Everyone gets sick. I just got more than my share.

Twenty surgeries, give or take, over the course of my life. Two of them were for breast cancer.

My body has been giving me lessons for as long as I can remember. But cancer is different. Cancer is the first time you truly feel it — not as an abstract concept, not as something that happens to other people — but as a real, immediate possibility. Death isn't someday. It could be now.

When I got my diagnosis, my first thought was surprisingly calm. My life has been a lot — dramatic, full, messy in all the ways that make a good story. My daughter was already an adult. If this was my goodbye, I thought, I don't have many regrets. I'm not afraid.

The only thing that broke my heart was this: my daughter would lose her mother early, just like I did. And I know exactly what that does to a person. I lived it.

That's when I started counting. How old is she now. How much time have we actually spent together. How much time is left.

After she went to university, she rented her own place, then moved in with her boyfriend after graduation. Six years passed. We saw each other occasionally. The love was always there — but the closeness, the kind that comes from just being around each other, had quietly faded.

I understood. I was exactly the same at her age. The world outside felt so big and so urgent. Friends, romance, building your own life — home was the place that would always be there, so you never rushed back to it. I remember that feeling clearly. I wanted out. I wanted more. Family could wait.

But "later" doesn't always come.

I'm healthy now. That's not something I say to comfort myself — it's true. But cancer taught me one thing I can't unlearn: you don't get to plan the things that matter most around "later."

About a year into her first job, I asked her a question. "Do you think five years from now, you'll still be doing something like this? Going to work, coming home, watching your favorite shows, same day on repeat?"

She thought about it for a while.

"Probably," she said.

One word. We both went quiet.

So I asked her something else. Did she want to give herself a year?

Leave the design job — the one paying just over thirty thousand Taiwan dollars a month, the one where she was trading her time for a number that wasn't going to change. Come with me. Travel. Figure out what she actually wants to do. Start with content creation, build something that's hers.

People said I was spoiling her. Family thought she should at least finish two years at the job first, get some real experience under her belt. But I've spent a lot of time thinking and writing about what this generation is actually up against — I've published on this in major Taiwanese media and been interviewed on national radio about Gen Z career patterns. The rules that worked for us don't apply anymore. In a K-shaped economy, trading your hours for someone else's profit is not a path forward. The only real leverage is building something of your own.

So I offered to cover her expenses for the year. Not to rescue her. To give her the space to find out who she is.

There was another reason, one that had nothing to do with career strategy.

I've watched too many people spend their whole lives being busy. Busy in their twenties, busy in their forties, and then one day they look up and the person they meant to spend more time with is gone, or too sick, or the moment has simply passed.

I didn't want that for us.

I want her to know her mother while I'm still healthy. I want us to have memories that belong only to us — not the kind you make on a holiday, but the kind that come from actually living alongside someone. I want to rebuild what six years of distance quietly took.

This trip is not a vacation. We'll work together, live together, and inevitably get on each other's nerves. She's her own person — she has her own boundaries, her own way of seeing things. She's not going to do something just because I'm her mother. I know this year won't always be easy.

But I'd rather face that than keep pretending that "we're close, we just don't see each other much" is good enough.

I don't need a lot. I just want us to have real time together — while she's still young, while I'm still well.

Not someday. Now.

If you're thinking about what's next — for yourself or someone you love — come find me at futurehealingdesign.com.

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