Possible All-Rightness

Nine months ago, on a Monday like today, I had my mastectomy. I want to write something far more dramatic than that such as  they cut off my breast, the bastards. The cancer was gone already by then, carved out in the lumpectomy. The margins were barely clear so they recommended that more tissue be taken. However, the mastectomy was my choice, on the advice of my geneticist,  in order to avoid radiation.

How hard it is to own my choice.
I want to point fingers other directions.

Visiting with a childhood friend last week, one with whom I later raised my shirt to show her my scar, my hand involuntarily went to my missing breast when I told her, "I miss my breast." I have lost count of how many times my hand has flown to my chest when I speak those words.

I was told that at nine months post mastectomy my scar would be my scar forever. It's taking all the faith I can muster to believe that my invisible scars are not permanent. Yesterday it came to me that I am trying to hurry the process, impatient with what is. Scared that my inability to trust in God's goodness is permanent. Trying not to beat myself up with thoughts of  you could be somewhere else on the journey if you just tried harder.

Reading this book yesterday I came across this sentence:

"And then Father's death pushed me right out of the slippery world of human control, and I had no choice but to try to open myself to the darkness and horror in order to search for a hope of finding a possible all-rightness on the other side."

And so here I am.

PS. I am participating in this challenge so you'll be hearing more from me this week.

Toward A Strange Land

I came home from a week's holiday last night to three new books waiting for me in the mail. You can't get a better homecoming than that! I started reading one of them and turning down corners of pages to remember where I wanted to highlight. Every time I turn down the corner of a page I think of my grade three teacher and how she would be frowning at me.

The first thing I wanted to highlight was this:

"When we get right down to it, none of us wants to remain where we are. We are not awake until there stirs in us the possibility of what we can become. Then, and only then, can we begin a journey and belong to the migrant people of God."
                                     ~ Elizabeth O'Connor in Search For Silence

And more:

It was at length the same to me
Fettered or fetterless to be,
  I learned to love despair.
And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage -- and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
               ---------------
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are: - even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.
                              ~ George Gordon, Lord Byron
                                  "The Prisoner of Chillon"

"It is a strange and frightening discovery to find that the sacrificial life that Jesus is talking about is the giving up of our chains -- to discover that what binds us is also what gives us comfort and a measure of feeling safe. Change, while it has promise, will take from us something we have found sweet. The image we have of ourselves may keep us from wholeness, but it has some very satisfying compensations. There are dividends in being known as the one for whom nothing ever works out. It is never easy to lose the paradise of one's innocence and to have to struggle with growing up and being held accountable for one's own life.  There are all kinds of anxieties in having to leave the land one knows and be on one's way toward a strange land. No wonder Jesus comments so often on the people who look and look, but see nothing; and hear and hear, but do not understand. If we really saw and really heard, we might turn to him and become involved with a migrant people who may have no place to lay their heads when night comes."
                                                              ~ p. 39 The Search For Silence

Such a biting thing, truth is.

I'm pondering what my chains are and if I'm willing/ready to give them up.

There is a part of me that feels embarrassed for where this journey of the last nine months has taken me and then for writing about it so publicly. That's my ego taking a kicking there. Which is humbling and good. Among other things I was under the illusion that bitterness was beyond me.

I know that where I find myself is not where I want to stay. 

As Anne Lamott writes in Traveling Mercies, "Don't forget, God loves us exactly the way we are, and God loves us too much to let us stay like this."

Thanks be to God.

 

Vulnerability Rises

I recommitted to doing centering prayer and sticking with it through the long haul. Normally I eventually feel too vulnerable and I flee until I try again. Rereading this book helped me see that sticking  it out would be the better option. For the past week or so I've spent twenty minutes daily in silence. Much like writing morning pages I can only have the same thoughts go through my head for so long before I am forced to look them square in the face. For a few days now I've had the uncomfortable feeling that something has been off in my attitude in general for a while. Today I was able to attach a word to it: bitterness. Lord have mercy.

Plenty Of Opinion

"If Angelina Jolie was here right now I'd punch her in the face. Who is she, with all her money, to parade around what she did?"

I'm a bit startled by the aggressiveness of her tone. We're strangers sitting together at a friend's anniversary celebration. The happenstance of place cards set across the table from one another. When the topic of breast cancer came up this is what she said to me. Lord have mercy.

I sat there and thought about Ms. Jolie's mother and aunt who died from cancer. I thought about when my geneticist said I would have had cancer again had my BRCA 1 & 2 test came back positive. I thought about the worry that Angelina might have experienced waiting for her test results and then the stress of trying to decide what to do.

I thought about how we are in situations where we have no life experience but plenty of opinion. That about sums up most of my life so I am guilty of it as well. It wasn't until I realized that my opinion was just that, an opinion, not fact, that I stopped trying to shove what I thought down other people's throats. It`s a vulnerable feeling to hold my beliefs in an open palm instead of clutched tight to my chest.

For many years I walked away from conversations thinking the other person was so stupid for thinking the way they did and patting myself on the back for showing them the error of their thinking. I wrote letters to friends and family telling them exactly what I thought of their behaviour, too. Lord have mercy.

Dearest One had no idea of this side of me until after we were married. Five days afterwards to be exact. Squirreled away in a hotel room with a bunch of other people, trying to empty a Texas mickey I asked a travelling salesman if he cheated on his wife while he was away from home. It wouldn't have mattered what he'd answered, I wouldn't have believed him because I was so sure I was right about everything, even the behaviour of strangers I'd just met.

I'm only thinking about this in retrospect of that conversation about Angelina Jolie. Up until I started typing this post I was still sitting in judgement of her. I still want to sit in judgement of her. But I need to remember I've been just like her -probably worse -  and am still capable of it, too. I want to think I am better because I practice restraint of tongue and pen. Most of the time. That`s the catch though, isn't it. Funny how I want to let myself off the hook for behaviour I see in others and condemn them for harshly. Well, not funny at all. Lord have mercy.

