“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.”
– Elizabeth Edwards, Resilience
After fighting a long battle with cancer, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of disgraced politician John Edwards, has passed away. Elizabeth lost the battle with cancer today at the age of 61.
Despite the fact that Edwards had been ill for quite some time, it didn’t prevent her from cultivating a respectable, public, political image for herself – even throughout the time when her husband’s affair had come out into the open. During this time of sickness, Elizabeth also published her memoirs and lectured to crowds of thousands on being a survivor, being resilient, and being an informed, strong woman in today’s political arena.
Elizabeth kept up the fight even up until yesterday afternoon – she published a note to friends on Facebook saying:
“I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces — my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that.”
May you finally rest in peace, Liz. You will always be remembered as a phenomenal woman in my eyes.
I truly do not know how she kept her composure and grace during these past couple of years. I mean – fuck – you have cancer and you are fighting to live every bloody day. Then you find out the person who is supposed to have your back has some other younger woman on HER back….and knocks her up. I know that feeling when you find out your boyfriend cheated on you….that horrible kick in the gut and pain in your heart. It must have been a hundred times worse for a married woman with children and terminal cancer. The fact that she did not kill the son-of-a-bitch is a testament to her strength. What jury would have convicted her? We don’t use this word much anymore but we need to revive it for John Edwards. Cad. John Edwards is a cad.
God bless you, Elizabeth. You were a tough dame and will be missed.
RIP, Elizabeth. That last quote of hers on Facebook brought tears to my eyes.
OK Edwards is/was a scumbag. And she did compose herself with grace and diginity through all of it. This is certain.
But remember, like Shrillary, this woman BOUGHT INTO the power that comes with marrying a dude like ding-dong whatshisfrick. She went in eyes wide open. He’d been boinkin’ around in some form or another for a long time, and she went with it. So that part I have no sympathy for. The cancer and suffering? Yes. I wonder if she got her first colonoscopy at 50 like she shoulda – since I think that’s where her cancer started.
My deepest sympathy to her children and parents, if they’re still around.