Creating a Legacy: Meaningful Ways to Be Remembered

A bowel cancer diagnosis, especially early-onset, often leads to some of life’s biggest and most profound questions. One of those is legacy. How will we be remembered? What impact will we leave behind? While this can be a heavy subject, it can also be incredibly empowering. Thinking about legacy isn’t just about the end of life. It’s about how we choose to live right now.

For Australians navigating bowel cancer, creating a meaningful legacy can bring a deep sense of purpose, healing, and connection. Whether you’re newly diagnosed, living with advanced cancer, or somewhere in between, legacy building can be a personal and powerful journey.

Why Legacy Matters

Legacy gives us a way to shape how we’re remembered, but also how we live today. It’s not just about material things we leave behind, but the emotional, cultural, and personal imprints we make on others.

For many people, thinking about legacy helps:

• Create clarity and intention about values, relationships, and priorities
• Bring peace of mind knowing their story, beliefs, or wisdom will continue
• Build lasting connections with loved ones, especially children or grandchildren
• Contribute meaningfully to the community or a cause they care about

Types of Legacy: What You Can Leave Behind

Legacy comes in many forms, emotional, spiritual, cultural, and even medical. It doesn’t always require money, grand gestures, or even good health. What matters most is that it reflects what’s meaningful to you.

Common legacy forms include:

• Personal storytelling and memory preservation
• Creative works like writing, art, or music
• Charitable contributions or advocacy
• Family traditions or values
• Cultural or spiritual teachings
• Medical donations (e.g. tissue donation for research)
• Time spent mentoring or supporting others

Storytelling and Preserving Memories

Sharing your life story is one of the most personal and powerful legacies you can leave. Whether it’s through written words, videos, or recorded audio, these memories can become cherished keepsakes for loved ones.

Ideas to consider:

• Write a memoir or life reflection: This could be a full book, a series of letters, or a digital journal. Focus on pivotal life moments, core values, or reflections on your cancer experience.
• Record voice or video messages: Some services like StoryCorps or Voices of Resilience offer prompts to help you start.
• Create a “legacy box”: Fill it with photos, letters, favourite items, or anything that tells your story.

For parents especially, leaving behind your voice, stories, and love can be an incredible gift. I’ve done this myself by writing a children’s book about having a parent with cancer. It’s one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever created.

Creative Expression: Art, Writing, and Music

Creative works are timeless. Whether you’re a painter, poet, singer, or scrapbooker, sharing your creativity can be an incredible part of your legacy.

You might want to:

• Write poems, blogs, or stories that reflect who you are (case in point: you’re reading one right now)
• Paint, draw, or take photos that express your perspective
• Create a recipe journal or cookbook if food has been central in your life
• Handcraft something personal like a quilt, woodwork, or jewellery for loved ones

It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be yours.

Charitable Giving and Advocacy

Legacy can also mean fighting for the change you want to see, even if you might not get to see it fully realised. That’s been a huge part of my own legacy: raising awareness, writing about cancer openly, and advocating through platforms like Bowel Cancer Australia.

Ways to get involved:

• Fundraise or donate: Support causes like Bowel Cancer Australia, especially on days like Red Apple Day (June 18)
• Leave a gift in your will: Many charities can help you plan a bequest that aligns with your values
• Start something: A scholarship, grant, or even a local event supporting young cancer patients or families
• Use your voice: Share your story publicly to break stigma and push for earlier screening and better support for young patients

Passing Down Values, Culture, and Traditions

Sometimes legacy isn’t something you can hold in your hands, it’s what you carry in your heart. Values, culture, rituals, and beliefs can be just as powerful as any physical gift.

Ways to share this type of legacy:

• Document family traditions or cultural teachings
• Teach your kids or community skills that matter to you
• Write letters of guidance for future milestones
• Pass on spiritual or personal philosophies that gave you strength

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, cultural legacy is especially sacred. If this applies to you, consider speaking with an Elder or Indigenous Liaison Officer about safe and appropriate ways to pass down knowledge and stories.

Medical and Scientific Contribution

Many Aussies with bowel cancer want to make sure their experience helps others down the line. That’s where medical legacy comes in, donating tissue, participating in research, or helping shape future treatments.

Options include:

• Donating tissue or tumour samples for research
• Joining a clinical trial or observational study
• Sharing your experience with researchers to inform care design and equity

If this interests you, chat with your oncologist or hospital’s palliative care team. They can help coordinate things safely and respectfully.

Supporting Others and Community Mentorship

You don’t need a megaphone to leave a mark. Just being there for someone can be enough. A quiet conversation, an honest message, or helping a newly diagnosed patient feel less alone, that’s legacy too.

How to do it:

• Join Bowel Cancer Australia’s Peer-to-Peer Support Network
• Reach out in online support groups or local meetups
• Offer guidance or encouragement to someone just starting this road

Making Practical Plans for After You’re Gone

Let’s be honest: this part sucks. No one wants to think about death when you’re still busy living. But making plans is a final act of love, and it helps the people you care about most.

Important steps include:

• Writing a legal will and nominating guardians for kids or pets
• Documenting your funeral or end-of-life preferences (Advance Care Directives are available in most states)
• Leaving gifts or messages for milestones like weddings or graduations
• Planning your digital legacy (what happens to your online accounts, photos, etc.)

Sites like Gathered Here offer free Aussie will templates and funeral planning tools to make this a bit easier.

Letting Your Legacy Grow While You’re Still Here

Legacy isn’t just about what happens after you die. It’s about how you live right now. And the truth is, you’re probably already building one, whether you meant to or not.

To keep growing your legacy today:

• Talk to your people about how you want to be remembered
• Celebrate small moments while you still can
• Say what needs to be said, even the hard stuff
• Trust that your existence has already mattered, just by being here

Final Thought

If you’re living with bowel cancer, especially if you’re young, you already know how unpredictable and brutal this ride can be. But even in the middle of all that chaos, you still get to choose how you show up. You get to shape what kind of impact you want to leave behind.

Legacy isn’t reserved for saints or celebrities. It’s in the words you write, the people you love, the stories you share, the laughs you spark, and the hands you hold.

So if you’ve ever wondered whether your life will be remembered, let me say this clearly: it already is.