James Van Der Beek has just woken up from a nap as he hops on a Microsoft Teams call.
About nine months after sharing his colorectal cancer diagnosis with the world, the 48-year-old actor's face looks thinner. He isn't shy talking about the toll his illness has taken on him. He admits he doesn't have as much energy as he used to. He has good days and bad days.
But, while he wouldn't wish his illness on anyone, the actor adds it's also given him something else, something he didn't expect: a deeper sense of self-love.
"Cancer's a wild thing," he says. "It really does force you to look at your own mortality and decide what's important and decide really what you want to live the rest of your life without. And so, one of the big things for me was recognizing how negative my self-talk was."
He continues: "When I was getting treatment and away from the beautiful cacophony of six kids and 36 acres and five dogs and a bearded dragon and the beautiful chaos that is my life, in the quiet I realized how negatively I was talking to myself. And so, that started a whole journey of just recognizing how important self-love is and how necessary and how simple it is."
