I was 36 years old when my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. I was working as an infusion nurse at the time, and I had a one-year-old at home. Life was already full. Between my job, a new baby, and everything that comes with being a new mother, there wasn’t much room left over. And then this happened.

I did what I knew how to do. I found him a good physician, someone I had worked with before and trusted. My dad liked him too, which mattered to me. He started treatment right away. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Appointment after appointment.

Nothing worked the way we hoped it would.

Eventually, the cancer had spread enough that fluid was building up around his lungs, and they had to drain it so he could breathe. I remember watching him go through that procedure and thinking there was nothing I could do to make it easier for him. He was in so much pain. I had spent my whole career trying to ease suffering, and I couldn’t ease his.

Less than six months after his diagnosis, he died.

I was a nurse. I knew the numbers. In the 1980s, lung cancer was rarely something people survived. I understood that intellectually. But understanding something in your head and believing it in your body are two very different things.

For a long time after he died, I was consumed by one question. Did I miss something? I went over every decision. Was there a different doctor I should have found? A treatment I should have pushed harder for. A sign I should have caught sooner. I was a healthcare professional, and my own father died, and some part of me decided that meant I had failed him.

I want to be honest about something. Back then, I was still very new to energy healing. I hadn’t yet come to understand the body the way I do now, or the way I believe in now. At the time, allopathic medicine felt like the responsible choice, the serious choice, the choice a good daughter and a good nurse would make. So that’s the path we took. And I don’t regret giving him access to the best conventional care available. I regret nothing about the decision itself.

What took me years to untangle was the guilt that came after. Because here’s the truth: I did everything anyone could have done with the information and the resources available at the time. That was never the problem. The problem was believing that if I had just been smarter, or faster, or more thorough, I could have changed an outcome that was, by every measure, out of anyone’s hands.

I share this because I see this exact pattern in so many of the women I work with now, women navigating chronic illness of their own. The guilt isn’t usually about a parent. It’s about their own body. If I had just caught it sooner. If I had pushed less, or rested more, or eaten differently, or handled stress better, maybe I wouldn’t be here.

I understand that guilt from the inside. I carried a version of it for years.

But your body isn’t a test you failed. Chronic illness isn’t proof that you did something wrong. So often, illness shows up after years of pushing through, ignoring warning signs because life didn’t leave room to slow down, or carrying more than any one person should carry alone. That’s not a personal shortcoming. That’s what happens when a body is asked to survive without support for too long.

Your body makes sense. Even when it’s sick. Even when the outcome isn’t what anyone wanted. It was doing the best it could with what it had, just like I was doing the best I could with what I knew.

If you’re carrying guilt about your health, or about choices you made or didn’t make along the way, I want you to know you’re not alone in that. It’s something I understand personally, not just professionally. If you’d like to talk about it, I’d be glad to have that conversation with you.

Cherry Pfau, RN, MSN, is a holistic nurse and energy medicine practitioner in Sanford, NC, helping women over 45 navigate chronic illness with clarity and support. To talk with Cherry, book a free conversation here. https://calendly.com/cherrypfauenergyhealing/free-energy-and-vitality-call