I told her that I thought Angelina brought an awareness to the disease that was good. I didn't apologize for having an opposite opinion nor did I get angry and snippy in voicing it. I just stated how I saw it and left it at that. I had a moment of feeling uncomfortable but it passed. Then she had a moment of feeling uncomfortable when I didn't back down and it passed. When we started talking again it was about other, less volatile, subjects.

The Other Side

My dining room table is full of my computer stuff because I've been painting my office this week. What started out as wanting a new desk soon morphed into new desk, new chair, new paint, new flooring. It will be a first for me to have a room to call my own and decorated to my liking. I painted the walls a soothing blue denim colour with white trim. It looks lovely. It is a very tiny room that is like a cocoon to me.

The weather has been hot for a good while and I have enjoyed the heat. So grateful that it is summer after a very long drawn out winter and cold spring. Dearest One and I have been enjoying sitting around our fire pit in the evenings which is my favourite summer activity.

I had my bone scan earlier this week. After pointed questions from the technician part way through the scan about where all I was in pain I was tempted to start worrying about test results. I reminded myself that all I knew was that I was having a bone scan. Full stop. Worry could wait until there was something concrete to worry about. Which might be never. The doctor is on holidays and by the time he will be back I will be away on holidays so it will be weeks before I know the results. A friend of mine who had cancer eons ago told me it would take at least a year before I stopped fretting every time I had a new pain.

I was going to write that the one thing I do better than before is be present. However the fretting about test results is not exactly being in the present, is it? And yet I am much more present than I was. A few nights ago my father-in-law was speaking to me - yelling really because he is deaf - and I was nudged in my spirit to be present to him. How much better the world would be if we could be present to one another. To do it means to forget about  myself for the moment.

I saw my spiritual director this week. He lives several hours away and the drive was a nice change. It was a good appointment. As I left I thanked him for bearing witness to my journey. Much like you all do, too. Thank you for hanging in there as I work my way through this period of my life. I wonder what it will look like when I'm on the other side of this.

A Work In Progress

I lie in bed looking up at the summer night sky, watching the trees titter back and forth, giving off a breeze much like that from the cheap hand held fans I played with as a child. Here, in the land of the midnight sun, darkness only comes in the deep of the night and lasts a few scant hours. My mind drifts to thoughts of God as I watch the trees sway their hips. 

“I've been fighting against how other people think God works.” 

 “Fighting against how I think God should work.”

Oh.

I don't know how God works. 

My belief shrunk down to just one sentence that is both manageable and unmanageable, too. 

It is a start.

I remember a conversation, over 20 years ago, with this woman, where she’s telling me about the long ago death of her one year old little girl; a much desired sister for her teenage daughter. She seeks my eyes with her own, as only one mother to another would, as she tries to explain what happened. Her sentences are peppered with -  “I didn't know” and “if only” as she tells me of an undetected simple infection that led to her daughter's death.

Is this how she came to believe that God is in control of everything? Did she need to in order to be able to lift her head off the pillow every morning to attend to her other children whose ages, 13, 12, 11 and 10, descended like steps on a staircase? I don't know her well enough to ask. We've only ever talked at each other.

I think of her lying in her bed wrestling with these things. Wondering how long her darkness lasted. I know her daughter died in the winter time, where there are but few hours of daylight.

A little spark of compassion ignites within me for her.

It's a start.

“Like Christ, after his resurrection, we will carry on our bodies and into the rest of our lives the scars of the hurts done to us. Maybe one day they will become signs of our humanity and of our covenant moments with God. We will look at them and remember how we have been rescued. But for the moment, all we know is we are a work in progress, held in the hands of God. Our redemption has not yet been fully realized, but we lean into the love that leads us, and all, to the fullness of life.”                                

~ Monty Williams, SJ, Stepping into Mystery, p. 313

Looking Into The Void

"God is good."

The thought slips into my mind and catches me off guard. As I let the thought settle in me tears prick at the corners of my eyes. It's been so long since I had a thought like that.

I'm heading out of town for work and that thought - the one where I realize some calamity could befall me on the road - pushes me to send Dearest One a text. "I hope you know that I think our life is about perfect." He sends me a text back that lets me know he agrees. There is a contentedness between us - born from all that these past eight months have held - that feels deep and true.

I saw my grief counsellor this past week. I came away from the appointment knowing that I will think up a ritual to help me let go of the old God Of My Understanding and make room for the new. I told my counsellor that even though my belief system seems to be shot to smithereens there is a stillness within me that I've never experienced before.

I cried with recognition when I read the following from this book:

"The present world we live in does not have much use for God as a living reality. It finds a dead God who can be used to justify dead systems more manageable. That is why the path of contemplation is so difficult - because to walk that path we have to come to the edge of those myths which give our lives meaning and look down into the nothingness surrounding them. (emphasis mine) 

Only in contemplation, when we spend time in this nothingness, do we discover that this nothingness is really the mystery we call God.... 

To live in that radical insecurity is painful, because we not only lose a way, we lose even the name of the way. We lose all sense of direction. We are lost in the dark.....
We can only wait in that darkness beyond a particular broken myth until our perspective changes, until our attitudes change, until we come to the lived awareness of how conditional our existence is.... 

We have a hunger for what we do not know. That hunger not only takes away the myths by which we organize reality. It also takes away even the desire for knowledge, for knowledge is now seen to be ineffectual against our need. At this stage, even the wisdom of the wise does not help."

A Speck Of Redemption

"Have you thought of writing a lament to God?"

Another woman, at the same gathering as the first, is asking me this after I share with her that I can hardly stand a single comment from anyone about how God is working in situations. She is a longtime friend and also a spiritual director. She suggested writing a lament after we were both present when someone else shared how the seeming manifestations of God were evident in a situation. My face feels like it's cracking when I try to smile in these kinds of conversations.

Dearest One and I talk on the way home about whether or not we are a blight on God's witness by not being able to cheer with people when they feel God is at work because all we can think of is our two friends who died by suicide within a day of each other and this short time later we still feel like we are walking around in a daze wondering where was God in that situation? If God can find us a parking space why can't God step in and prevent such deaths? Why didn't He?

