September transitions

I love September. The month that says a lingering farewell to summer and gingerly embraces the autumn. Holding on to warm sunny days while ushering in crispness with cool nights and chilly mornings. Nature turns its face toward the sun later each day and closes its eyes earlier each eve. New guests visit the bird feeders and baths while others say farewell and head for climates south.

September opens doors and windows.

Postcards to yourself

If you were sending your younger self a postcard, what would you say to you? At this moment in your life, what would you want yourself at 10, or 15, or 25, or even 35, to know about who you are and where you are in life now?

Considering postcards don't allow for a lot of commentary, what could you ... would you ... want to say in that short captive space that might help that younger you to navigate life better? And would giving insight on the choices you made at that point in life be your message? Would altering your life, steering yourself away from some bad decisions, be your intent? Or would your note be more like "Having so much fun and can't wait till you get here" ... a more cryptic, but still settling, kind of message?

If you could send your younger self a postcard, would you even dare to do so? Would you be concerned and wonder what effect your comments, instruction, hints about life might have upon that past you, and, what it would then mean about what you're doing in this "present" and who you are now?

Since it's not possible to send ourselves a postcard to the long ago from the right now, the only thing we can do is send ourselves a message today. We have the power and capacity to send a literal or figurative postcard to our now-present-soon-to-be-past-self that all is well and that while life has its ups, downs, good and bad, happy, sad, tough times, it is Life after all.

Challenges

There really isn't anything that prepared me for the breast cancer diagnosis. Similarly, there isn't anything that prepared me for life after the diagnosis or life during the treatments ... or life after the treatments.

Sometimes talking to someone else who has been there is a big help. I don't feel like I need therapy ... well at least not most days! I don't want to go to a support group. But. I sometimes feel like I am the only person in the world who is experiencing shit side effects from the breast cancer treatments and also the mental, emotional and spiritual changes ... that are constant.

I had a double mastectomy. Am taking Tamoxifen. Am as big as a fucking house. Partly due to the original chemo and then lack of energy and no exercise and then the Tamoxifen. I broke up a long time relationship a couple of years before the diagnosis ... I bring up that up because these days I would really like to go out on a date or something, but I am like, well, where do I meet someone at my age and then when I do meet someone when do I bring up the fact that the boobs I have are removable?

People ask, "Have you written anything with regard to your experience?" I started this blog to get some stuff out and to share with my family and my friends how I was feeling so they didn't have to feel uncomfortable about asking me stuff. Then I got tired of talking about it, but crap, you live it whether you talk about it or not.

What's so weird is that as a cancer survivor you feel lucky. You are grateful to have life and to have come out on the other side of the treatment. The flip side is that there's some guilt. Okay, maybe that's just me, the Catholic thing and all.

There's also frustration and confusion.

After your hair grows back and a couple of years goes by, you think you should be all better. Get on with life. Do what you used to do. You think that you are back to "normal" and your expectations of yourself are that you are -- but the chemo and the cancer and the worry and the post-chemo treatments take a toll.

There you are looking at yourself in the mirror and you see yourself ... but then somedays it seems like that reflection ... it isn't really you ... or is it? No matter what, you really never are who you were before the diagnosis.

All that said, I feel so much better now than I did a year ago, and I try to celebrate my survivorship daily. An occasional funk is natural, I think, but I always say to myself, at least I am alive to be cranky, crabby, to feel fat, to be annoyed ... etc.

The good thing about surviving cancer is that life does go on.

Amusements

I love to feed the birds. I love birds of all kinds and always have. This love most likely was instilled in me by my grandmother, who, when she would visit us in Richmond from Chicago, would wax amazed at the blue jays and robins that hopped around our front yard bird feeder. Our picture window in the living room let us see nature in splendor, our couch served as the viewing spot. I would sit there, with my lovely Gramma sitting next to me, and watch the birds with her. If anyone at that given moment asked me where my favorite place in the world was, it would have been right there, on the Sears and Roebuck couch, next to my most special person in the world.

So here, now, years after my sweet Gramma has gone to heaven, I carry on the tradition. Feeding birds, watching their antics and being amazed and awed by nature.

Meanwhile, there is the squirrel.

All this spring I have been working to outfox the squirrel. No, it isn't just one squirrel. There are many. But to me, the battle is against the one. The squirrel.

If anyone out there reading this knows of a real way to keep a squirrel from raiding the bird feeders in the world, please let me know. Do not tell me about the squirrel proof bird feeder. I have bought more than one and I will tell you this ... the squirrel has found her way past the proofing.

