Sometimes a picture does more than words. For both the artist and for the viewer.

I am a porcupine. Edgy. Prickly. Impatient. I feel like I have to protect myself…from the harshness of people who don’t understand.

Cancer is a porcupine. I feel it’s stabbing quills in my chest, forever impaled, and they go with me wherever I go. I feel both the literal pain and the figurative broken-hearted ache of this brutal, out-of-nowhere attack. And I have to keep protecting myself from it as I can’t seem to shake it.

Both+And…to be the porcupine I’m trying to protect myself from. . .

*Post 965

Brutal :: 11/24/17 :: Post 88

Anger.

Resentment.

Frustration.

Sadness.

Thankfully I know it won’t always look like this. But today………all of it.

Rainbows and Butterflies :: 11/24/18 :: Post 437

It’s interesting to me that some people struggle with authentically experiencing the stormy seasons. The discomfort of the real is too hard. And even sitting with another in the muck without trying to save them from it is really too much.
“You gotta always be positive. There is no room for anything but”……….
I just don’t agree…I can be authentic….it doesn’t always have to be rainbows and butterflies.

But I most certainly am grateful in the midst of the storm

Gratitude Month Day 24 :: 11/24/19 :: Post 800

Yikes. November 23 of 2017 and 2018 were dark days. The experience has certainly come with a wide range of emotions and experiences. Every day has had it’s difficulties…every day has had its light (no matter how small)…

And that still is true today, another year past. 2019. I fell asleep last night, wrapped in the arms of my husband, pillow drenched with tears of anguish, my heart incredibly heavy. I woke up this morning with an emotional hangover, evident in my swollen eyes and pounding head. But, also a little lighter. While cancer has robbed us of many things, it has not robbed us of each other. Even if it has to look different. We are still required to accept the destruction, but we can accept it together. And that’s the kicker… As I said yesterday, our relationship looks significantly different now than it did before cancer because we’ve seen things together that no relationship should ever have to see – ‘cancer’ isn’t just a word on a page for us…instead, we’ve seen the inside of the word. Imagine the word on a page and we’re at the front-end curved edge of the ‘c.’ Without warning, we’re shoved from behind into the blackness of the letters, being swallowed up as we fall into the depths of the word. In that space, having to find our way from letter to letter in the dark, mere glimpses of light here and there, we stub our toes and hit our heads just to realize the reality that we now live. That the intimacy of cancer is ugly. And that the end of the word may never come.

I think we’re at a point where we’re starting to comprehend that the words that come after this, the words that will continue to tell our story, will come from a deeper part of the page. We will never just float across the words again … that ship has sailed.

Gratitude Month Day 24 – I’m grateful for a devastating beauty that only comes from the ugliness of cancer’s intimacy.