I know there are no answers to my questions.
I know that.
I also have to trust that there is something to be said for wrestling with the questions. There is a part of me that whispers within, telling me to stuff this all down and put on a happy face and pretend I am in a different space than I find myself in. And it's not that I'm not happy. I am finding little joys daily and I am wrestling with my beliefs daily. My sponsor helped me see the other day that it was my beliefs not my faith that has been rocked off its foundation.

Lament To God

Good Friday - the day You hung from a tree
he hung from a tree, too.

It makes me want to scream.

I remember looking at her face as the pain of losing him had etched itself deep in the space of 24 hours.
Her shoulders shook with emotion and I reached out to hug her
knowing that my hug could do nothing to bring him back.

Later that day she joined him.

Fucking trees.

I hear stories from friends.
The one who put her trusted revolver to her head
and pulled the trigger only to have it not go off.
She had fired it often
it had always come through for her
whether she was scaring someone off
or intending to wound.
This time it didn't.
She lived to tell me.
And gives God the glory.

I so wanted these two to live to tell the story, too.
To find a speck of redemption somewhere.
And You who created the heavens and the earth.
Who can do anything.
It feels like You did nothing.

Except I know that you knelt and cradled them to your bosom,
enveloping them in the love they craved their whole life long.
I pound the steering wheel until my hands are bruised.
Why was it only in death that they found what they craved in life?
For God's sake - why?

"A failure of love"
reverberates in my head
like a needle stuck on a record.
Around and around it goes.

How long will I weep?

God Is?

"God is in control of everything." She's standing just inches from my face and her face radiates joy. I tell her that that is of no comfort to me.

She tells me surely it must be a comfort! I reply that maybe one day but not now. I can't even begin to tell her why it is of no comfort. I've opened myself up to so much already just by disagreeing with her. She turns to the woman beside me and they talk about other things that they also are so sure of when it comes to God. I decide to look at my feet because I don't want to give any indication that I am in agreement. It also helps me keep my mouth shut tight. Conversations like this make me want to scream.

I've made it through the evening in the company of many people we used to go to church with before we became Catholic. A church that held a Sunday School class on cults after we left and included in that teaching was Catholicism. That makes me want to scream, too.

It's a wonder I was honest with this woman. She's probably forgotten the Sunday, when I was still trying to go to both churches in an effort to support my sons whose friends were all there, when she remarked to someone while right in front of me that what could ever be wrong with the gospel that I'd have to go 'there' to church. It's a reminder to me that what I see and the conclusions I come to are just that. My conclusions. Not the truth. But man, it stung.

She had stood just inches from me telling me who God is at a celebration of mutual friends' reaching milestone birthdays. I'd looked forward to the evening, to good visiting. Despite our veering off in a different direction and the misunderstanding of those we used to fellowship with, I still can visit about a myriad of other things and enjoy myself a lot. They are good and decent people. They mean well. Generations of belief that Catholicism is not only downright wrong but perhaps evil cannot be changed in one conversation. I have reminded myself more times than I can count that my only recourse over the years is to live out my belief. And I'm aware, more these past 8 months than ever, how poorly I do that.

There are many things I do cherish about my time amongst these people. They loved me when I was a brand new Christian and forgave me for much spoken out of turn and in mockery and bluntness. They watched me grow and cheered me on. They were long suffering and extended grace upon grace. Which is perhaps why it bothered me so much to be judged when I became Catholic because it was as if they had to forget all they knew about me because my choice made no sense to them. No doubt, no doubt, I do that, too.

I'd told God on the way to the party that perhaps I was done being mad at Him and would go to church on Sunday. I haven't been to Mass in a very, very long time. Why? Because there is no getting around God when presented with the Eucharist. Opening myself up to It renders me completely vulnerable. Several months ago I  told God, ' sorry I can't open myself up to you right now because if I do I am going to start sobbing and won't be able to stop.'  You know, that snot inducing ugly crying? There's no place to hide that level of emotion in our little church in the boondocks when there are only 10 other people present. In the past long while I've guarded myself every time I've been lector at Mass, unwilling to be undone by reading Scripture in front of anyone.

My plan for today is to go to Mass really early. Our little church in the boondocks has a key we all have access to. I will sit in its cool interior on this hot summer day and have a heart to heart with the God of my understanding. Who, if He is in control of everything, sure fucked a lot of things up.

Scapegoating Unaware

Yesterday was my first six month post cancer check up. I sat in the waiting room and thought about all the people who would be getting bad news that day and felt grateful that it wasn't me. I shared that with the doctor when I saw him. He's seen me through the worst of the tamoxifen/cancer related depression and my inability to find a speck of gratitude so he knows a glass half full is improvement.

A friend of mine in recovery told me last week how he accidentally broke the turn signal handle off his car the second time he was diagnosed with cancer because he was so rattled by the news. He's a crusty old bugger with a warped sense of humour and a deep well of compassion, too. I only winced when he told me on parting that I was stronger than cancer. I decided to let it go. Maybe he has to tell himself that in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other after having faced cancer several times.

I've been back at work for nearly three weeks now. Mostly I have been observing myself in relation to others. Grateful for the moment when the word 'detach' popped into my head while a co worker was sharing some work related drama. There is a lot of scapegoating happening and I keep reminding myself that people cannot scapegoat in awareness. I've stopped myself several times from getting up from my desk and whining to others about the person being scapegoated. I come home and tell Dearest One about the times I was tempted to say this or that and we talk about zipping our lips and stepping back from the drama. He's told me some hard things about my attitude towards the person being scapegoated which come from his years of working in a professional environment. There's something to  his wisdom that shuts up every 'but, but, but......" within me. It is good.

In our personal lives we are involved with people right now who thrive on drama which usually includes the police every single week. I have detached there as much as possible because the drama is exhausting and just hearing about it is draining. When I did not engage in the drama with my coworker I heard her later telling someone else the same story. I know that feeling. I had to ask myself if that's what I sound like when I go over and over whatever my personal drama is at the moment. Most likely. The best thing I've done about that lately is to have self compassion.

