Posts tagged cancer
the in-between state

2 weeks prior to starting chemo when I was hearing my diagnosis for the first time, I had a conversation with myself about my drinking. Though I drank less than I used to, it seemed to be the right time to choose to be alcohol-free for the duration of my treatment. After all, booze has shown to increase estrogen in the bloodstream and HELLO I have an estrogen receptor positive cancer. Truly sounds like a no-brainer to me!

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different news

What I want to be clear about here is that I didn’t ‘fail’ at keeping cancer away. My first thoughts with this new experience were of that ilk. I believe the trauma of the first experience I had with cancer made me feel ashamed that I got it again. Actually, I was ashamed that I got it at all. Everyone will say ‘but it’s not your fault’ and I would say that to anyone in the world but myself. So that is the source of where I begin. How DO I talk to myself?

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Spring Move and the Shedding of a shell...

As I was preparing to move this week I was overcome with some sadness of leaving my house. It’s been a safe haven for me for the last 6 years, I’ve grown, healed, fallen in love, became a dog mom and gotten married there. I was very comfortable! But I also agreed we needed a little more space and that is was time to evolve. The first night being here I was relaxing on the couch after a fairly stressful week and I turned on planet earth to decompress. I watched this pod of crabs migrating. They gathered together to go through the process of shedding their shells, as they had grown out of them. And surprise surprise, it turns out they had another shell growing beneath the one that had to go, but it was vulnerable for those first few days so they needed each other for protection before resuming their loner crab existence. It turns out that I related to this metaphor quite literally. I’ve always been drawn to the crab, being a Cancerian, the ‘crab’ is our symbol, and at times, retreating into my shell has been my way to protect myself. And though I’d like to have retreated this week, I instead needed to grow and shed my shell.

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