My process today is a bit ….. well …… I don’t know. Bear with me.

I had a hair appointment today. I’m grateful for my Lindsey…she’s walked with me through my hair growing back and she’s truly a beautiful soul. I sat in her chair today, edgy and chippy. Not chippER, chippY. I struggled sitting there. Not because of her, but because of the reflection. I feel extra chubby, my hair frizzy and unmanageable, trying to keep myself somewhat together. And I’m finding, as I bitterly answer her, “well, how are things going?” question, I have a very strange resentment toward my hair. …More on that in a sec………..

She told me today that one of her clients was just diagnosed with breast cancer. Ugh. I feel for this woman. I’m so sorry. Join a really sucky club…where you will feel terribly lonely yet loved and surrounded by some really badass fighters. I wondered today why it feels like so many women find out they have breast cancer in October, the pink month, and of course, duh, if there is so much awareness, it’s hard not to see it – that’s the point. And everyone and their mother gets checked in October because, well, “Don’t let this happen to you!” is a slogan passed around by those marred by it. (I can’t get on board with saying that, nor do I like the premise of the slogan, but, I guess I get what they are going for.) Nonetheless, ugh. Cancer is wretched.

Cancer is wretched.

………So, I got home. And walked by the mirror, admiring the efforts of the last almost 2 hours, hoping that I liked it as much as I liked how it smelled (you know, salon products always smell better even if you have the same products in your own shower). Turns out, I couldn’t get it in a ponytail and myself away from the mirror fast enough, tears filling my eyes, cuss words under my breath.

But why? Shouldn’t I be grateful that I have hair again? And even more than that, that I’m alive?!

Let’s go ahead and nip that one in the bud right away—I am grateful I’m alive. I am. Heaven sure sounds lovely and I was mere inches from it, but since I know I’m going there anyways, it’s a treasure to be here and living life with my people. But I can’t say the same for my hair. Which is weird I know. And you may even be rolling your eyes at me and tempted to straight-up cancel me because it’s a dumb thing to say…who wouldn’t want their hair to grow back if they had to have chemo?! Isn’t that a gift of surviving?!

It is. And I can acknowledge that. And it is a healthy perspective. One which I do hold.

But here’s another side. Most grief is grieving something that won’t come back, which in and of itself, is a cornerstone-part of the process. Learning to accept and live without whatever is lost is grief counseling 101. But what happens when whatever is lost comes back? What does that cycle look like? It’s bonkers, that’s what it is. I had real breasts. They were taken away from me, wheeled off to a lab slab, never to return but now I have fake ones that look real. I had hair and eyebrows and eyelashes, killed by poison coursing my veins, never to return the same, but it’s grown back and the reflection I see is only now slightly different. I had normal hormone levels made by organs removed by a robot and never to be put back in, but the tiny percentage left behind still wreaks a very similar havoc.

The grief process is derailed when it doesn’t account for the things lost to come back. Acceptance is hard when the very loss that is being grieved is in-your-face-(and even on-your-body-)present. How do I cycle through and come to terms with the losses that have so brutally blown me to bits when, in the very technical sense, everything came back?! I wonder if that is yet another reason why survivorship is so blasted confusing and I wonder if that is why I struggle so much with looking at a body that, on the outside, looks like nothing ever happened. Some may really like that about surviving…and we each get to do it our way…for me, though, I S T R U G G L E big time with it. So I grieve losses that time and space will never soften. And I grieve with the added layers of a clashing of outside-me and inside-me. And I grieve with the added layers of shame and guilt that I am not simply grateful for the gifts of lost things [sort-of] returned. And, well, it’s no wonder I’m a hot mess.

(And I must credit my incredible 12 year old for helping me put words to my process today. She listened, asked profound questions and validated me in ways that would astound the most educated counselors. Thank you, love. YOU are a gift forever treasured.)

*Post 914

Grateful :: 10/5/17 :: Post 38

I’m sitting in such an odd place tonight. I am so emotional. I am so tired. It was a long day. For being just 4 weeks post-op and consumed by the road ahead, I don’t have the endurance to do what I could before. I started my day at 5:30am, went to work, came home, went to Haleigh’s softball game at 6:30pm (which I could tell meant the world to her) and finally got home at 8:30pm. Once home, my other two kiddos wanted some momma time. I hurt from head to toe. My heart is exhausted. My eyes hurt. My head hurts from holding back the tears most of the day…. I can’t even think straight enough to make much sense of what to say.

I can say with confidence, though, that a word has come to me a lot throughout the day: Gratitude.

I know, it’s weird being that I am so emotional and fried, and the reason I am so emotional and fried is pretty effing crappy, and yet the word God has given me OVER AND OVER AND OVER today has been gratitude.