I came away from my doctor's appointment yesterday with a requisition for a bone scan to make sure that the new hip pain I've been experiencing is not metastatic cancer. Neither the doctor or I think it is but he's being safe and I appreciate that. It's most likely a symptom of the anti estrogen medication I'm on. It was a bit of a shock to the system to see the word metastatic on the yellow piece of paper and a reminder of all that I have no control over.

The scapegoating at work and the whining I'm attracted to is like a metastatic disease in itself.   I have total control over not spreading that disease any further. It's become my main prayer as I drive to work every day.

Slivers Of Grace

"I'm sorry you are questioning your faith."

"Oh, I don't think it's a bad thing," I say with a smile.

I believe that even though I'm at a teenager level of angst about how God does or doesn't work these days. And even though I find myself wanting to still, still, be a superhero when it comes to all things faith wise, I feel like I'm dragging my super hero cape behind me like a deflated balloon on a string.

Who knows, maybe I will let go of the string one day or at least become comfortable with the tension between my ego's need for hero status and my soul's desire for what? I want to write communion with God but don't even know if that's it.  This spiritual journey is about being nothing more and nothing less than who I am, where I am, in the here and now. That's who I am when I pray. Well, God, here I am in the fullness of my humanity. 

The conversation at the beginning of this post happened a few weeks ago after I shared at a meeting. I wasn't totally comfortable sharing that my faith has been shaken to bits because I knew I was risking people coming up to me afterwards and telling me how to fix it. The man who was sorry I was questioning my faith was totally sincere in his concern. The most comforting thing someone did was give me a hug and talk about how we learn compassion on this journey of recovery. He was someone I thought would try to block my pain with advice so it felt like a possible sliver of grace when he didn't.

How long will it be before I can once again say the word grace without feeling like I am trampling on the lives of those whose journeys seemed devoid of grace and for those of us whose journeys zig zag all over the place without much to go rah-rah about?

Decades ago, when I was searching out a relationship with God, a minister asked me what I thought about God's grace. I had no idea that the word could even mean anything other than something my grandma said before Christmas dinner. Decades later I find myself cringing any time someone tells me how God's grace was at work. They say it with such conviction that I alternately pity them and stand amazed at their certainty. I so want to shout at them but what about this person or that person's story? Where was God's grace then? Where was the neat and tidy all wrapped up in a box ending? Huh? Huh? I wonder if we know when and how God's grace appears.

And so I find myself shying away from any mention of God's grace in my own story or anyone else's. I wonder then if I am a shoddy witness with my silence?

It's not a bad thing to question my faith but it sure can be uncomfortable feeling like God has slipped through the grasp of my certainty.

Acceptance

My BRCA 1 and 2 test came back negative. This news felt like getting the last piece of information in a very long journey. It's such a huge relief to know I am not passing this on to the next generation. And I'm sure it's a relief to my mom that even though she's had breast cancer (twice!) I did not get it through genetics. I know - as if a person can do anything about their genetics  - as if it's in one's control but still, I'm relieved. That and the geneticist laid out what my reality would most likely be had the test come back positive. I don't blame Angelina Jolie one bit for being proactive after she tested positive. 

I've felt such anger towards the surgeon who has told me repeatedly that sure, mistakes were made but had they not happened and if certain other things hadn't happened then my story could be a whole lot different than it is today. I have felt an undercurrent of  "so be happy and grateful and if you feel those other feelings, then you aren't grateful and shame on you."  to his words. It could very well be that we just have the same chatter going on in our heads and well, I can guilt trip myself without any outside help, okay? I have wanted to tell him look, could you just listen to me without telling me how I should feel? Feeling my feelings through this journey has been my biggest triumph. Much scarier than putting on a brave face and faking it for the sake of those around me.

The day after I got the latest test results I thought to myself, mistakes were made and had not things happened after that then your story could be turning out so differently than it is. I checked and couldn't find an ounce of  internal pressure  or a sense of  "I should feel this". I felt no emotional charge, instead I felt calm. And grateful. Who knew?

It was a shock and a relief to feel something genuinely positive. I have not felt a whole lot of gratitude through this journey. It's been a blow to my ego not to qualify for a gold star poster child award. I've heard people eulogized lately who have died from cancer as people who never complained and were always other centered.  I think to myself, well - that won't ever be my story. And there's a part of me that really wants it to be. I did chuckle while reading an obituary the other day that said that so and so would be remembered for their lack of patience and their love of cooking. Mine might be something to the effect of being remembered for her vocal opinions and love of dark humour. 

After I reflected on the surgeon's words the next thing that popped into my head is that I owe it to - I don't know - God - my fellow human beings - myself? to make the most of this life I have. I don't know what that looks like and I have no intention of being anyone other than myself while I do it. But I am trying to not take what is before me for granted.

 

Genuine

I've had a lovely few days. I spent the night with a good friend whose company I enjoy. I went to the city to buy groceries and run errands, shopped for a rocking chair for my soon to be grandchild. Every day kind of things that make me feel like life is getting back to normal. I stopped in at work to get caught up to speed on what's been happening in preparation for my return to work next week.

As I was driving into the city yesterday I felt full of gratitude for being able to do stuff like that. It's the first time since my breast cancer diagnosis/journey that I can remember feeling such deep gratitude. I thought to myself what a nice change it was to smile without my face hurting and to be able to truthfully say I was good when people asked me. Genuine gratitude felt like such a gift in itself.

Last month I listened to this author being interviewed and he talked about a new mantra of his: Here. This. Now.  I have repeated that mantra to myself many times since I heard it. It works to remind me to be in the present moment instead of running a million miles ahead of myself like I'm want to do. I take a deep breath and repeat it and for the moment I am in the moment.

The geneticist's office just called me to let me know that they will have my BRAC 1 & 2 test results back within the week and could I please come in to discuss them on such and such a date. I asked if they couldn't just tell me over the phone? After all it is an 8 hour drive to hear that I don't carry the gene. And if I do, well, just tell me already. They said either way I needed to be seen in person. My appointment is on my birthday. It's either going to be a great birthday present or one I won't forget any time soon.

