Voices

Douglas Flora

Sep 6, 2025, 12:57

Douglas Flora: When There is No Wind, We Row

Douglas Flora, President-Elect at Association of Cancer Care Centers, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“‘When there is no wind, we row.’

Tough week here. The incapacitating back pain that took me to surgery a few months ago has reemerged, and it’s the worst I’ve ever experienced. It’s been rough.

When my life gets rough, I go back to this simple phrase above again and again, an unexpected gift from a very dear patient I will never forget. She was a young mother with breast cancer, and at the same time, she was caring for her husband as he was dying of metastatic melanoma with significant brain involvement. She was providing his round-the-clock home care, even assisting him with bathing and toileting, all while she underwent aggressive chemotherapy herself. I could not help but ask her how she coped so well under such staggering stress and sadness.

Her response, delivered without a hint of self-pity, has resonated with me for almost twenty years. She simply said, “When there is no wind, we row.”

This wasn’t a motivational slogan. It was a cold, hard fact of her life. She was an anchor in a storm, pulling on the oars to keep her children afloat and care for her dying husband, all while her own body was being ravaged by chemo. There were no tailwinds for her. The tides were against her, but she didn’t stop. She chose, every single day, to put her back into it, to make the agonizing choice to row, to move the boat forward.

It was a demonstration of a quiet, courageous purpose that transcended circumstance. She was proof that true grit isn’t a speech or a poster—it’s the relentless, unglamorous work of just keeping going.

And her message applies to us all. For me this week, that means rowing through an MRI and a another likely back surgery, at a time that my life has never been busier.

I’m happy to report that, thanks to her grit, she was cured and is living a great life now. Sometimes, when the wind goes away for a bit, you simply have to keep rowing until life gets easier and the wind returns again to fill the sails.”

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