I have to admit that I am rather amused by the squirrel's antics, her ability to "figure things out" and do what comes natural -- survival at whatever cost. I'm therefore most impressed with her tenacity. She really doesn't give up until she wins. Or till it's time to go home.

I think I should take some lessons from this squirrel.

Thunderstorms

There is nothing better than a spring thunderstorm. Except maybe a summer thunderstorm.

The air, electric, ticks with energy. The sweet fragrant rain (a scientist told me that aroma we smell during a rain storm is ozone). Everything turns upward, reaching for the green.

Thunderstorms. Reflecting life in a pool of fresh water.

Happy days, June.

Loss and gain

You know, since I lost my breasts and then went through chemo, I have not really spent much time considering my loss. That is, I have spent a lot more time considering what I have gained... much healthier in the long run, I think.

Most of the time, when tragedy strikes us ... and let me be frank here, YES it was a tragic occurrence that I lost my breasts ... it is easy to be consumed by the pain, the loss, the fear.

But I choose not to focus on the tragic. I am alive. Many adjectives to describe this new chance I have at life: Surviving. Grateful. Hopeful. Full of myself. Being. Learning. Looking for the new. Seeking and seeing the hand of God in all things. Faithful. Believing in the future. Growing.

I think the tragedy is that it sometimes takes loss to appreciate gain and to love what we have been able to keep.

Two years later ...

May 15, 2009 is a special day.

Two years have gone by since my diagnosis of breast cancer. I am truly feeling better. I look forward to many more years of growing, feeling better and surviving whatever life throws at me.

Searching

I always seem to be searching. But for what? Something I have lost? Something I have yet to encounter ... something nebulous, a thing I do not know I will find? Something that is searching for me?

Maybe I am searching for an answer.

What, though, is the question?

I often feel I am in a fog. A cloud. Floating around without purpose.

It's sometimes unsettling to be in this position, but since it is very much a normal part of who I am and a significant quality of my life, it mostly feels like home.

Curious. Does this happen to everyone, or is it a phenomenon unique to me? Is this part of the larger collective consciousness, a human condition?

Nevermind ... no answer required. Even if it's true that all of us have this experience, the actual searching is our own. The experience then for me ... mine.

Now, what was it I am looking for?

Blue

There are days I feel blue. For no reason. Inexplicably, this wave like the ocean engulfs me, cerulean. Maybe the blue came upon me because it is Monday. Maybe it came in the night. I didn't sleep well last night. Worrying. Free floating anxiety. Nothing specific. Everything specific. Blueness in the black night.

I want things to be bright blue, like the September sky. Instead I get the murky blue that like sediment floats on thin air ...

I think I saw a blue heron today. It really isn't blue.

Tomorrow I will not be blue either.

A new chapter

Today is the day before Easter and I am thinking that I want to start a new chapter in my new reality blog.

In exactly a week from today I will turn 51. In a little over a month from now it will be two years since my diagnosis of breast cancer. I am truly feeling like a survivor!

I appreciate that I have been given a chance to explore my feelings and thoughts regarding my battle with cancer, and I think now I would like to just get on with living as a survivor.

So, from today, my blog posts will be more about life ... life after cancer. I am going to borrow an idea from a friend of mine who also blogs. Her blog is entitled 10Minutes. 5 Lines. I like that and think it's time for me to start focusing on the moment, and focusing on writing.

This is the season when we strive for new beginnings, for resurrection, for healing. And from now forth, these concepts are my new reality.

To be

Today I was thinking about something I read ... something a friend of mine who is also a breast cancer survivor wrote.

She said, "Most days I wake up and don't even think about the fact that I had cancer. But some days I wake up and am gripped with fear that it has come back."

My sentiments exactly.

Most of the time I am feeling okay and despite the medicine I take that doesn't allow me to lose weight, and in spite of the fact that my energy level still isn't where I want it to be (that is, I am not superwoman), I can forget ... or not remember ... that I am a cancer survivor. Even in the morning when I stand in front of the mirror and see the absence of breasts. I can disconnect from the "cancer" and just see myself. Even when I put on the bra with the fake boobs, I can move beyond the cancer diagosis and concern myself with what outfit I will wear and how much time I have left before I am officially going to be late for work. Normal shit.

There are those days though ... like today. I felt a lumpiness under my left arm where my lymphnodes are located. It's a little puffy. It's visible in the mirror when I raise my arms. It's probably nothing ... it happens. And I have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, so I'll get it checked out. My doctor will probably tell me what she told me the last time I freaked out because of something I found under my arm or on my chest ... it's fat. Yes, that is what she said, that is what is was.

