After an interesting development in June, I have yet to announce something. The reason why I have held back is because “Oh, I’m sorry.”  Discussing with one of my bosses and my husband, both are of the same agreement that it is instinctive and automatic that one responds “I’m sorry” to something that they have no control over.

It is like hearing someone say “I’m sorry” when one announces that one is deaf. Why are you sorry? What did you do that constitutes an apology?  Accidentally tripping someone and saying “I’m sorry” is genuine compared to being sorry that one is deaf, white, or female – or also being a short person. Oh well.

The concept of ‘sorry’ has been overdone.  It feels like an excuse to justify someone’s feeling of awkwardness or whatever it is that they feel at the moment of the announcement.  Let’s take how students deal when they do something they should not have done. They come up to me and say “I’m sorry.”  It means nothing. See picture to the right.

Really, it does not.  The action behind the ‘sorry’ means more than the word itself. I guess that’s why I am not crazy about “I’m sorry”. How many false feelings have been shown over time when the word ‘sorry’ is used frequently?

Then one would ask “what else can we say?”  What about “shucks!”, “damn”, or a simple hug?  Disappointment is acceptable as well. After all, what we are, who we are, and the why we are, are a part of life and that experience is not necessarily something to apologize about.

So with this, my announcement is: I have stage 1 breast cancer. Work in progress.