Untie the Pink Ribbons

“Life is a gift.

We just have to remember

to untie the ribbons.”
 – Unknown

 

I was diagnosed on New Year’s Eve of 2001 with breast cancer.  I heralded in 2002 with trepidation, stark fear and a sickening feeling in my stomach as I faced the unknown future.  Due to that diagnosis, I have survived more than 10 surgeries with one more in the future.  I have endured 6 months of chemotherapy, 6 weeks of daily radiation, countless tests and visits to specialists, excruciating pain, sleepless nights, days when my brain just didn’t seem to work, losing my hair, my breasts, my confidence and my life as I knew it.  I have residual problems, testing every 6 months due to complications and I’m never quite far away from that original diagnosis although to meet me you may never know what I’ve endured.

But I’m still here, untying the gift of today…everyday.

It’s a choice my friends.  No matter what you are facing and believe me, I’ve faced so much in my life and not just cancer, it’s a choice to greet the dawn with enthusiasm, patience, love and kindness in your heart.  It’s a choice to think, “Oh God, it’s morning” and groan or to say it with enthusiasm for the gift of today that is yours.  After any illness, tragedy, or hard times, there’s a transitional period to find your new normal.  It will go a lot easier and faster for you if you lean into the idea that change is inevitable and it can be good.

Don’t mistake me, I can still get plenty mad about having breast cancer.  I can stomp my feet with the rest of the marchers and be angry that parts of my life have been taken from me.  I can look at my scarred body with hatred for what has occurred.  However, I choose to look at it with love for having endured so much pain and still be able to house my soul, my heart and my mind.  Sure, there are days when I lament the loss of my figure as it was before cancer and sure, I look at the scars and see the pain, the heartache and feel that I am not  beautiful.

But…I can also look and see how my body has healed herself with my help.  I see how my mind, body and spirit have connected, joined forces, so that the superficiality of life has fallen gently by the wayside and I am freed from conventionality.  I hold dear the knowledge that I find beauty in another soul’s eyes and spirit and pray that there are others out there who feel the same way.

We hold the power to untie those pink ribbons and find beauty, love, light and health in our own lives.  The diagnosis and subsequent treatments hold a turning point in my life.  I cannot say that I am happy I had this illness.  But I will say that I have grown in my own strength, love and health because of it.  I am a different person because I have endured so much and I am grateful for what I have learned about myself.  I found inner strength that I never knew I possessed.  I embrace my spirituality more tenderly than before and I hope that if you are on this journey of breast cancer, that you find peace, love, health and light within you to guide you as we find ourselves on this journey of light.

Shine On!

xo

Pink Once A Week

Lately I’ve been just going with the flow in my life, but I’ve been dabbling in writing a book or two as well.  It seems to me when we breast cancer patients finish treatment, we are sent out into the world with less than nothing in order to rebuild our lives.  As an 11 year survivor, I’m finding that there are so many women out there who are asking as I did, “What now?” because quite frankly, it’s a bit overwhelming.

First there’s the simple grieving process of being diagnosed, with the subsequent surgeries ranging from a lumpectomy to a full double mastectomy which is enough to depress the happiest of souls followed by the reconstruction surgeries which may or may not take place at the same time.  Most times we endure chemotherapy which as the meds designed to kill cancer cells, slowly changes our body chemistry as well, we endure hair loss including baldness, depression, nausea, aches, pains, weight gain and hot flashes, none which are sexy or fun.  Afterwards, we may have radiation treatment daily which tires us out and gives us a mean sunburn among other things.

And then, we’re set free ~ off to a world filled with pink ribbons and we are handed a survivor sign to commemorate our cancer journey.

But what about the new normal that we’re trying so desperately to find?  It’s a hard road to get used to implants or being breast-less or multiple surgeries.  It’s a process to accept our new bodies with the restrictions surrounding them.  Self-esteem, self-confidence and self-acceptance need to improve so that we can feel good about ourselves and that’s simply NOT just a breast cancer thing either!