Here. This. Now. Breathe.

This Encouraged Me Today

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything

To reach the end without delay.

We would like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something

Unknown, something new.

And yet, it is the law of all progress

That it is made by passing through

Some stages of instability –

And that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

Your ideas mature gradually – let them grow,

Let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,

As though you could be today what time,

(that is to say, grace and circumstances

Acting on your own good will)

Will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

Gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing

That his hand is leading you,

And accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

In suspense and incomplete.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

Deep Pain

So true.

A Bow Named God

"You're too strong to let cancer beat you."

Oh, God love him. Words from a young man this past weekend who I hadn't seen in a long while. His face was so full of light and I hated to bring him back down to earth. But I did. I told him that many 'strong' people have died of cancer. In fact I was headed to a funeral later that day for a woman who would have loved to have not had cancer 'beat her.' She was a lovely, strong, vibrant woman who died too soon. His face fell a little bit at my reply. In fact he asked me to repeat it because he wasn't sure he'd heard me right.

It's not fun being the party pooper, speaking up for those who have been forever silenced. If positive thinking, being strong (I wonder what that means), fighting the good fight and all the rah-rah you can muster would make the difference between life and death there'd be a lot less dead people. I wonder if I'll always be touchy about believing that.

I'm waiting for my oncologist to call me. It's our last time of touching base before he writes up my discharge plan - the plan for follow up tests and check ups and the like for the next five years. There is already a CT scan and an MRI in the works over the next few months. I haven't yet made my peace with how to live in the tension of not knowing what the future holds but I want to and am inching towards it. (this is where some dumb ass tells me we know Who holds the future so don't worry, be happy. I bet they haven't had cancer.)

I wish there was a time and place for patients to tell doctors things that might help them deal more effectively with the next patient they see.

I'd tell my oncologist that he and the other medical professionals, who so readily wanted me to take medication to cope with the grieving process of losing my breast, needed to honour the time and space it took to go through it. All the way through it. I wish they had been able to do that instead of wanting me to short circuit the path of feeling the grief so deeply, as if something was wrong with me for being human. I can think I am being bad - a lovely remnant of my screwed up childhood - just because someone else thinks I am. Make it someone in authority and it can happen in a nano second.

The powers that be often said they knew I wouldn't get stuck yet when I showed deep feelings they whipped out their prescription pads. Six different times I was offered a pill to mask my feelings. I wish doctors were taught that patients need their doctor's support of a non medicated way through the natural grieving process of having had a serious illness.

I am all for medication when it is needed including for people coping with a serious illness. I have seen it bring incredible relief to people I love. But I knew in my gut that I didn't need it. My path was to be present to the whole she-bang of emotions.  I wish  a medical professional would've cheered me on for moving through the process and acknowledged the sheer courage it took to do that.

Had it not been for mental health professionals I might still be doubting that my instinct to wade through the deep was the right choice to make. It has been hard to trust that what often looked like being stuck was really just part of going through. I had to remind myself over and over again of that in order to have the courage to feel the feelings. The counsellors I've seen have been great at affirming the journey as it has unfolded.

I feel like I am coming out of the other side of it now. Not fully out but emerging nonetheless. I am both surprised and relieved. Life has colour again. I am delighting in the tiny things, mostly.

There is a part of me that I am hoping isn't here to stay; the return of my cynical self. A cynicism that rises when I hear people wrap up life's small and big things with a bow named God. When it rolls off their tongue with a flippancy that seems devoid of reality I feel an acute sadness. Being sure of how and when God works has disappeared from my belief system. I've been waiting for it to return and the other day it occurred to me that it might never be mine again. I told my spiritual director last week that it was a bleak place to be. Beyond believing that God is with me there is a deep void where I know nothing.

Funny the things one wants. I want to have a light/bright countenance like my young friend has. A few months ago I met several elderly women whose faces shone with inner wisdom. I want that, too.

Dogged

I walked into the living room this morning, saw what was either dog puke or shit on the carpet, and walked right back out. I went about making my breakfast and taking my medication all the while hoping that Dearest One would go into the living room to drink his coffee, see the carpet, and deal with the my dog's mess.

I was prepared to feign innocence so I didn't even tell him it was there. Here, this is my problem to deal with but let's pretend it's yours, okay? I don't think Dearest One even went into the living room  before he left for work. (This scene is so reminiscent of the days of I didn't smell a poopy diaper, did you smell a poopy diaper in hopes that he would be the one to change it. Which might mean I haven't matured a whole lot in the intervening decades.) Actually, I just didn't want to deal with dog shit first thing in the morning. I'm guessing that's what it is because the pugs haven't gone and eaten it. See what things one can be grossed out by and then hope for all in one sentence?

Want to hear the worst thing anyone has said to me this whole cancer journey? A doctor, when I showed up in emergency on New Year's Day, with my incision site red, inflamed and painfully swollen said I would be a good candidate for reconstruction because my skin is super stretchy due to the connective tissue syndrome I have. Wait, that's not the worst. What he said next is.

When I told him I wasn't going to have reconstruction he said "Well if something happens to this guy (as he motioned to Dearest One) and some good looking twenty something comes along, you might change your mind." I was stunned speechless. Twenty-something? I'm going to take up with (anyone?!) a twenty-something if Dearest One dies? Are you kidding me?

It was a doctor we've known for over 20 years and I can only imagine that his familiarity with us is what led him to think he could make such a crass statement in such confined quarters and not get kicked in his nether regions. Later, it struck me as weird that he thought what some hypothetically newly met twenty-something thought of my chest would matter to me more than what my husband of over 30 years did. I've puzzled over that more than once since then.

Until recently when I heard that said doctor was caught having a fling with a twenty-something. Here, this is my problem to deal with but let's pretend it's yours, okay?

I've been watching my thoughts lately, reflecting on what I say to others, and recognizing how much I think what they must be thinking is based on what I would in their situation. I confuse what I would do/think with what every other person would, too. If you'd asked me I would have told you that other people project their thoughts onto others, but I rarely do. I only have to say to someone "You must feel _______." instead of "How are you feeling?" to be reminded again how much I project onto others.

