Oh there is just so much in my head tonight. And so much that I feel like I want to write about. And I am experiencing so many feelings. But I keep hearing “just be quiet.”
Interesting because I sat with a friend today who is deeply hurting. And my mind was spinning. So much in my head, so much in my heart, so deeply hurting with her. So deeply hurting. And yet I could not form words.
Just be quiet.
*Post 990
Nothing :: 12/16/17 :: Post 109
“Everyday has something.”
I wrote that towards the beginning of this chapter…I wrote it because it was a lesson that the early part of the year taught me. Everyday has its own thing. Don’t worry about tomorrow’s stuff because you’ve got enough in today. And when you get to tomorrow’s stuff, you’ll have what you need to be in it.
I hold this lesson close. I keep it on the top of my mind always. I say “be where your feet are” often.
But I’m also learning that sometimes the Thing of the Day is actually nothing.
That’s been today. It’s been a day of quiet. A day of rest. No earth-shattering realizations, no enlightened perspectives, no life-altering answers. Just quiet. And rest. And some Christmas music.
Cookies :: 12/16/18 :: Post 460
Annual Prekajac Cookie Exchange. So fun. So good for my soul. I have a crazy amazing family. And now a belly full of yummy cookies.
Living Changed Head to Toe Day 16 :: 12/16/19 :: Post 824
Living changed, head to toe… 15 days ago I started at my head and have worked my way through a big part of the top of my body; talking about how my life has changed from the smallest parts like my nails to the bigger parts like my brain. Without really planning it intentionally, I come to literally the middle of the month and the body part next is my chest. And I’m not even sure where to start or what to say………
The life that I live now is barely recognizable because of my chest. Because of where the tumors were invading. Because of the destruction of rogue cells multiplying and taking over the healthy ones. Body parts that I was born with, developed during one of the craziest, hardest, most emotional times of life (the stripes earned to be a woman), that fed my babies, that were a part of me – brutally cut out because if they hadn’t been, what gave such life would have been my death. I remember right at diagnosis how I was desperate for getting them off. Don’t give the tumors another second to snuff the life out of healthy cells. Don’t give any more time for cancer to infiltrate further than it already had…details of which I was still in the dark about. ‘Get it off get it off get it off’ was all I could think – like a spider that scared the you-know-what outta me. And then the night before my double mastectomy, I crumbled. Devastated at the reality the next morning brought. Saddened by the loss that was inevitable. Crushed beneath the cruelty of cancer and what was only just the beginning of its chaos.
Two years later, I look down and feel so confused… I like who I am on the inside better now than before cancer yet I feel like a fraud having mounds of fat and implants posing as real boobs. I love my mastectomy tattoo yet I hate cancer for what it stole. I oddly embrace the ugly scars, still visible under the ink intended to erase them, because of the story they tell and it’s a story that I want to share. I wish that the ‘new’ inside me can be with the ‘old’ outside me. But one can’t be without the other…so I sit in bittersweetness, the literal tension of opposites. And without the devastation of cancer, I wouldn’t have the desperate gratitude that colors my every move. Living changed, head to toe, day 16 is just that.