But nonetheless, this morning I had a meltdown. I realized for the trillionth time that I am a cancer survivor. I HAD cancer. In the past. Had. Done. Over. I'm a survivor. Now. And the fact is, there is no way to really know for sure if the cancer will come back. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. Yet, I felt the urge to scream. Run away. Cry. Fold into a ball and hide in the corner. Fear. Gripping. Me.

I move forward. Breathing. I think ... what are my options? Besides crawling into a corner and folding into fetal position.

To be alive is to acknowledge the possibility ... the inevitability, really ... of dying. We all experience this, I think. I am sure I felt fleeting fear of death on more than one occasion in my life before breast cancer. After cancer, however, that fear really has a face. It's your own face. It's other people's faces. It's the cancer center waiting room. The chemo treatment room. The operating room. In fact, this fear of death isn't really rational, but it isn't irrational either. It just is. Cliche as it sounds, Hamlet (or William Shakespeare, as the case may be) had it right. The real question is, to be or not to be. And choosing to be means you understand that there will come a time that you will not be.

In the movie Shawshank Redemption, the main character says that there are two choices ... to get busy living, or to get busy dying.

I choose to get busy living. That's all I've got today.

Seeing

Everyone knows that saying ... do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Just recently I have thought that it would also be a good idea to do unto ourselves as we would have others do onto us. Or something like that. In reality, my thought centered more about "seeing" ourselves as others see us.

It's always been a wish of mine. To be able to see "me" as the world sees me, and not as I see me. I fear that would not be a good thing should I show up on the red carpet and be questioned by Tim Gunn about who I am "wearing" (that would be ... um George by Walmart or Mossimo by Target or maybe "who knows, I got it at the thrift store and there isn't a label.").

In any case, I have felt this secret desire to be a little silly and self-centered.

So what started me on writing this post. A man told me I looked great. And for the first time in a long time I realized I was being SEEN. Ever since my cancer diagnosis I have felt unseen. And while I am still a woman who works at looking good, picking out clothes that make me feel good about myself, fixing my hair and wearing makeup, I must say that for a long time now I have not seen myself as sexy. And on this day, at that moment when that young man told me I looked great, I was actually taken aback because I was being seen in a way that I have become unaccustomed to being seen ... at least by me.

Then I heard a story about some scientists who have created a mirror that doesn't reflect images in the reverse, but as they really are. So I am not the only one with this wish to be seen as other see me. I think we all would like to see ourselves as others do.

So now I don't feel so silly afterall.

One life lesson worth learning

The thing about cancer is that it makes you stop and take stock in your life. Actually, it just makes you stop. Period. You stop thinking and for a minute or ten the world around you is a blur. The wind is kicked out of you. It takes a little time to regain your mental balance once you've heard those words ... you have cancer.

I have learned a lot about a lot of things since that day I was diagnosed. I've learned about loss. I've learned about gain. When I was down for the count a year ago, I was forced to learn that no matter what I wanted to do, I really couldn't. Not that I couldn't do some things, but I could not do a lot of what I wanted to do. Today, I can do a whole lot more than I could a year ago, but I still cannot do everything I want to do. Sometimes I can only do the things I have to do. Sometimes I can do what I want to do. But never can I do everything that I want to do and/or have to do.

The thing is, we never can do it all. We kid ourselves if we say that we can. If you have a job, then there are at least 8 hours of your day that do not belong to you. Add another hour or so every day for commuting. If you need to sleep (which I really need to do!) then there are 6 to 8 hours of your day spent. So that leaves about 7good hours during a weekday to clean, cook, pay bills, watch TV or read, do some chores, and prepare for the next day. On the weekend, you get maybe 16 hours each day to accomplish tasks and chores and, to relax, to recharge and to play.

So if I am doing the math right, that is about 100 hours of time a week to fill with what you want and need to do outside of working and sleeping. And no matter how efficient you are, or how many lists you write, when one thing is getting done, something else is not.

If you are watching your favorite TV show, you are not cleaning the house and the cobwebs build up. If you are having dinner with friends, you are not reading your favorite book or magazine. If you have to paint a room and it takes a day to do it, then something else has to go. And that happens to all of us, no matter if we've had cancer or not. It's just life.

I think the difference is this: Once you've had cancer you don't want to waste one minute of life. You want to get it all done. You never want to leave something on your list without being able to end the day by crossing it off. You are constantly worried that maybe time will run out.

And I guess some day it will.

Which is why I have given up worrying about cobwebs.