What a paradox it is that while we are much more alike than not as humans, what I would do or think is not necessarily the same thing as the next person would. (Although I want you to raise your hand if you've ever done the poopy diaper thing.)

I have no idea if Dearest One saw the dog's mess and chose to ignore it, too. He's a far more selfless person than I so my bet is that he never saw it. However, I know what I'll be doing once I finish this post. After all, it is my problem.

To See The Trees Again

The quote below- from this link - has given me much food for thought:

"On the morning of Frances' death, as I stood by her bedside, I made a secret resolve somewhere deep in my being which has only recently come to the surface. I made an agreement with God that from that day onward, everything I have to say about God, everything I have to say theologically, has to stand with me by Frances' bedside. If it cannot stand at the side of death, if it cannot stand by the side of a fifty-five-year-old woman who wanted to live to see the trees again, it had better not stand at all because it is probably not worth very much.
~ Zoe White, 1988"

 

Jiggling

"The medical establishment is not going to validate what happened to you. You are going to have to do that yourself."

I sucked in a deep breath at my grief counsellor's words. I instantly knew what had been triggered all along by the lack of validation from the medical community. I gazed into the fireplace in his office and jiggled my leg in a furious kind of way as I remembered childhood stuff where no one in authority was willing to step forward and validate what was happening to me.  Remembering the time I thought to myself  'where are the adults and why aren't they doing anything?'

What a tender spot was pushed by his words. I have thought them over for the past month and while I don't exactly know what it looks like to validate my story, something is shifting within me. Slowly and surely the fog is lifting. I am finding bright spots in my days and last week, after a particularly happy day, felt such relief that happy days were possible again.

Spamalot

"The next time I read a blog, I hope that it does not disappoint me just as much as this one. I mean, yes, it was my choice to read through, nonetheless I actually believed you would have something interesting to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could possibly fix if you weren't too busy looking for attention."

Those lovely words made up the bulk of a spam comment which ended in a request for me to check out their web site lending bowlfuls of money at exorbitant interest rates. It's the only way I knew it was a spam comment and not a for real one. But you just never know what's going to speak to you, now do you?

I get lots of spam comments and delete them all.
I hardly ever read them.
But the one above sure got my attention.
It sums up how I feel about my blog some days, too so I stopped and considered that maybe there was some truth in an anonymous spam comment.

I told myself at the beginning of my cancer journey that I would not apologize for one single word I would write about it. That I would let my words stand even when I thought I was being a self absorbed whiny person whose ego fueled dream of being a poster child for recovery or Christianity or cancer survivors evaporated with every honest word I wrote. Some days it's easier than others to stay true to being honest. Some days I want to pretty up what I write so I appear more than I am. But I won't let myself. It somehow would seem dishonouring to the reality of my inner journey to do so.

My grief counsellor affirmed this week that where I am on the journey is exactly where I am supposed to be and he wondered where the expectation came from for me to be somewhere else. I told him that if I was sick of being in the grieving/healing process then surely other people were, too. And of course as soon as I said it I knew that I needed to give myself permission again to be where I am. That this is what reintegration into regular life feels like. He told me this is exactly what it looks like. That part of me that still wants to say, OMG this is what happened to me coupled with the other part of me that says OMG I am so sick of talking about this. It actually means I am making progress.

But I tell ya that spam comment stopped me in my tracks for a moment. And has the essence of a prayer in it if I look hard enough.

Vulnerability Armour

When I was in my early teens one of my cousins snitched on me about the foul language I was using at school. My mom told me that ladies didn't use that kind of language. As I wasn't interested in being a lady I didn't change anything other than not hang out with my cousin at school.

Not too long ago I was visiting with someone I don't know well but like a lot, when I noticed foul language coming out of my mouth kind of like spittle I couldn't take back. I've always thought I was drawing that person into my inner circle by letting them see me, foul language and all. I really believed that even though I often felt like I tripped on something when the f bombs started coming out of my mouth.

After tripping several times in my conversation with my friend I let myself ponder what my tripping was trying to tell me. I then had the uncomfortable realization that instead of foul language indicating I was gathering my friend into my inner circle what I was truly doing was putting up a wall.

I instantly thought of shame and vulnerability researcher Brene Brown and what she wrote here:

"Thankfully, I know myself well enough to know that "cool" is one of my favorite pieces of vulnerability armor. " 

And I thought to myself, when those f bombs start coming out of my mouth, with someone I know hardly at all, I am not trying to bring them into my inner circle, I am trying to keep them at a distance. I am scared and I want to appear to be cool. I do not want to be vulnerable.

I am still a little stunned by that realization.

I haven't felt the need to drop an f bomb in a casual conversation with a casual friend since.

**I believe there truly are instances where a swear word or phrase becomes a kind of prayer. I experienced that a month ago after unexpectedly losing two friends in two days.  What I really meant, what was underneath my words, was the thought that I couldn't believe this was happening. In times like that those words hang in the air like a prayer, like a cry for Someone beyond ourselves.

Score One For Me

I flick through the blouses in my closet trying to decide which one I will wear today. The day. The one where I will get fitted with a breast prosthesis. I've already stalled this day off by three months. I've told myself it's because the post surgical swelling was still going down and I  wasn't sure I could handle the pressure of a regular bra around my rib cage yet. Now I tell myself I have to go get it done because I am returning to work soon and as I'm the face of the company, the first one the public sees, I need to look as professional as possible.

Last week one of my nieces brushed up against her sister in my small kitchen only to have her sister exclaim, "ooh, your boob just brushed up against me. That creeps me out." Before her sister could answer I blurted out, "Hey with no boob on that side I bet I could stand even closer." Her eyes reflect both horror and compassion back at me. No small feat for a young woman not quite out of her teens.

When I was a teen I occasionally loved shocking people with what I wore. There was the morning I managed to slip out of the house wearing only a halter top and shorts, knowing both were against the rules at school. When my home room teacher told me to go get dressed I smugly told her these were my clothes. Later an announcement on the PA system reminded students to follow the dress code. Score one for me.

