Interesting enough as I wrap up my May Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass theme, last night I had a very vivid dream (you know, the kind where it’s so real that the only way you realize it was a dream is because you wake up from it…the kind of dream where the people in it are actually your people and where the feelings in it are actually felt).
Well, it wasn’t a good one.
Because I sleep so poorly in general, most always I rarely remember even dreaming let alone any of the details, but last night’s dream is both easy to recall and lingeringly upsetting. And it’s making me super funky today….my subconscious seeming to have plenty to say about what is going on deep down inside of my head and heart. But what is represented by what? What is my body trying to communicate? Do dreams even work that way? Should I care about what I dreamed? What, if anything, do I do with it? Why can’t I shake it off?
Without having any of the answers to those questions, I’m feeling the gut-punch of the all-too-real, it-could-actually-happen images that, like I talked about yesterday, leave me completely in the undone. Uncertain and rattled.
“It was just a dream……..it was just a dream…………………………it was just a dream.”
Was it?
The Whole Person :: May 30, 2018
About once a week, sometimes a few times, the muscles in my chest and abs cramp so painfully. I don’t know why…my doctors don’t know why…but what I do know is that it hurts so so bad. Tonight is feeling extra bad. And I hope to sleep it away. Cancer effects every.effing.part. Ugh.
Fierce :: May 30, 2019
Fierce. I like this word. Because of cancer: I am fierce. I love fiercely. I feel fiercely. I protect fiercely.
I’m planning to do a mastectomy tattoo and the closer I am to being done with reconstruction, the closer I am to having this be a reality. I remember back at the time of my diagnosis and the intensity of the pain I felt at the thought of a double mastectomy and losing such a precious part of my body and then having this unknown concept of “reconstruction” (a literal constructing something new) ahead of me without any frame of reference at all for really what any of it meant. I remember around every corner there came new understandings about the extent of this process….the this-has-to-come-before-that waiting and realizing that we weren’t talking weeks or months, but years down the road.
I remember thinking, “I have to survive an amputation….and then chemo…and then radiation…….. and they won’t even consider reconstruction until months after all that is done. That feels lifetimes away….I wonder if I’ll ever get there or if I’ll die first.”
As I’ve written before, time is a crazy thing and while I never thought I’d see the day I could actually start making this a reality, here I am. I have secured a mastectomy-experienced tattoo artist (who, by the way, offered to do both the artwork and the tattoo free of charge as a gift to me…amazing, right?!) and I have chosen the main symbol of my journey that will be incorporated into the art. The rose with it’s thorns symbolize so much – the flower: femininity, beauty, uniqueness, softness, fragrance, depth; the thorns: protection, pain, treachery; and the flower and the thorns together: a fierceness of gorgeous resilience.
While my spirit is heavy with the weight of so much, this feels really special to be writing about because of the depth of what it means. The waiting. The survival. The patience. The hell. The beauty. The resilience. The fierceness.
A Smaller Bigger :: May 30, 2020
I am sitting here, feeling the heaviness of current happenings, knowing that I want to write and process but find the actual words elusive. I can muster just a few…
Numb. Sad. Confused.
I wonder what things would look like or how they would feel if we didn’t have access to 24/7/365 information. And I’m not just talking “a social media fast.” I know news is a way to feel connected to the world because I think we all want to feel like we are a part of something bigger than our own little footprint, but my heart is telling me something different today — What if we were just content in our own little footprint? What if we stopped scrolling? What if we stopped reading every article that is published? What if we sat outside and just took in only what we could see (literally and figuratively)?
I’m not condoning selfishness or self-centered-ness. And I do think God created us to seek community outside of our own little footprints. But what if? What if the inundation of information stopped. What if we were forced to seek community without clicks and taps and links and “www’s”? How would things look different?
I think people could still find comfort when they are hurting, because people would still hurt and because people would want to comfort them. I think people could still stand for justice when justice is required, because injustices would still happen and because people would still have their convictions. I think people could still serve and love and help those who need it, because people would still need help and because there are people who are designed to be helpful. I think people could still feel like they were a part of something bigger than themselves, because that’s human and that can’t be quieted yet the ‘bigger’ would be smaller.
But here’s the deal – I think we’d have to work harder to connect because the click-to-connect and the tap-to-share and the link-to-relationship and the www-to-inform-opinions make it far too easy.
Today, my heart tells me that that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. We’d probably be much more intentional about our actions if it required much more effort to act.