James Van Der Beek has broken his silence after announcing his diagnosis of colorectal cancer.
Van Der Beek, 47, shared a slideshow via Instagram on Saturday, November 3, which featured several photos of the Dawson’s Creek alum set to Richard La Forge’s song “Autumn Breeze.” Van Der Beek began his heartfelt caption with the words, “‘It is cancer…’”
“Each year, approximately 2 billion people around the world receive this diagnosis. “And I’m one of them,” the actor wrote. “There’s no playbook for how [to] announce these things, but I’d planned on talking about it at length with People magazine at some point soon… to raise awareness and tell my story on my own terms. But that plan had to be altered early this morning when I was informed that a tabloid was going to run with the news.”
Van Der Beek announced his cancer diagnosis in a brief statement to People earlier on Sunday, saying at the time, “I’ve been privately dealing with this diagnosis and have been taking steps to resolve it, with the support of my incredible family. There’s reason for optimism, and I’m feeling good.”
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In his Instagram post, Van Der Beek echoed this sentiment, writing, “I’ve been dealing with this privately until now, getting treatment and dialing in my overall health with greater focus than ever before. I’m in a good place and feeling strong. It’s been quite the initiation, and I’ll tell you more when I’m ready.”
He continued, “Apologies to all the people in my life who I’d planned on telling myself. Nothing about this process has occurred on my preferred timeline… But we roll with it, taking each surprise as a signpost, pointing us toward a greater destiny than we would have discovered without divine intervention. Please know that my family and I deeply appreciate all the love and support.”
Concluding his caption, Van Der Beek promised, “More to come…”
In his post, Van Der Beek tagged his wife Kimberly Van Der Beek, to whom he has been married since 2010. James and Kimberly, 42, share six children together: Olivia, 13, Joshua, 12, Annabel, 10, Emilia, 7, Gwendolyn, 6, and Jeremiah, 2.
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James has previously spoken about his parenting journey, exclusively telling Us Weekly in September 2020 how the coronavirus pandemic impacted his perspective on parenting.
“Just really learning to prioritize. I think we’ve all come to this realization that we were all so busy before with stuff that didn’t really serve us and didn’t necessarily make us happy,” James told Us at the time. “So now it’s like, ‘What am I building my life around?’ [I realized] so many of the things that I entertained doing were either based [on] some outdated idea of what I thought would be important to make me happy or somebody else’s hope or dream or expectation.”
