In just over a week, I embark on a new career opportunity, which I feel reluctant to share about. My boss, and dear friend of 24 years, says that she is happy for me– but the approaching transition has caused growing tension between us. Also, I do (more…)
I hesitate to share when things are going well because if I recap more than a 
single minute, I easily get spun up in the axle –the entire history of it all, IT: being the “dynamic” of my (FOO)family of origin. I was, for a stretch, enjoying the perks of total estrangement from my FOO and all affiliated, with the exception of my ex and our children, when my mother’s sister emailed Wednesday with an invite for breakfast this weekend. Both anxiety and grief were my immediate gut reactions. It is too a complex a relationship for each of us, full disclosure and authenticity are not well tolerated and our connection is not blessed by the others, which creates hardship for her. I believe she and I are similar in unmentionable ways (sensitive and vocal about being sensitive which troublesome to those who are not(the rest of them)) and it is just too elephant in the roomish and eggshelly for me. I am no good at that and forcing it feels more difficult than wise. (more…)
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…)