So that’s what I’m writing about ~ I want to give a class on it ~ I want to help women who are looking for a friend  to hold her hand as we travel along this road together.  It’s the beautiful thing about women who’ve endured breast cancer.  None of us have wanted to join this group, but since we are all here, we bond.

You can meet a stranger who has breast cancer and instantly, there’s a bond of knowing and understanding which forms quite literally in moments.  We’ve been there and we understand each other.  Have you found that happens to you?  I think it’s human nature to bond with others of similar circumstances.  I know I’ve bonded with others who’ve been grieving over the loss of a parent since my dad passed away last year.  It’s when we open up and connect with each other that healing can take place.

So if you’re interested, let me know because I’d like to write a bit more about it here on my blog.  But I’m testing the waters first because many of my readers aren’t breast cancer survivors ~ but since we’ve all experienced sadness in our lives (at least most of us), I thought it could help others as well since I like the glass half full approach!

What do you think?  Would you appreciate just once a week breast cancer help? 

Please let me know!  Just click on the Poll below!   Thank you!

Shine On!

xo

Daily Prompt ~ Changes!

Change is beautifully inevitable

Daily Prompt: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

You need to make a major change in your life. Do you make it all at once,

cold turkey style, or incrementally?

For me, changes have never been subtle in my life.  They’ve arrived cold turkey style and left me scrambling to start swimming in order to not drown under the tsunami of change.  Many of the changes took me a long time to come to terms with as some of them were life altering as many changes can be.  Take for instance being diagnosed with an illness such as cancer ~ or being told of the death of a loved one.  Those changes are life altering in and of themselves and they are changes which do not allow for a u-turn in the road of life.  You just have to keep swimming with the tide afterwards.

So I have turned to the cold turkey style of change as my comfort zone in life even though it may take me baby steps in time to allow for the adjustment that the change brings so in that case, I guess my answer is both incrementally and cold turkey!  The change itself, is cold turkey style, but the adjustment which occurs after it, is incremental.  Does that make sense?

For example, when I had my double mastectomy due to breast cancer, even though I was reconstructed in the OR so that I wouldn’t awaken without some type of mound on my chest, the change was most definitely cold turkey style.  There is nothing like falling asleep with my own soft breasts only to awaken with hard, unmoving and cold lumps called tissue expanders under the skin where previously there was warmth.  It took me a long time to be able to change my thoughts, my feelings about myself and find a new normal in accepting my new body, life and scars.  And I won’t say it is easy because it’s not, but I will say it is do-able and this gal who I am now, has a much richer life than before she was diagnosed in 2001.

Even when I was losing my hair due to the ACT chemotherapy that I was taking, I opted to cut off my own hair cold turkey and then incrementally go bald!  Once my hair began coming out in clumps in the shower which is an emotional roller coaster ride even though I knew it was going to happen, I decided to take control over my life and in turn, over the breast cancer that riddled my body.  With a bottle of champagne in one hand and my hair festooned with pink ribbon pony tails, my husband and I celebrated my taking control over my cancer.  Celebratory swigs bonded us as I carefully cut off the pony tails to my scalp, holding the clumps of hair by the pink ribbons.  I remember with the first cut that I couldn’t’ stop giggling because what woman in her right mind takes a pair of scissors to her head and chops off a clump of her hair?  I mean really?  But I did it and it was freeing!  Oh so freeing!

I took off about 10 pony tails (which I still have 2 of my original hair) and looked into the mirror.  All was fun and joyous until I realized that I had big clumps of missing hair on my head.  My gentle and sweet husband to whom I am still so grateful to be married, kissed and held me and then proceeded to cut my hair into a really short pixie style a la Mia Farrow.  (Thank goodness he wasn’t drinking as much champagne as I was that day!)