I've always said I don't like being the centre of attention but that's simply not true. There are many ways of trying to be the centre of attention. (Like my writing of blogs posts I think in my snarkier moments).

I decide against wearing anything that could hint of cleavage (that there will never be cleavage again still saddens me) or anything that looks like a sack. I settle on a top that clings lightly.

The fitter is very sensitive as she inserts different sized prosthesis, trying to find one that matches my remaining breast. And just like in real life, no two breasts match. My mom's own journey with breast cancer coincided with the beginning of puberty for me. While she was still in the hospital undergoing treatment, I worried aloud to my older sister that my tiny breasts did not match and did that mean something was wrong. I was both relieved and disappointed when she told me no ones' breasts ever did.

When the woman has found the best fitting prosthesis I turn to face myself in the mirror. I feel tears rising and I squelch them instantly. I am confused because they are not happy tears. When the fitter asks me if I want to wear the prosthesis out of the store I say in a clipped voice, 'No.'

Up to this point, especially when getting dressed to go out in public, I've had remnants of that teenage centre of attention thinking. I've felt no pity for the people who will see my lopsidedness. Deal with it I  often think to myself. This is what reality looks like. If I have to face it every day then so do you. Score one for me.

But I know behind my tears and lack of readiness to wear the prosthesis is the disconnect between my inner and outer realities. While so much is still healing on the inside of me how will anyone know what I've gone through now? I hate the thought of invisibly moving forward.

Which is what wearing a prosthesis is. An invitation to get on with living life after cancer. Surely cancer survivors surround me every day in the grocery store and at the gas station and I don't hear any of them reminding the world how their journey has marred them forever. They are quietly living their lives doing ordinary things, most likely with gratitude.

From there it's a short jump to remembering that every single person alive bears some kind of scar, emotional or physical that has changed them permanently. And so here I find myself again. Reminded that I am not unique in my suffering. I'm sad that I am not unique. My story is unique. But it's only that. My story. Not your story. Not the story.

Perhaps there is hope I will leave behind my teenage ways one day.

Score one for me.

A Barren Tree

I pick up greeting cards and flip them open, reading and shoving them back in their place. I do it again and again reading phrases such as God will bring you through or You are a mighty warrior and God is on your side until I can't bring myself to pick up one more 'encouragement' card. I mutter under my breath 'utter bullshit'  as I close every card. I look around the Christian book store for more than an hour to find the only thing that speaks to me is a large black and white print of a barren tree against a barren sky.

I wonder if silence qualifies as encouragement.

I leave the store empty handed, get back in my car and drive on pounding my fists on the steering wheel while talking to God. I think about the unbloggable deaths in the past month that have ripped me open in ways that are beyond my comprehension. Tore from me the last bit of what I was holding onto in the faith department. Whatever it was I was once so sure of has slipped from my grasp. At a very deep level I know I will hold onto little from here on in.

All that ever comes to me these days is the thought of being present. Being still. In my more self absorbed moments I think of the encounter between Jesus and Thomas and how Thomas didn't recognize the resurrected Christ. I wonder if I will recognize myself on the other side of this.

Soon

I will write an in depth post soon. Am off this morning to a city far away for a medical test. The regular stuff - heart lung performance that I need to get done because of my connective tissue thingamajig. Much less stressful than the cancer stuff.

I got fitted yesterday with a breast prosthesis. Still sorting out that experience. Will write about it soon.

Graphic Change

Minor irritations. Opened up the weather app on my phone last night to find they'd changed the graphics. Harrumphed to Dearest One about it and thought how I dislike even  minor visual changes that appear in a touch of a finger.

Saw my grief/loss counsellor yesterday armed with a collage assignment completed. Stupid things really. Make me feel silly and childish cutting images out of magazines and pasting them to paper. Except when I was done I wanted to weep. I stood there puzzled at how a random assortment of pictures with jagged edges could evoke such feelings. I didn't let myself look too long or hard at what had appeared so innocently under my fingertips.

We look at the collage together and he tells me he has never seen one so linear. I've even numbered the pictures. We talk about linear and labyrinths and wanting things to proceed in an orderly fashion. True. And then he posits that life and my cancer journey is more like a maze. My hands fly to my face in horror and I tell him I would never arrange the pictures in a maze. Dead ends. Changing directions. Being lost. My worst nightmare. Except the journey has arranged itself in exactly that way without my permission. Which is the crux of the problem. The place I kick against until my toe bleeds.

Silent tears spring from somewhere far below the jagged mastectomy scar that runs across my chest.

He points out the colour of the poster board I've picked to paste my pictures on and it's the colour of the heart chakra. The place of emotions.

And so something as silly and childish and innocent shows the very deep child wound within me. The one who cried for order and control and the ability to predict what would happen next.

He rolls up the collage and hands it back to me with instructions to write a little every day about the pictures and my thoughts until I'm ready to tackle writing the story in a bigger burst of creativity. We put off cutting up the individual pictures and selectively burning them as the time is right. Symbolically burning and letting go of what they represent. And a torrent of tears roll down my face unleashing my child into a vast land of opportunity and growth if I can just embrace the graphic change in front of me.

Speaking Out Loud

"I feel like I speak a foreign language."

That 's what I said to Dearest One tonight after running into a long ago friend earlier today. She commented to me how glad she was that I was in a specific person's life right now because that person needs God. She thinks I'm going to open my mouth and tell that person of their need. Um. No. It hadn't even crossed my mind to mention God to this person. How presumptuous of me it would be to think I know what they need.

As nice as it was to see this long ago friend I told her that if she was waiting for me to do the reconnecting I didn't have the emotional energy to reach out. That felt much better than making small talk and nodding my head in agreement about how we should get together soon.

And she most likely grates on my nerves because once upon a time I really thought that if I could just sneak the word 'Jesus' into a conversation that I was doing my part to save the world. And so I tried.

