My head is in 100 places. I can’t seem to gather a straight thought. I’m distracted. I’m preoccupied. I’m emotional. I’m anxious. 

The funny thing – I was reading Through the Looking Glass and chapters 6, 7 and 8 are literally all over the place. Not only could I barely follow based on my own state of mind, but I’m left wondering if Lewis Carroll was having a day much like mine when he wrote them. Oh the story that would come from my haphazard brain space today. . .

I’m certain it would include the dark and tense pit of my stomach, a dialogue with a volleyball, the epic battle between my cancer monster and my cancer companion, a doctor and her life-size pill chasing after me, the mire of manipulation, the trudge of a mile, the desert and the ocean, a tornado of words, a conversation between What-If and Memory, a dream within a reality and a reality within a dream, Joints screaming at Tendons, a heart ablaze blaming a tomato, a solemn white flag staked into a lonely hill, an Alice that looks like me on a sailboat being tossed about and all of the me’s that I am conferring (and probably arguing) to make sense of it all.

Maybe THAT’S what my book could be…

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Another Round :: May 28, 2018

I always get into a little funk the day before another chemo round. My heart is heavy….

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The Significance of the Slow Down :: May 28, 2019

Life moves so fast. And it is difficult to be present in each moment if they are fleeting.

I’m desperate for a slow down. For moments to last longer. For experiences to linger….even the hard ones. There is so much richness in the living fully present and always having to think 5 steps ahead distracts from the here and now.

I’ve said, from the very beginning of this, that I don’t want it wasted. What a travesty that would be…. As hard as it is to live into this treachery, if I don’t, I will look back and regret having wasted the chance to grow deeper in every way. Deeper in empathy. Deeper in understanding. Deeper in faith and in hope and in gratitude. Deeper in relationships and intimacy. Deeper in self acceptance and identity. Deeper in grief and joy and all of the other tensions that I hold. 

Deeper in meaning.

And in purpose.

And in presence.

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How This is Like That :: May 28, 2020

I posted this on social the other day…..

“As re-opening happens, it will undoubtedly come with tensions. People will yearn for the “old” not yet knowing how to accept that it actually no longer exists….it’s not even a place ‘we’ll get back to eventually.’ And as we learn to acknowledge that reality, we will wrestle with a very human and limited understanding of what it means to have ______________ [faith/hope/joy/gratitude] while simultaneously living practically and authentically. @ambernichole79”

This is certainly intended to speak to this pandemic…BUT, it is fully informed by my cancer story….this is EXACTLY what survivorship is.

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