Holding on to Normal: How I Survived Cancer and Made It to the Other Side, Happier, Healthier and Stronger

by Alana Somerville

A compelling memoir about trying to live meaningfully with illness and triumph beyond it, by breast cancer survivor Alana Somerville, a teacher and mother of two young children.

I looked at all the sick people around me. Was I going to be like them? Was that already me? Did I suddenly have a time stamp on my life? Would I make it out of this alive?

Alana Somerville—wife, teacher and mother of two small children—was thirty-three years old when she was diagnosed with stage-two, triple-negative breast cancer. The diagnosis changed her world and the relationships she had with everyone around her. Suddenly she was faced with endless medical appointments, multiple surgeries and procedures, the challenges of chemotherapy, and all the decisions involved in her treatment. She also had to deal with the trauma of realizing that her support network—sometimes even her closest friends—could struggle with how to help or even how to react to her anymore.

Throughout the course of her illness, Alana learned to maneuver through the medical system, to advocate for herself, and to build a truly supportive network. She also discovered how to keep her positive spirit intact while undergoing a double mastectomy and ongoing treatment. She is now living cancer-free—a survivor and an advocate.

Alana’s story is not unique. It’s a story that will resonate with anyone who has suffered illness and found themselves navigating a whole new world upon diagnosis. This is an “everywoman’s” journey through the experience of cancer, tracing the emotional, physical and psychological steps that are common to all. In the end, this memoir will offer hope that one can live a healthy, fulfilling and happy life beyond diagnosis. Holding on to Normal is for anyone who is suffering—or knows someone who is suffering from—a setback in life, and who is looking for inspiration on how to navigate their own journey.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alana Somerville writes about her own struggle with cancer and surviving the journey! She had me in tears and she had me cheering her on! What a journey! Having many in my family who survived and died due to cancer this was an emotional read but also shows how positive thinking can help people during their struggles and to perhaps overcome!!!

[Anne Logan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Holding on to Normal by Alana Somerville is a memoir. It’s about a 33-year-old mother of two young children who is diagnosed with breast cancer; her journey of discovering the lump, deciding on treatments and reconstructive surgeries and then enduring the chemotherapy that led to her recovery. Why did I choose to read this difficult book during a pandemic? I honestly have no idea why I picked this out of the close-to-a-hundred other options on my shelf, but here we are.

Somerville’s story felt very real to me. The lead-up to her diagnosis is an anxiety-inducing few chapters, from her initial realization that she had a strange lump to the fateful appointment where her cancer is confirmed (after many tests). I raced through the pages desperate to reach what I already knew was coming. I have so much in common with Somerville too, I felt like I was right there with her; a young mother of two myself, the amount of stress that diagnosis would have caused in my own life seems insurmountable. Perhaps the biggest difference between her life and mine is that none of her family had a history of cancer, while mine is riddled with it. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, my mother had both skin and breast cancer, succumbing just before her 50th birthday. And like Alana, she was also a teacher living in Southern Ontario. Can you see now why reading this book was so difficult for me? But despite my initial reluctance to read the book, I pushed through anyway (as I always do) because I’d had the book since the beginning of 2018 and it wasn’t about a pandemic, so what were my excuses? And I knew she survived the whole thing so I expected and looked forward to a happy ending, which is something we all need right now. Plus, it’s short! My favourite kind of book.

Not surprisingly, the story is inspiring, and Somerville’s struggles puts our current challenges in perspective. Women with young children will identify with this book the most because the exhaustion Somerville describes is such a common experience, yet hers is compounded by the toxic medications she’s on. The most vulnerable aspect of her writing is the embarrassment and dread she experiences over losing her hair. For young women, a drastic change in appearance like hair loss is devastatin, because it not only changes the way we feel about ourselves, but it alters the way others see us. Like the other challenges thrown her way, Somerville works through this too, acknowledging her emotions and coming out stronger on the other side.

My problem with the book is the writing. Somerville’s voice is flat, filled with cliches and obvious observations, for example: “In the admitting department I filled out what seemed like a huge stack of paperwork (I felt as though I was signing my life away)” (p. 39 of ARC). Is this meant to be a joke, did she feel like she was about to die, or does she have privacy issues? Who knows, but it was little asides like this that seemed completely unnecessary and oftentimes confusing. Which led me to the question; why her? This is an experience that unfortunately, so many people go through, so what makes Somerville’s story worthy of a book published by one of the biggest publishers in the world? Believe me, I feel a certain pang of cruelty in questioning the point of a cancer survivor’s story because Somerville’s tale is one of hope that can help others, but I still can’t ignore that nagging feeling that the writing leaves so much to be desired.

To read the rest of my reviews, please visit my blog:
https://ivereadthis.com/

Or follow me on social media!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Ivereadthis/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ivereadthisblog
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ivereadthis
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD6E...

[Davidleask · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not sure I would recommend this to a woman recently diagnosed with breast cancer.....too personal a story to gain support. In fact I felt some confusion over what the goal was for writing this book other than helping the author. She writes well and was engrossing, but I haven't come away with any inspiration for other patients.

[lauren🌷 · Rating 5 out of 5]

An empowering story of someone who has determination, and lots of heart.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alana gives us tears, hope and joy. By sharing her experience, she helps us to understand how sickness can change the life of a person and how we can support them during these awful times.