I get it though.

There are not enough words….there are not enough ways to truly thank everyone. Being on the receiving end of such generosity of time, treasure, love, encouragement…. It is amazingly humbling. I have such a gratitude for how each individual in my story holds a place. And I don’t even know the magnitude…. There are things being done for myself and my family that I don’t even know about. And I can’t even begin to adequately thank everyone for what I DO know about.

It’s such a vulnerable place to receive help. To not know how to truly thank someone. To articulate the depth of my heart’s thankfulness.

I desperately want to repay the generosity…and yet that is not what gifting is designed for. So, my family and I, we just receive. And we pray fervent prayers of gratitude and thankfulness. And I have to trust that everyone walking with us in this (known and unknown) is receiving as well….because I ask God to do so and I know He is faithful. Please, Lord, give back what I am incapable of giving back…tenthousandfold.

My heart, while battered and exhausted feels loved and treasured.

I don’t have much left for tonight…There is so much more in my head and on my heart, but I have to get up early tomorrow to make it to my physical therapy appointment and then off to work. I am beyond tired and fried….but I have so much to be grateful for even in the midst of the enormity of what I am in.

Such an odd place – grateful for where I am but wishing I didn’t have to be here…and feeling an exhaustion I have never felt before but trusting that I’ll get up and do it again tomorrow.

Not in a post but wanted to save: I am beyond grateful for my husband. For my kids. For my mother and father. For my family. For my friends. For how each individual in my story holds a place. For how I am getting random little gifts here and there that have no explanation other than someone knows me and wants to bless me and remain anonymous. For my aunt and uncle and a cousin who helped raise some money for us that might help us with buying a wig. For the generosity of family, friends and strangers in that amazing gift. For my aunts who help fund feeding me…and for another cousin who researches and cooks for me. For another cousin who will help me feel feminine and beautiful as I lose my hair and eyebrows and eyelashes. For other family members that are doing things that I don’t even know about. For those near and far that love me through sending cards and care packages and prayers. For my aunt and mom for cleaning our house. For the unexpected generosity of time, treasure and love from everyone. For a sister-in-law that organizes a meal train and for everyone who has fed us this past month. For a friend that organized a prayer chain for us so that we are covered in supernatural ways. For friends that check-in. For friends that pray. For a head massager that I didn’t even know I needed. For soft clothes and pajamas. For my momma’s foot rubs and her essential oils.

So :: 10/5/18 :: Post 387

My body hurts.

Dreadfully so.

October 5 of 31 :: 10/5/19 :: Post 750

Our annual trip to the mountains to see the fall yellow brilliance of the aspens of Colorado was almost a bust. Almost.

After what seemed like hours along roads and in parts of the mountains that were far from brilliant…and getting closer and closer to giving up…we found ourselves in a one-way-in-and-one-way-out parking lot. We had a choice to make – park, get out of the car and walk or turn around and drive the bleak, non-brilliant-yellow-fall hours home. Walk it was, because off in the distance there was just enough yellow peeking out of the evergreens to give us a sliver of hope that we’d see something beautiful today.

And we did. It was a beautiful trail with fall colors against the backdrop of rocks and pines, just challenging enough to feel exhilarated but not so difficult that I couldn’t participate with my family. We walked, smiled for pictures, enjoyed conversations and took in the beauty of fall. Like we do every year.

I am such a metaphoric thinker…I see meaning and purpose and symbolism all around me. In 2017, when we did our annual fall colors trip, it was so interesting that the colors were muted by fog – so indicative the beginning of this story. I had just been diagnosed and I was recovering from my bilateral mastectomy and we were about to embark on chemo. Foggy, no doubt. In 2018, our annual fall colors trip was a bust and we had to focus on the beauty of the rocks, instead. Again, indicative of where I was – just weeks beyond a total hysterectomy because for a brief (but overwhelmingly scary) moment in this midst of breast cancer, they thought I had cancer in my ovaries. It took some doing for me to find beauty in the despair that year. And then this year – having to patiently wait for the beauty to show itself, trusting that it existed deep inside the trail because it wasn’t obvious from the start. Trusting that one step in front of the other was bringing me one step closer to it… Survivorship is like this. There is this existing beauty deep inside survivorship because we got here even when there were no guarantees of it. There is also uncertainty and confusion, much like the turn after turn of the roads and the trail – will it have been worth it? And then there is gratitude – that can be difficult to find sometimes when everything else seems bleak, muted, dull, desperate – and yet it remains inherent in everything even when you have to go searching for it.

Today I am grateful that I see the world differently now.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month…

…Day five – Losing hair by force is one of the hardest things to experience. It’s not ‘just hair’ and while I know it’ll grow back, it’s a difficult thing to process.