One year ago today I received the phone call informing me I
had invasive lobular breast cancer.
This makes today my “cancerversary.” Researchers have defined trauma as “an event that happens after
which everything is different,” and being diagnosed with cancer certainly fit
this definition.
Along with the diagnosis came the permission to quit trying
to be Wonder Woman. Not that I was
ever very successful at being Wonder Woman, but I had a long history of running
myself ragged trying to fulfill the expectations of others.
Being diagnosed with cancer certainly knocked that out of
me.
I stumbled across the beginning of never finished and never
sent letter to my friend Michal who lives in Israel. The letter was dated December 2012 and written about six
weeks before my diagnosis. In it I
tell her, “I am coming into the end of what has been an extraordinarily hard
semester. Somewhat like watching
storm clouds gather, I knew it was going to be a rough one, but this surpassed
my expectations. It was the convergence of constant crisis management both at
work and at home which brought me to my current state emotional and adrenal
exhaustion. I think the last time I wrote was over the summer.“
The writing I refer to in the last sentence was my personal
writing practice not a specific correspondence. The year that I was on sabbatical and traveling, I kept up a
very steady writing practice but the minute I was back home I wafted into my
futile wonder woman mode and my writing drifted by the wayside. I had discovered that writing was a
life affirming practice that helped me to process my lived experience and
negotiation difficult situations in my life but I could not find a way to make
it a priority in my life.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer I knew I needed to
start writing again. On a gut
level I knew it would be key to my survival. And so I wrote through the good and the bad days,
through surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, from February through
August. My last entry, dated
August 24th 2013, joyfully announced I was going back to work on a
full-time basis for the fall semester.
The school year began and I never wrote another word.
Which is not to say I completely slid into old habits. I did not. There is a joke in meditation circles that goes, “Don’t just
do something, stand there. ” This,
along with my personal motto, “Resist urgency,” became the guiding principals
for the road forward. I tried to
pause before agreeing to take on any additional responsibilities. I signed up and attended an eight-week
course in “Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR).” My friend Klea and I
attended a “Yoga-Care” class throughout the fall semester. I even traveled to the Kripalu Center
for Yoga and Health in Western Massachusetts for a three-day workshop entitled,
“Radiance: Building an Amazing Life after Cancer.” These things may not seem to
be outrageous actions but for me they were radical acts of self-care and
compassion that never would have happened in my before cancer (BC) days. I had “planned” to take the MBSR course for at least five
years but was always “too busy.” I
had dreamed of going to Kripalu for at least as long, but could never justify
the expense and or missing a day or two (gasp!) of the semester. BC it was easy for me to give
advice about the necessity of taking care of yourself if you are trying to care
or attend to others – the whole putting on your own oxygen mask before
attempting to help others. I
totally got it on a theoretical level but I just could not make it an actual
practice in my life. Cancer
changed that.
One of my teachers at Kripalu defined hope as “seeing reality but still seeing the next step to a
slightly better future.” I like
that definition, and by that definition I am a very hopeful individual.
I am part of a twelve week LIVESTRONG program at the YMCA in
Mankato. I have always been at
home in the dance studio or in a Yoga or Pilates class but put me in a room
with a bunch of treadmills and elliptical trainers and I want to run screaming
out of there as quickly as possible.
However, part of my
“slightly better future” involves a stronger cardiovascular system and since it
is the winter of 2014 and I live in Minnesota (aka Polar Vortex central), I am
working on developing a new relationship with exercise machines. This relationship has a long way to go
but in this arena I also remain hopeful.
A number of years ago I read a book by Sara
Lawrence-Lightfoot titled, The Third
Chapter: Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 years after 50. In it she writes, “We must develop a
compelling vision of later life: one that does not assume a trajectory of decline
after fifty, but one that recognizes it as a time change, growth, and new
learning; a time when ‘our courage gives us hope.’” During the past year I have realized I have an impressive
array life skills that helped me negotiate life in the after diagnosis
lane. While the details are still
unclear I realize the third chapter of my life will involve helping other women
negotiate this new terrain.
I started chemotherapy on April 18th, 2013, which
means I only have about three more “Herceptin” treatments left and if all goes
well somewhere around the middle or end of April I will have my trusty purple
power port, Violet, removed. Violet
and I have had a great run together but I am ready to move on and celebrate
many more cancerversaries.
