“After cancer my brain passed away”: Bianca Balti shows the true face of that “strange and lonely place which is depression”

“The depression after surviving cancer is real, it is legitimate, and it is not a moral failure“. It is with these strong and clear words that Bianca Balti has chosen to tell each other, to remove the veil from that part of a tumor that we almost never speak: the after one. That fragile and slippery soil that opens when the care ends, when the worst seems to have passed but inside it remains a void.

I disappeared from social media because I was depressed – he confides the model. Cancer care have been fine, they have been in remission for months. I am grateful. But gratitude does not erase depression, it complicates it. Sometimes it makes it shameful.

Here is the naked truth: surviving does not automatically mean returning to the life of before. Bianca says that it is as if her brain, after months of diagnosis, therapies, travel and commitments, had “turned off”.

The choice of silence

Depression, he says, is “A strange and cruel place“

For this, Bianca disappeared from Instagram. He could not pretend with a smile of circumstance, he could not hide that inner bruise. Part of his silence confesses, it was protection. Today he has chosen a different, more intimate and slow space: a newsletter on Substack, written in English. A place where his words seem to scroll as a chat with friends in front of a cup of tea.

Of course, there are also practical reasons that have contributed to his sadness: the eldest daughter who leaves the home, the parents with new projects, a boyfriend absorbed by work, an early return to the United States. But Bianca knows it well: «It wasn’t all here. There was something deeper. “

Bianca Balti’s lesson

Bianca, however, reacts. He returns to talk to the oncological psychologist, resumes Pilates, slows down the rhythms. What is his teaching: simplifying life, priority to his own health. A teaching that is worth a lot: taking care of yourself is not selfishness, it is a need.

I’m here now, I’m a work in progress – says Bianca. I will continue to show myself imperfectly, because it is the only authentic way of being there.

Necessary and urgent words: depression is not a moral failure, but a human experience. Show yourself fragile, imperfect, “work in progress”, can be the most powerful form of authenticity.

Because healing is not only the absence of illness. It is also learning to live with your scars.