> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.cindyschwartz.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Its OK not to be OK - URL: https://www.cindyschwartz.com/its-ok-not-to-be-ok/ - Published: 2026-10-12T21:19:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-19T21:19:33.000Z - Description: You are allowed not to be okay yet. You are allowed to find things harder than you expected. You are allowed to have less patience for workplace shenanigans that once barely registered. - Author: Cindy Schwartz - Tags: Rewriting Leadership Norms, Women in Leadership I remember someone telling me, when I finished chemotherapy, that I must be so relieved it was over and that I could go back to normal now. Never mind that chemotherapy ended seven months after my diagnosis and I still had another eleven months of treatment ahead of me. Even if treatment had been finished, there was no normal to go back to. This is something we get wrong surprisingly often. It does not matter whether someone’s breast cancer was found at stage zero and treated with surgery, or whether it was found later and the prognosis was far more uncertain. The medical reality may be very different, but the moment the word cancer applies to you, the frame of your life changes. Conversations, thoughts, and plans that once belonged to other people suddenly belong to you and your family. For many of us, while treatment is happening, almost all of our energy goes into getting through it. We focus on winning, beating it, tolerating the next round, getting through the next appointment, and standing back up again the following week. There is not always much room left for processing what has happened. That often comes later. We do not have endless leave. Most of us use the time we have for the physical fight: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, appointments, recovery. The mental health part is something we tell ourselves we will deal with later. For high achievers and people pleasers, it can be even harder than that. Even if the leave is available, you have already taken so much time. Other people have covered for you. Your team has adjusted. Your family has carried more. You start to feel guilty even thinking about taking more time for something as intangible as your mental health. The physical treatment felt legitimate. There was a scan, a surgery, an infusion, a date in the calendar you weren’t allowed to miss. The psychological aftermath is much easier to minimise. You tell yourself you should be able to manage it. You have already done the hard part. Surely now you should just get on with things. Then later arrives at roughly the same time everyone expects us to be back. Anyone else notice the mismatch? You return to work and discover that your cognitive function may be slower than it was. Your resilience may be lower. Your concentration may be patchy. Your patience for corporate nonsense may have disappeared entirely. You may look more like yourself again, while feeling considerably less like yourself. Just as the workplace starts expecting the old version of you back, you may be least capable of being the person everyone thinks is returning. That is a norm worth rewriting. Organisations need to remember that coming back to work does not mean someone is finished recovering. The fact that treatment has ended, hair has started growing back, or a return-to-work date has been agreed does not mean the person walking back through the door is ready to operate exactly as they did before. Compassion has to extend beyond the visible part of illness. So does flexibility. So does patience. But this norm also needs rewriting for the women coming back. You are allowed not to be okay yet. You are allowed to find things harder than you expected. You are allowed to have less patience for workplace shenanigans that once barely registered. You are allowed to discover that your priorities have shifted, your energy is different, or your tolerance for pretending everything is fine has disappeared. You fought hard for your physical health. You are allowed to fight just as hard for your mental health. That might mean taking more leave. It might mean working differently for a while. It might mean saying no more often, asking for help, seeing a psychologist\*, protecting your energy, or simply acknowledging that the version of you returning to work is still recovering. None of that makes the return less successful. We need workplaces that understand recovery takes longer than treatment, and we need to give ourselves permission to understand that too. The old you has not disappeared, but she has changed, and learning to accept the new version takes time. \*If any of this sounds familiar, Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) and Beyond Blue both offer support, and your GP can help you find a psychologist.