When he was finished, we looked into the bathroom mirror together and he held me ~ cradling me with his love ~ and he told me that ‘this too shall pass’ for which I believed him.

The next morning, my pillow looked as if a cat had slept on it as it was covered with my pixie short hairs which broke my heart.  So that night, my husband buzzed my head so that I wouldn’t have to awaken with the sadness of looking at my pillow and it was better for me.  Done ~ cold turkey ~ and I felt as though I could move on with my wig, my scarves and my hats.

I have walked through hell and have kept walking for which I am so grateful and I believe that’s why I write my blog ~ because I want to inspire and be inspired by all of you.  For you see, change is inevitable in our lives, so we have to keep evolving, keep flowing with our lives and keep taking baby steps forward.  We can change our course of direction at any time, but we can’t go backwards.  We can only stand still when we need to rest and then begin again.

What makes the changes easier is when we allow ourselves to connect with others on this lifetime journey.  Taking hold of a hand which is offered to you eases the transition of change.  It’s in those moments when we realize that we are all connected here and that change can be beautiful.  Keep smiling!

Shine On!

xo

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Beauty…

People are beautiful if you love them.

When I awoke this morning,  I realized that 10 years ago, just around this time, my hair started falling out due to the chemotherapy I was enduring.  I won’t lie and tell you it was ok with me, because I distinctly remember that it wasn’t at all.  One particular day, I started crying in the shower because as I was washing my hair, my hands were coming away littered with clumps of my hair detached from my head.  It was, simply put, overwhelming.  And if you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about ~ just not fun at all to say the least.

It was a few days after this gut wrenching beginning of baldness that I decided to take control of the side effects before they completely did me in.  Being the ‘girly girl’ that I can be, I decided to cut off my hair with the help of my supportive, loving hubby and a good bottle of champagne!  I tied my hair into little pony tails adorned with pink ribbons (ok a little theatrical,but I didn’t care) and we popped open the bottle of bubbly.

Hidden in our bathroom as our boys were safely watching the famous purple dinosaur Barney, we began to cut my hair because I wanted to feel like I was in control (even if were only technically that I was cutting it before it fell out)!  As I snipped off the first pink ponytail, leaving what seemed to me a giant sized hole in my pageboy, I handed it to my hubby reverently.  And I cried and I laughed because I couldn’t believe I had just cut off my own hair!    I won’t say that I was strong and did it without tears because life is about truth and my truth was that it was a hard thing to do, but it had to be done and I did it…and I am glad that I did it because I needed that reminder later on.

Perhaps because of the bubbly, or because it’s been a chemo-induced 10 years of time since then, I am a bit fuzzy as to whether I charged ahead and took off the rest of the ponytails, or if my hubby did.  However, one thing is certain, by the end of our hair-cutting session, I looked like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.   My normally brown pageboy with bangs, was now a close to the head, cropped version of Mia’s hairdo.  Lucky for me, my hubby was willing and able to stand by me while we took this stage of our journey together.

Shaving my head with the flowbee (or whatever that thing is called) was simply not a viable option for me.  I was not able to fathom going that far.  So we finished all the bubbly we could and together we emerged to see the boys and their reactions.

And there was none.  Simply put, hair or no hair, I was still Mommy…and they didn’t even notice ~ even when I showed them and asked if they liked my new ‘do…they were completely blase about the whole thing which I found so crazy because here I’d cut off my hair and my hubby had done the finishing touches to it so it didn’t look too awful and the boys were non-plussed.

What an amazing lesson for me ~ you see, I was still Mommy ~ still ME ~ and it took their non-reaction to make me see that ~ no matter what changes are made to my outer shell ~ I am still me ~ and so I send on this tidbit to you.  No matter what outer changes you are dealing with, deep inside you are still you.

Connect to that ‘me’ place today and know that I am applauding your Beauty!

xo

P.S.  And yes, I still have the first pink-ribboned ponytail hidden away in my jewelry box.