It's Movember again! A quick overview if you're new here: hi, I'm Josh, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2020 but am officially cancer free now; and had a bout of panic attacks and severe anxiety -- leading to an OCD diagnosis -- which I'm also recovered from now. I've been participating in Movember ever since in hopes of raising some money and awareness about the issues I went though to hopefully help other people going through similar things, and hopefully help some people avoid some of the worst of what I went through.

If you've been here before you might notice I blew past something in the intro -- I'm officially no longer a cancer patient! I had my last oncology appointment this past April, everything was still all clear, which makes 5 years and the end of my surveillance! It was something I really couldn't even envision just a few years ago, and was actually kind of surreal to have this ordeal finally be at an end.

That's not actually the most exciting update in the past year though -- in June, our baby boy Eli was born! He's 4 months old now, is super smiley, loves to explore, and is just generally really great. The literal first question I asked when I got my cancer diagnosis was whether we would still be able to have kids, and I'd be lying if I said the thought didn't contribute in a fairly signficant way when my anxiety was really bad. It was a long journey, we had multiple miscarriages, went through IVF, and honestly it seemed almost impossible when we finally got to meet him. The day he was born was the day that I can distinctly remember feeling was impossibly far away 5 years ago, and to be honest it still feels surreal sometimes that he's real and thriving.

In the past, I've tried to talk about how things could get better when they feel like they're at their darkest while not really completely believing it all of the time. This year I think I can very confidently say that it's true. I couldn't have gotten here with my old strategy of trying to grit my teeth and push through and ignore stresses and be constantly hard on myself. I had to admit I needed help, and deal with some things that felt really uncomfortable. But it worked. I remember when it clicked for me, in an appointment with my psychiatrist, that it wasn't just "back to normal" that I was trying to get to -- but that things could actually be better than they were before. That I could get to a place where the constant worries weren't always winning.

As a result, and especially now that we have a baby boy, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a man in the past few months. There are a lot of descriptions of manliness from very prominent places in recent years that I feel grossly misunderstand what it really means to be a man. It's not manly to belittle, to subjugate, or to demean others. These are things that can tend to be portrayed as "strength" but are actually weakness, because they show that someone can only feel strong by putting others down. What's harder, and what it really means to be a man, is to support others, use advantages to help people without them, to admit that you need help rather than take it out on people around you.

Thanks again so much to anyone who donates, reaches out, or just reads my story -- every little bit helps, and if I can help just one person who's struggling then at least I've been able to make something good out of my experience. We can help more than one person though, and I've been blown away by all of the support and generosity in the past 5 years. My goal is $6,000 again this year, which I'll match myself again also.

Thanks so much, as always, for your support,
Josh