James Van Der Beek is opening up about his cancer battle. The 48-year-old Dawson’s Creek alum spoke out about his battle with Stage 3 colorectal cancer in a post on social media.
In the post, he explained how it also affected his marriage to Kimberly Van Der Beek as well as the lives of their six kids—Olivia, 14, Joshua, 13, Annabel, 11, Emilia, 8, Gwendolyn, 6, Jeremiah, 2. Keep reading to find out more… “Today’s my birthday, and it has been the hardest year of my life,” he explained. “When I was younger, I used to define myself as an actor…which was never really all that fulfilling.
And then I became a husband, and that was much better. And then I became a father, and that was the ultimate,” he said. “I could define myself then as a loving, capable, strong, supportive husband, father, provider, steward of the land that we’re so lucky to live on.
And for a long time, that felt like a really good definition to the question, ‘Who am I? What am I?’ And then this year, I had to look my own mortality in the eye.” “I had to come nose to nose with death,” he continued. “And all of those definitions that I cared so deeply about were stripped from me.
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