Author: hannaodile

8.3.24

You stepped out of your home, looking frail and under weight and nervous and shy. You offered hugs but I braced myself and blocked my heart and body with boxes of sweets that we brought for you. I felt the wall of compassion grow. I felt the depth of distancing and protecting expand. Both can be present. Both will be present. For how long?  Only time will tell.

You nervously showed us around your home. I immediately began seeing our past woven into the fabric of this life- art from beloved trips, dining room tables, with the spots from warm plates marking years of cherished family meals, covered over, side tables I bought as teenager, foot stools to rest our feet. All things I too cherished but left behind 11 years ago out of guilt and heartache. My distorted tokens of support and connection. “Keep these. Keep this as a tether back to “us”” I secretly whispered into them. 

Life had different plans.

As I watch you lose your balance, reside yourself to falling, tumble toward the floor, the couches edge meeting your face and then a finally of a full body, un-braced hard hit to the floor I saw your complete vulnerability.  I kneeled next to you and asked the only words I knew to say, “may I touch you?” 

As the night progressed and our daughter and daughter in law sat anxiously sorting out next steps and you rested upstairs, I looked around at the things that were nauseatingly meaningful to me a few hours before and felt a whole hearted “thank you.”  With that fall, I realize I detached not only from the things but the hurt that they symbolized. I fully understood that the man who weaponized those objects may still be present, but his strength to keep showing up is shadowed by the gravity of this illness.

As I sit on this back porch, listening to our daughter make coffee in the kitchen, I know that attachment, love, patience, and kindness are the only

the only

the only

focus for the rest of my time here.

9.28.2022

I stepped across the parking lot and took the usual picture.

Me in front of the oncology building, wanting to show excitement for another 6 months healthy. What I captured was the true feelings – exhaustion. Exhaustion from the new job and the drive.

No.

Not that.

Exhaustion from the counting.

5 years. The new APRN came in, face wrapped with a sunflower mask, beaming to share with me how happy she was about my five year mark. She bantered about it officially being Jan 30th, the day I finished chemo.

I pressed that I count my surgery date as my anniversary. With kind dismissiveness she said “yeah surgeon’s use their date, we use ours.” I, voice shaking under my mask said, ” No, I count it. It is the day I was pronounced NED.”

Thank goodness for the mask. I pressed my tongue hard against my pallet. I knew if the tears started they may not stop. Press your tongue. Don’t remember the rage and sadness and fear and trauma. Just answer the questions.

“Treatment in Virginia? What brought you to Connecticut?”

Tell the story. Tell the gratitude. Feel the miracle of the outcome.

Don’t start crying because the tears may not stop.

The grief and realization of the battle that was fought will rise. Then what? Then how do you drive to your new job and act like today is any other day? No visit. No medical history. No battle scars to show (they are carefully hidden under the tattoo that is carefully hidden under the high neck shirt).

It wasn’t until I read a beautiful post by a dear fellow flat sister at the end of my long emotional day did I realize that though I am so very grateful I survived, that I am surviving, I am also still grieving and angry and confused and bewildered and terrified by this disease.

I can have all of these at once.

All of them.

The APRN rattled on about the promise of my future because “if those of you with TNBC can live to 5 yrs without a reoccurance you survivability rate is extremely high”.

As I listened, I felt the weight of the sea glass that hangs from a necklace around my neck.

It is from Lake Michigan.

From a farmers market.

A farmer’s market that I walked with my friend Guala.

Guala, who 2 months after her 5 year exam discovered her breast cancer had become metastatic. She was gone within a year.

I bit the inside of my cheek as I held back the words I didn’t know were there.

“Do you know what it means to live day after day for those five years knowing the statistics of reoccurance that you hope upon hope you do not add to? Do you understand you are telling me the story of my friends Diane and Shana and Guala whom I have lost during that time and the others who are fighting every day the battle against metastatic breast cancer we all know is a losing game?”

“Do you understand in asking me to celebrate my survival you are disregarding the hell I walked through to be sitting in front of you today?”

This.

This explains the tears that I could not cry.

This explains why the only words I could type when I made it back to my car were to my sister and brother in law.

Words of gratitude for holding me, housing me, supporting me during those months of treatment.

I left the office in a fog.

I drove myself to Starbucks like I had done 5 years ago.

I celebrated with the same coffee I bought after I heard the words “it’s triple negative breast cancer. There is no other choice but immediate chemotherapy followed by surgery.”

5 years almost to the day I sipped that syrupy sweet drink hoping it may, 5 years later, sweeten the bitterness of these memories.

Yes I am grateful beyond measure.

Yes I am devastated by the financial, emotional, relational, professional and physical toll this disease has taken on my life.

My one hope is that as I step into the pink washing month of October I can let my voice be heard when sharing the many layers of what it means to have walked this path.

