Springin forward

There’s a lot to say and I’ve been thinking about so much, and yet haven’t been able to write it all down lately. I’m doing well though. I finished my radiation in late January and am slowly finding my footing back in a work setting, and also finding some outlets for creativity. So much has happened these last 2 years. It’s really a shock in some ways that 2 years ago, we were all running for cover from an unknown virus. A virus, that is still relatively unknown in its long term effects. In addition to that big pile of fear we all ingested, we also had to renegotiate our relationships with ourselves, how we work, how we socialize (or don’t) and what it all means. It’s a giant shift. My illness reappearing in the middle of all that was inconvenient at best, or maybe exactly what I needed. Jury is still out, but I lean toward being grateful I was in tune with myself to know something wasn’t right.

And it’s back to that loop for me - why and how and what did I do that I didn’t extract cancer from my body the first time around? And as I face another follow up CT scan this week, those questions still loom and my lymph nodes are like, are you gonna have to poke us again? I really hope not, because that totally sucked and we are still angry over that.

I had a lymphatic massage yesterday which was a real game changer in terms of how I felt in my body. I was dragging a bit when I showed up - despite doing some helpful yoga stretches lately and staying on my meditation path, I was still feeling kinda swollen and achy and just fatigued. I can blame all kinds of things for that, and I am trying really hard to rest more, eat well and move my body, but there’s just something about all that chemo/radiation and now maintenance meds, plus having covid in December - I am still just depleted.

And as much as I’m trying to find this balance, there is so much I want to do. I want to work, write, create, update, keep up, edit, cook, clean, whatever it is to keep my life on track. It’s so reasonable, yet why am I coming up short and feeling a weird pressure to push back into a system that ejected me for overriding too many times?

I’ve been listening to a new podcast called “Quitted” by Holly Whitaker who wrote “Quit Like a Woman” and Emily McDowell, creator of ‘Empathy Cards.’ They are exploring so many deep concepts, more than just quitting alcohol or a job, but looking into they WHY we got to where we need to be quitting in the first place. A lot of it points back to feeling like we have to work a certain amount to be validated. I mean, there is something ingrained in me about how much I'm 'supposed to work' every week and then I come home and do my other job - being a creative - or is that 'for fun?' In the culture of addictive processes we find ourselves telling each other that it's good for us to be jammed up all the time, but I don't think it's healthy! There is so much talk around 'self-care' and 'work life balance' but damnit they just become buzzwords that we end up resisting in lieu of proving to ourselves we need to be superheroes instead of mastering resting.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert (eat pray love, big magic, city of girls) is a guest on 2 episodes of “Quitted” and like I said, this is a brand new podcast, and Holly and Emily are still straightening some of the kinks out - but they have Liz on there and it’s soooo good to hear from her, because she basically quit everything the past few years, even (GASP) social media! Holy cow, how dare she?!?! And what a thought, to quit the thing that we are so addicted to, how did she do it (listen to the podcast to find out) BUT the point of what I’m saying here is that she was in that cycle because she was addicted to the response from others (aka ‘likes’) and I mean, who isn’t, right? But what I loved the most about what she said and this is a huge reason why I’m recc this podcast is that she was a victim of Purpose Anxiety. Uh oh, what is that and why does it resonate so much with me as soon as I heard it? The definition of it acc to Larissa Rainey, an Organizational Psychology researcher, is “purpose anxiety can professionally be defined as the negative emotions experienced in direct relation to the search for purpose.” So, in any profession or line of creative work or existence, we are designed to feel like we need to meet some big achievement before we die and if we don’t our life hasn’t had a special purpose. But Liz points out, if we are all trying to change the world at once, doesn’t that make for a whole lot of chaos? Which, would explain a lot to me!

But just to hear that diagnosis purpose anxiety — to give it a name, it was a healing moment for the pile-on I was feeling the pressure from in every cell in my body to conquer some grandiose to-do list that even a superhero would balk at. And it took the pressure off - for a a little bit anyway - to say, hey, it’s ok to find purpose daily in whatever you are doing, even if that means something mundane like going to work being kind to someone over the phone. It’s such a relief to me to realize I don’t have to do anything soooo important to change the freaking world or have a master plan for my next thing that ‘s gonna make me into the Megan Palmer I always thought I should be! Who is she? She is me right now. She is the person who loves the world but sometimes stays in bed an extra 15 minutes. She is the person who is consistently showing up to life, even when it’s unclear as to why it’s important to still know how to send a fax. She is the one learning slowly how to say ‘no’ sometimes even though it feels so counterintuitive to the nature of her business. Yet, I am learning that this untraining is important for my purpose, whatever that may be.

Going through an illness as a person who sorta thought they might live forever really checked me. Of course I didn’t really think I’d live forever, but I didn’t think I’d get sick at 39! That was other people. But now I see, it’s any of us, and all of us. Healing takes a lifetime, or at least a lot longer than the illness itself, which means, we are all on some path of healing, like it or not. And allowing that to come in - via booking a massage, or making some space in a schedule for ‘downtime’ or learning a new skill - we will find purpose, in daily moments, while doing the dishes, or waiting for that fax to go through.