Still Here, Still Becoming: Cancer Remapping My Queer Self
Rod Muriano created this short personal film through the University of Toronto Digital Storytelling Workshop after his diagnosis of aggressive prostate cancer.
Rod’s story is a deeply personal reflection that reflects on the emotional and identity-related challenges of tests, surgery, radiation, and hormone therapy that profoundly affected not only his body but also his sexuality, dignity, relationships, and identity as a queer man.
“ The side effects piled up. And with them came a fear...I didn’t know how to name it at first. I had to sit with that, I needed to face it, understand it; that was not just a fear of pain, but also a fear of rejection. Fear of becoming someone my own community, or even my own body, might not know how to hold. I thought about pleasure, about touch, about the ways I had always known how to give love, receive love, be desired, and desire back. And then suddenly there was this question underneath all of it: what happens when the body changes? What happens when the old map doesn’t work anymore?”
Rod uses the idea of ‘self‑retethering’ to describe an ongoing, layered process: learning how to be in an honest relationship with a changing body, and continually returning to self‑love, presence, and meaning in the life he has now. The film sits with uncertainty and complexity rather than offering easy resolutions, inviting other 2SLGBTQI+ folks to imagine their own ways of remapping self and care through and beyond cancer.
Related stories
