Today’s Quotable Quote:

“Many people in the United States and throughout the industrialized nations misguidedly believe that the only ways to have what we want is to work hard and long. There is an alternative. BE who you are first…Discovering our life purpose focuses our attention on the essence of who we are – our be-ing. If we were designed to be human do-ings, we would have been called that.”
Pat Williams and Diane Menendez 

Pat Williams and Diane Menendez are associated with the Life Coaching world and have taught, mentored and provided incredible life coaching for a long time….pioneers in the practice, for certain. When I started looking into life coaching, I was only somewhat certain that this is what I wanted to do as a next step in my career. And then I read this from one of my textbooks for my recent classes. 

And I knew I was right where I needed to BE. 

*Post 1043

Unexpected :: 2/7/18 :: Post 159

I had a really tough doc appt today. 

I went to my plastic surgeon and while I knew he would have to take fluid out of my right side tissue expander to prepare me for radiation, I was expecting it to be very little. Turns out it was over half and I look ridiculously lopsided. 

As he was removing fluid, he kept saying how bad he felt and how “the oncologist was making him do it”…

I didn’t expect that to be as hard as it was…it totally caught me off guard. After he left the room, before I got dressed, I looked in the mirror and started crying. It brought me back to how I felt after surgery…..looking down and seeing nothing there. Experiencing the loss of an entire body part. Facing the new reality of redefining so much. 

Accepting the permanence of cancer. 

And it reminded me of just how much I’ve lost and how much more I have ahead of me. 

I’m angry. And annoyed. 

And sad. 

I know the lopsidedness is temporary but there is so much about this experience that is far from temporary. 

The scars on my body. 

The scars on my heart. 

The memories seared into my soul. 

Hurt :: 2/7/19 :: Post 513

It’s been a long day and I’ve hurt through most of it.

Hoping I can sleep it off. 

And I had to get my hair cut tonight…hearing the scissors cut the hair I’m so desperate to keep was really hard. 

Breathe through it. Breathe through it. 

Gobs of Grace :: 2/7/20 :: Post 847

As I sit here, in the quiet of a snow day, watching the blanketing of winter happen from my bedroom window…

(In the background, I hear my kid laughing hysterically with her friend and my face can’t help but smile while downstairs my other kids are watching TV and enjoying the day off from the normal go-go-go that comes with life in-between snow days.)

…Coffee in hand, I sip and reflect on my past week.

It’s been interesting – 

I found myself nostalgic for life before cancer. Oh man what I learned. It taught me so much about identity and roles and context. It honed communication skills like no other experience could have done. It required a resilience that I know saw me through cancer treatment. It brought relationships that, no doubt, will be eternal.  

The nostalgia was thick but at the same time, I found myself so contemplative about my life now. What a big life change – to go through cancer diagnosis and treatment, to survive a huge car accident, to get to ‘this side’ of the intensity of surviving into this weird place of survivorship…adding in a career change and this whole new direction of no direction…life as I knew it is so different now. The things that matter to me – different. My day-to-day – different. My expectations – different. My capacity – different. My faith – different. My identity – different. My everything – different. 

Once again, I sit in tension – missing parts of what was while feeling deep gratitude for what is. Wishing for direction but hoping I don’t get it. Wanting my old body but needing my new self. Believing there is purpose in the change but having to trust it’s slow manifestation.

I don’t know who I am. But I do. 

I don’t know how to live changed. But I do. 

I don’t know why. But I do.

I got a visual this week of a dot-to-dot. My life before cancer was one of those dot-to-dots where you can actually visualize the picture before you start connecting the dots. It made sense even without form and structure. Now I live in a dot-to-dot that is unrecognizable and all I have available is the next dot in the picture (and sometimes even that isn’t clear). There is such a freedom here but this week I have had to remind myself a lot that the freedom doesn’t have to come with anxiety. I don’t have to have the linear structure of a dot-to-dot to know purpose. But man is it hard to contently live here. 

And on a physical note – my body hurts like hell, I can’t stand being trapped in my own skin, I’m exhausted from the literal constant pain, my eyes won’t stop watering, my stomach hurts almost always, sleep is elusive, headaches are common and while I love LOVE the snow, it is extremely painful to be cold. But, not to worry, I’ll get a hot flash any second now…

One foot in front of the other and gobs of grace in-between.