Recently someone died who I long ago thought I would 'witness to.' You know, find the right words to nudge them into the kingdom. I spoke at their funeral about the time years ago when they put love into action and how I still think about and recognize those actions as much more loving than any words I could say. At the funeral lunch I said to friends how humbling it had been to find the person I would have thought at one time I needed to witness to, witnessed to me with their life. I was into words and they were into actions.

Guess which spoke louder.

Needing Some Lovin'

** Thank you for all the lovely comments. I just needed some reassurance in this tippy world we call our temporary home.**

Today I'm wondering what keeps you coming back to my blog.
Why do you bother?

I keep coming back to writing because it's how I process my life.
I used to journal instead. And granted, journalling was way different than what I write here but it was still a way to empty my thoughts onto a page.

Many years ago I was about to give up on blogging when I got an email from a stranger telling me how my writing had affected her journey. I leaned my head against the wall beside my desk and bawled my head off. I often forget that strangers are reading what I write. I think about the handful of people who I know read here regularly and forget that they are not the only ones.

Sometimes I see the reader numbers and wonder who are you?!
A comment would be lovely.
I will unabashedly soak them all up.
Some days are like that.

But It Wasn't

I watched as he gently arranged the thick blanket around the old man's shoulders, tucked it in between his legs and the edges of the wheelchair until the old man was wrapped up like a cocoon. Only then did the young man turn  and wheel him out the door. A twenty something and an old man bonded in their grief going out to have a smoke in a spring snowstorm. The young man was my son. The old man the father of someone my son had close ties to once upon a time.

This past week has been hard.
Really hard.
Two deaths in two days.
One funeral.

Tears streaming down the old man's face, his aged hand, shaken by a stroke, zig zagging its way to until the kleen*x finds his tears. A parent burying a child. Another parent burying a child. Both parents of the age where by all appearances, it very well could have been the other way around. I want to write that it should have been the other way around.
But it wasn't.

And nothing makes sense.
And nothing makes sense.
And it never will.

Unbloggable

Sorry for the silence.

Unbloggable things are happening to other people. Can't take the risk of it showing up in a search engine out of respect for the living. What a reminder that things happen every day to people unnoticed by the masses.

I hate this. I said the word "fuck" over and over again yesterday for half an hour straight. Some things are too horrendous to fathom. And yet we must wade through it.

It's jolted me awake to see that I am going to be just fine.
Prayers appreciated.

PS - I celebrated 25 years of sobriety on Saturday. Gratitude running over.

Ritual

"Ritual makes our reality safe."

That is the best tidbit I took away from my session today with a grief and loss counsellor.

No wonder I love rituals.

In Full Colour

"I gave up my breast for a grandchild."

Yep. That's one of the first things I said to Oldest Son and his wife when I woke from anaesthetic. Dearest One told me days later that I might want to clarify what I meant because I had been pretty loopy at that point. Narcotics or not, I knew exactly what I meant and why.

Funny how one can know exactly what they mean and think it's clear to others, no? So I explained to my daughter-in-law that being without my breast meant being without cancer and living long enough to be a grandma. Gracious woman that she is, she was cool with my explanation.

During the week before I had my mastectomy I listened to a guided meditation for those facing surgery and part of it talked about being surrounded by a magical band of allies in the operating room. In my mind that meant not only those who love me in the here and now but those who have gone on before me - the communion of saints - if you will. It was a comforting thought.

When I was wheeled into the operating room I looked around at the space and realized my magical band of allies would need to squish in tight if they wanted to fit. And so they did. When I was under anaesthetic I saw a beautiful, magical band of allies - all glowing an intense white - outlined in different heights like someone had taken a grey pencil crayon and traced their various heights in one long stroke. I couldn't quite reach out and touch them but they were close. In amongst the beings, who had no distinct features, was this little girl - in full colour - with very distinct features. She had run over to my operating table and was nestling back in between those glowing white beings when I saw her. Her face radiated such indescribable joy that I smile every time I remember her. While she wasn't a mini version of myself  I felt she was definitely related to me.  I wondered who she was. I thought of the (three) babies I have miscarried.

And it was this in-full-colour-little-girl I was thinking of when I told my son and his wife that I gave up a breast for a grandchild.

In September I will welcome my first grandchild. Boy or girl, my joy is indescribable.

Figuring It Out

"Your vulnerability in being present to what is could be triggering people's pain - pain they might not want to face. So their response to where you are at on the journey is a projection of where they are at not a reflection of where you are at. Perhaps the surgeon, too was uncomfortable with the places your truth was touching in his own life."

Such healing, hopeful words yesterday spoken to me by a therapist who I haven't seen for several years. Good to hear from her that where I am at is where I am at and nothing to feel ashamed of or embarrassed by. Being affirmed in where I am is doing more for me in this transition from health crisis back to 'regular life'(whatever the hell that is) than every suggestion that it is time for me to move on, get with the program, and put this experience behind me.

Last week's conversation with my long time friend was a turning point for me. I  breathed a huge sigh of relief and relaxed into acceptance of where I am at. And then my mood lifted significantly. That friend would tell me that it isn't something we need to go pay professionals for but something we used to do for others in friendship and community. I've found myself  feeling happy and then confused that I am feeling that way. I had to tell myself that feeling happy doesn't negate what I've been through and now I am on a journey of figuring out how to integrate it without feeling like I'm somehow betraying myself. My therapist told me yesterday this was totally normal and that I would figure it out.

Figuring it out is so different than having it figured out. I hope the first phrase is a life long one and the second one disappears from my vocabulary.

Resting

I spent several hours on the phone yesterday with a woman who's been pivotal in my conversion journey, someone who has travelled alongside me for over 25 years.

The night before I remembered this friend and how last summer she'd explained a long absence from my life during a most difficult time of her own. She told me that everything she'd believed had been turned upside down and she'd had no words. Ah, I thought, someone who knows what it's like to be rendered mute.

I could barely get the words out through my tears yesterday as I told her I needed her to tell me if the upside downness ends.

I'm pretty sure that that conversation did more for me than any professional help ever will. What a relief to hear someone say that the place I find myself in is not something to fix, but a place to rest in, in order that the work being done in the depths of me can be done.