking about what it means to lead yourself when you cannot lead the situation. When you cannot fix it. When you cannot control the outcome. When resilience isn’t about overcoming something, but about continuing to live meaningfully alongside it.
Perhaps that is the hardest form of leadership. Not leading others. Leading yourself.
For me, this has meant confronting something I never expected to: how easily we can put ourselves into a box labelled “I’m not okay.” Once we’re in that box, we stop living and start waiting. We stop making plans because the future feels uncertain. We begin to believe we have to be okay before we can lead – ourselves, our teams and our lives fully again.
But perhaps that isn’t true.
I can be afraid and still be courageous. Exhausted and still find joy. Uncertain and still be present. Not okay, and still okay.
That realisation led me to write the poem that follows. I began imagining cancer as an unwelcome guest – one who arrived without invitation, took over space in our lives, and refused to leave. A guest we never wanted, and nevertheless learnt to care for. A guest who taught us things we didn’t know we needed: compassion, courage, perseverance, presence. And the discipline to stop asking “Why me?” and instead say, “Try me.”
Not because we believe we can control everything. But because we can still choose how we show up and that choice, more than any outcome, is what leadership actually is.
So, this time on LeadershipSpice, there is no recipe. Instead, there is this.
The Guest Who Wouldn’t Leave
You came into our lives
like a piercing arrow – sudden, sharp and unexpected.
We never invited you
Yet you walked through the door without knocking,
without permission, and settled yourself in
as though you belonged.
An unwelcome guest.
A rude, demanding, dominating presence
who behaved as though you owned the house.
You thought you would cripple us.
You thought you would defeat us.
You thought you would break us –
our bodies,our minds, our spirit,
our laughter, our dreams.
You thought you would turn
our lives into a waiting room,
our days into appointments,
our nights into worry,
our conversations into whispers.
You thought, perhaps,
that once you arrived,
everything else would become
less important.
But we had other plans.
Despite the trouble you brought,
We took care of you.
We learnt your language. We learnt your moods.
We learnt your demands. We gave you our time,
our attention,our energy.
We rearranged our days
around you.
We made room for you
when there was hardly
any room left to give.
We even tried
to make you comfortable
which seems rather absurd
when you had made
our lives so uncomfortable.
And still you demanded more.
More patience. More waiting.
More uncertainty. More courage
than we thought we had.
You kept troubling us.
And then you overstayed.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
Still, you refused to leave.
You settled deeper
into our lives,
as though the invitation
had been extended indefinitely.
You never seemed to notice
the pressure you created.
The exhaustion. The worry.
The moments when a smile
had to be assembled
before stepping out of the room.
You didn’t see the tears that were hidden.
The fears that were swallowed.
The nights that seemed
far longer than they should.
You didn’t see
how often we said,
“I’m fine,”
when what we really meant was,
“I’m trying.”
And perhaps that
was your greatest mistake.
You mistook our tiredness for defeat.
You mistook our silence for surrender.
You mistook our fear for weakness.
You did not understand
that people can be afraid
and still be brave.
That they can be exhausted
and still carry on.
That they can be hurting
and still laugh.
That they can be
not okay and still live.
Because somewhere along the way,
you tried to put us
inside a box.
A box labelled:
NOT OKAY.
Not okay today.
Not okay tomorrow.
Not okay until you leave.
Not okay until everything
is certain again.
But we refused
to live inside that box.
We discovered
that “not okay”
is a moment, not an identity.
So we stepped outside it.
We laughed.
We ate good food.
We celebrated.
We met people we loved.
We made plans.
We travelled when we could.
We found joy
in ridiculously ordinary things.
We made memories.
And sometimes,
you were there too.
At the edge of the photograph.
In the background
of the celebration.
Sitting quietly
in the corner of a good day.
We did not pretend
you weren’t there.
We simply refused
to let you be
the only thing there.
You occupied space.
You did not own it.
And strangely,
for all that you took from us,
you gave us with things
we never knew we needed.
You taught us compassion to understand pain
without asking it to justify itself.
You taught us tenderness – the quiet kind,
that needs no words.
You taught us courage – not the dramatic courage
of people who know they will win,
but the quiet courage of showing up
when you don’t know
what tomorrow holds.
You taught us perseverance, to keep going
without guarantees.
To find strength in smaller places.
One morning.
One meal.
One conversation.
One laugh.
One day at a time.
You taught us
to stop postponing joy.
To stop waiting
for the perfect day.
To stop saying,
“We’ll do it when things are better.”
Because sometimes
the imperfect day
is the day we have.
And somewhere along the way,
something inside us changed.
We stopped asking,
“Why me?”
And began asking,
“Why not me?”
Then something stronger:
“Try me.”
Try to frighten me.
Try to take away my courage.
Try to silence my laughter.
Try to convince me
that because life is uncertain,
it isn’t worth living fully.
Try.
Because I have learnt
that courage isn’t
the absence of fear.
It is refusing
to let fear choose
how I live.
So yes, Cancer – you may stay longer
than any guest should.
You may continue to make demands.
You may change our plans.
You may make some days
harder than others.
You may even leave scars
that will never completely disappear.
But you do not get
to decide what happens
inside this house.
You don’t get
to decide how much we laugh.
How much we love.
How much we celebrate.
How much life
we allow ourselves to live.
You don’t get to turn a family
into a diagnosis.
You don’t get to turn a caregiver
into nothing but caregiving.
You don’t get to make a woman
forget that she is more than the person
who holds everything together.
You don’t get to take away
the parts of us that existed before you arrived.
The dreams.
The friendships.
The silliness.
The music.
The food.
The conversations.
The journeys.
The joy.
The person I was before I learnt
your name.
That person is still here.
And perhaps that
is what you never understood.
You came into our lives
expecting to become
the centre of our world.
Instead,
you became a reminder
of how precious
the world already was.
You came to teach us
about endings.
We learnt about beginnings.
You came with fear.
We found courage.
You came with uncertainty.
We found presence.
You came with pain.
We found compassion.
You came expecting
to break us.
And instead,
you revealed
the places in us
that could not be broken.
So stay if you must.
Make your noise.
Take your space.
But know your place.
You are a guest.
An unwelcome one.
A difficult one.
A guest who stayed
far beyond your invitation.
But this is our home.
These are our days.
These are our memories.
This is our life.
And while you may be
a part of our story,
you are not the story.
You may be
a chapter we never chose.
But you do not get
to write the ending.
Because the ending
is not yours to write.
Until the very last page,
we will laugh.
We will love.
We will live.
We will have bad days
and good days.
We will be frightened
and brave.
We will be tired
and still find joy.
We will be
not okay – and still be okay.
And if you ask us
what we have learnt
from having you
in our lives,
we will not say defeat.
We will not say surrender.
We will not even say
that we conquered you.
We will simply say:
You taught us
how fragile life is.
And in teaching us
how fragile it is,
you taught us
how fiercely
to live it.
So, Cancer – you came like a piercing arrow.
You stayed like a rude, relentless guest.
You thought you had come
to take something from us.
But look at us.
We are still here.
Still laughing.
Still loving.
Still living.
Still choosing.
Still saying – Try me.
A final thought
We often speak about leadership as the ability to influence people, navigate complexity, drive change and achieve outcomes. But there is another kind of leadership that rarely makes it into leadership frameworks. The leadership required when you cannot change the outcome. When all you can do is decide how you will meet the day. Perhaps that is where self-leadership becomes most real. Not when everything is going well. But when life isn’t. Perhaps the question isn’t always: “How do I fix this?” Sometimes it is simply: “Who do I choose to be while this is happening?”
That is the question I am still learning to answer.
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