Trying to raise good citizens. Honest. Kind. Faithful. Humble.
My parenting game is NOT on point these days. Quick to jump in the ring with my son…I am not so unlike that defeated, blood and sweat covered boxer just swingin’ and hopin’ to connect. Neither dignity nor peace have been won in this way. Shit shit shit—healthy engagement has not been modeled for me and it is unnatural and hard AF. (more…)
It makes sense that I married a man opposed to any sort of amending or resolving of conflicts and painful moments. Not once, in the span of our short…
My sister would frequently snap: “Not everything is about you” when I expressed anything difficult or needing. And it made me confused in a sad and shameful way. Like it never addressed anything but the collective need for me to shut up and be different. Under the guidance of my older sister, parents, and extended family I failed to learn about me, myself, in relation to whom I am, only in relation to how pleasing or displeasing they found me to be, mostly the latter. For example, my birthday gifts and foods weren’t about me, weren’t on my list of things I liked or wanted. I was informed that those were expressions of whom they were and what they wanted to share with me and that I should be grateful…yet their raging and diminishing behaviors were purely about me AND I should remain unaffected. I still do not really get it. I have stopped trying–as that made me want to not live. (more…)
I remember feeling amazed to learn that there is a different formulation for chemotherapy depending on the type of cancer. I thought there was just a Chemo Recipe, and you got more of it or less of it depending on how advanced or widely spread the cancer was. I was also surprised to learn that where the cancer is found, is not necessarily the type of cancer it is. For example, my mother’s cancer was found in her lungs, but it originated in her ovary, so it was Ovarian Cancer and required the correct chemicals to effectively address it, it was not lung cancer, ever. In her lungs is where it made itself known. If her Treatment Team had not been dedicated and expert at understanding the source, they may have been less effective at addressing it so completely, leaving her Cancer-Free in barely 6 months of treatment for Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer. If they had just treated it as the cancer they first saw in the lungs, as lung cancer, it would never have been cured. They had to name it(correctly) to tame it! (more…)