Today I’m so grateful for friends and family.
New friends, young with children and lots of energy. Three of you have stepped into my life either as new friends or as deepening ones. Your stepping forward in the ways you have throws me into wonder. And I love our visits, texts, pictures of kids doing silly things and calls. Exchanging drawings by mail. You know who you are but maybe you don’t know how much your reaching out heals me.
Long time dearest friends, calling, texting, monitoring my chemo schedule and reaching out to see how things are going, bringing treats and just showing up. Impromptu tea parties. You know who you are, and again their is renewal and deepening in our connection.
Friends who have thoughtfully recommended books, or given me books. How great, giving or shipping me a well traveled stone they carried to a special place or picked up at a special place. Even sending a photo of them at the rally on their honeymoon, or with a poster inspired by my posts. Or just reaching out.
People sending with beautiful cards and words through email and texts.
Cousins deepening and renewing connections through many means including joint daily spiritual readings and fun magazines to enjoy.
Other family reaching out with long eloquent emails focused on kids and daily life with enough concern embedded in them to deeply touch me. Oh and one who didn’t go to the rally to be with me.
And I won’t even get into how helpful Ken and Nathan are.
I can’t express enough how these things touch me, and heal me. That became more palpably true as I began to read the book “Speak the Language of Healing, Living with Breast Cancer Without Going to War.” It is important to me to avoid war, battle, survivor, victory (and by implication loss) language from my vocabulary of this – no can’t say fight – healing process. This book is all about it. The book is by 4 women from different faith traditions (including 12 step, Sufi, Jewish and Christian) who separately decided they wanted to focus on the spiritual journey offered them by cancer. It doesn’t matter that mine is uterine and theirs breast. They break their process of cancer treatment into 4 steps which they admit can loop around a bit. These are Chaos, Choices, Community and Spirit. I’ve only read Chaos and much of Community so far. This book is so rich I bet I write on it again more than once.
The specific reason that I’m linking my appreciation for all of you and this books is that the “Chaos” chapter is about the horrible process all 4 women went through of trying to answer the question “why me”. That isn’t a very interesting question to me. My answer is some combination of genetics, environmental exposures and yawn. But most people get really cought up in this and it ties to blame. Their friends and family exacerbate it by suggesting a healing vegan diet (by implication, if you’d been vegan all along you wouldn’t have gotten it) or a particular prayer practice. But if you can heal it – then you could have inadvertently caused it. All 4 women point that out
What is important to me here and what I honor you for is that not one of you have done this to me. No, “Its all for a reason” or whatever. You are remarkable because you know how messed up it would be to pose these “helpful” suggestions. Thank you all. So I sort of jumped over this step.
The next step is about choices on treatment etc. Thanks so much to those who helped so much on that side, so much I had a world class doctor within 24 hours of my diagnosis. Wow, guess I’ll move straight to the community chapter. And I’m glad to have read the others.
Source of grace – Thank you for the grace all my friends have shown and continue to show toward me. Let that spiral of grace extend beyond the walls of this group and through our expanded contacts to the world. Blessed be.