From Surviving to Living: How Cancer Taught Me to Finally Listen to My Body

In this profound episode of "Surrendering to the Signs," I sit down with Ruud Hopstaken, a former client turned dear friend and colleague, to explore one of life's most challenging crossroads: the moment when survival is no longer enough, and we must learn what it means to truly live.

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The Crossroads That Changes Everything

"I've been on many crossroads, but I think the one in the beginning of 2012, that was a big one," Ruud tells me from my living room, in a conversation we'd envisioned having years ago. "When I look back it becomes even bigger.”

Before that crossroad, Ruud's life looked successful from the outside. He was vice chair of the largest university medical center in the Netherlands, working 24/7. 

"I was running marathons. I was constantly in motion. I was still married at that time, but it was not fulfilling for me, and mostly that was my problem - because I didn't share what was going on inside of me. I just thought, well, if I don't talk about it, then it will continue or whatever. But apparently it didn't."

In 2012, everything unraveled at once. Ruud stepped out of his marriage and rented a place nearby. While running a half marathon in Stockholm with a friend, she noticed something was wrong. "You're not in your normal shape. You should look at it," she told him.

The Moment Everything Goes Silent

Working in a hospital meant Ruud knew everyone. The doctors were friends. So when he went for a checkup, he expected manageable news. Instead, his colleague delivered the diagnosis: stomach cancer. 

"Within two or three days, I was home sitting on my couch and everything became silent - I had no job, I’d stepped out of my marriage, and my life expectancy was not that high."

He remembers looking at his phone. No emails. No calls. After living life always on, he was suddenly off.

"It was a huge experience, but when I look back now, it was only the beginning."

Working With Your Body vs. Listening to Your Body

What strikes me most about Ruud's story is his realization about the difference between using your body and listening to what it’s trying to tell you.

"I realized as I was talking to the surgeon about stomach cancer it was as if I was talking about something not belonging to me," he explains. 

The moment of truth came with his first chemotherapy treatment. The nurse arrived dressed in protective clothing with two bottles marked with huge red crosses. She put the needle in his arm.

"That moment I realized it's about me. Until then I worked with my body, exhausted my body, ran marathons, but I didn't listen to it. I just made my body do what I wanted it to do."

Now his body was demanding to be heard. 

Three Options

Going into the surgery, he was given three scenarios: they could open him up and immediately close him if it looked too bad (one hour recovery); they could remove just the tumor (four hours); or it could require major surgery (eight hours).

The morning of surgery, Ruud climbed onto the operating table and everything went black.

When he woke up in recovery, his first question was: "What time is it?"

"I realized I had the surgery at eight o'clock, so I thought, okay, when it is 10 o'clock, bad, bad news. When it is 12 o'clock, it's good news, and when it is four o'clock, it's also a bit of bad news."

It was around noon. They'd removed his stomach.

"I felt so happy. It's strange. How can you be happy when they removed your stomach? And at that moment I realized I felt so whole, but I lost my stomach. It was an amazing experience."

Tears of Loss

Two weeks later, the pathology results came back. The surgeon rode his bike to the hospital to deliver the news personally: "It's okay."

Ruud started crying. The surgeon assumed they were tears of joy, but they weren't just that.

"It was not that I was happy because I was going to live, but it was in a way from sadness because cancer has been with me for more than half a year."

He explains there are two types of people with cancer. Some fight it, wanting to kill it and remove it as something foreign. "And you have another group of people, and I'm one of them who says, well, it's in me. I am not cancer, but I have a disease, I have cancer and I want to treat it well."

Cancer had become part of him. Now they'd taken that part away. "I lost something.”

From Surviving to Living

"The difficult part had to start because now I realize I survived cancer. I even survived all my top jobs. I survived everything. But how do I live?"

This is the heart of Ruud's journey and what makes his story so relevant: "Instead of surviving, instead of running marathons, jobs 24/7, surviving chemotherapy. How do you live?"

He embarked on a journey to discover “Who am I? And what am I here to do?"

A Plane Going Down

On his way to Hawaii to swim with dolphins, Ruud's plane experienced engine failure. The captain announced they were going down to an emergency landing. People screamed. People cried. People went silent.

"And there was only one person with a big smile. That was me because I thought, listen, I survived cancer. Oh my God, I'm not going to die in a plane crash. It's not going to happen."

And it didn't.

The Gift of Connection

Perhaps the most moving part of Ruud's story is how cancer gave back what his driven life had taken away: the ability to truly connect.

"Although I lost my stomach. I got back my ability to connect and to share feelings. I realized that if I wanted to hear something from my daughter or my son, I had to say something first."

His daughter became his mirror. She told him a painful truth: "You can always call me, I said to her and she said, no, I couldn't have called you because when I called you, I got your PA or I never reached you. And when I reached you, I got you on the phone, but you were not there. I hear you're talking but you were somewhere else."

He hadn't realized it, but she was right.

The Teddy Bear

During chemotherapy, Ruud made a mistake. One night, feeling horrible, he left his daughter alone while he went to the hospital. He completely forgot she'd be left in anxiety about whether he would survive.

Rebuilding took time. When Ruud started traveling again to seminars, his daughter gave him her teddy bear as a companion. In every hotel room, he'd unpack the bear and think: "I'm not alone."

Before surgery, Ruud had prepared everything - his will, funeral arrangements, even the restaurant for the reception. He'd made a list of songs to be played, including one he and his daughter always sang together at concerts.

His daughter found the list and came to him shaking: "Are you really going to die?"

"No, but these are the preparations," he told her. But for her, "they were not preparations, but they were in a way, preparations to say goodbye."

After he survived, that song became enormous for them. Every time the singer performed it, they'd both cry, knowing what it had meant, knowing he was still alive.

Then came the moment in Antwerp. Before a concert, Ruud opened his suitcase and told his daughter: "It's time to give it back to you."

The teddy bear had helped them both. "She became my daughter again."

Walking Your Own Road

Now, as a coach and facilitator, Ruud helps others navigate their own crossroads. But he's clear about what he can and cannot do.

"The only thing I can do with people is help them walk their road, to live their life and not somebody else's life."

Ruud's story demonstrates the profound difference between surviving and living, between working with your body and listening to it, between being present and simply being there. 

His cancer didn't just take his stomach - it gave him back his ability to feel, to connect, and to finally answer the question: who am I, and what am I here to do?

Sometimes the hardest crossroad isn't surviving the crisis. It's learning to live after you've survived it. 

Listen to the full conversation to hear more about Ruud's journey, his work helping others navigate their own crossroads, and the wisdom he's gained about truly living rather than just surviving.

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Find Ruud at https://www.ruudhopstaken.com/