June 23, 2019

“The Universe that we live in works in mysterious ways. There is chaos in the complexities of its functioning and yet everything is balanced.”

(Undocumented quote from wellness website)

Let me begin with saying we are all ok.

Really.

We are all ok.

Now the story of the images that continue to rattle around my brain and heart.

I stood in the door way helping toddlers navigate the transition from outside to inside to lunch. A process I affectionately call “herding hungry kittens.”

I had rejoined my toddler room after a break away from the building. Something I rarely do.

I stood in the door way.

Guiding little bodies here and there.

Verbally supporting them to their little chairs and little table and through the big job of little hands learning to open their lunch bags.

And then a crash.

And then another crash.

And then screams.

I turned to our doorway leading to the hallway.

I opened the door and saw the wall moving toward me and the ceiling beginning to fall.

To the left was the office where two cherished coworkers sat.

One a lifelong friend.

A mentor.

A “first person to hold my baby” friend.

A “hold space for you as you walk through a cancer journey friend.”

She was there in the office closest to the wall and ceiling that seemed to be coming down.

I knew they had each other.

I knew they had another exit.

I knew I needed to get back to my babies and get them out.

I closed the door.

I said a prayer of love and hope….

And I closed the door.

Then began the hustle and moving quickly out the building as we have practiced.

As we stood at the designated safe spot in the playground and I heard each adult and child’s name called off and a “here” in response I knew we were all ok.

Slowly the news came that it was a car that had lost control and crashed into the classroom across the hall. Remarkably no children or adults were in the area. There were no injuries.

So we had a picnic.

Then a picnic in the rain.

We joked about how glad we were that we were a nature based preschool and the children appreciated the outdoors.

We soothed worried parents as they picked up their children.

We debriefed as a staff.

We went home and tried to regroup.

It wasn’t until the next day when I was able to look my dear friend in the eyes and say how very hard it was to close that door knowing she was on the other side did I let myself cry.

To hold her in a loved filled hug and say I did what she had taught me to do- always, always put the physical and emotional safety of the children first.

Above all else.

Cherish the children.

And I did.

We did.

We are all safe.

Buildings will be fixed and scheduling will be rearranged and life will go on.

And for that I am so very grateful.

We are all ok.

5.28.18

I had heard the stories before. Broken pots that water seeds. Amazing Grace coming from a revelation about the injustices of slavery.

The first time I heard each of these I was moved to tears. Those moments when you have a new way of seeing the world and life suddenly seems more mystical and you are convinced you are a more enlightened being.

Then life happens. And death happens. And divorce and new beginnings that lead to awful endings happen. And stories of any kind seem to lose their meaning. And life just becomes life. You become so confused and battered it is hard to find meaning, however you label it.

And that is where I landed.

Down on my knees, crawling to a new beginning.

And then this existence took yet another unexpected and intense turn.

September 13, 2017.

The day the radiologist said the words “It is breast cancer. I’m sorry.”

Five days before I was to leave for a new life in New England.

Running to a new beginning.

Running from a destructive and abusive relationship.

Without cancer.

Then with cancer.

The prognosis became more grave.

Rare cancer.

No other option but chemo then surgery.

No other option.

That is when my world shifted.

Suddenly I realized there was no more running.

No more hiding.

I was cracked open by a deadly disease.

Sitting in my sister’s backyard awaiting yet another test to define my prognosis and treatment plan, I made a decision. I would take my hands off the handbars like I had when I was a cautious yet adventurous little girl.

I would face this process with curiosity and wonder.

I would allow love in.

Really let love in.

I would unapologetically cry when I was grateful, happy, sad or overwhelmed with wonder at the beauty of the world and the people who were sharing it with me.

When my hair fell out I cried harder than I had in years.

I knelt in the woods and took a picture before I left it.

My actions felt like a cliche.

Then a voice, my voice, mothering myself said “No more. We no longer hurt ourselves that way. Let this be meaningful. Let your actions be your own truth. Free of judgment. Your own or the world’s.”

From that day forward that voice drowned out all the rest.

I began to honor the moments as they came.

The moment my brother in law shaved the rest of my hair while my sister knelt before me, held my hands and choked back tears while I cried big, raw and real tears.

Tears of loss.

Tears of gratitude for being loved so much.

Those moments.

They stick.

The first trip to chemo. The first time meeting the “red devil”.

The first trip to chemo bald.

The holidays

and hikes

and visits from family and friends.

The time my family made the multi day trip to bring my dog to my brother who would care for her when I could not.

They all were “stop in my tracks” beautiful and amazing and precious.

We all know we are going to die.

But every two weeks I put chemicals in my body that could kill me while holding the thought that without them I would definitely die.

Life became extremely precious.

I became more and more comfortable with dying. I cried often though thinking about how my suffering crushed those who I love and who love me. Their strength and commitment still humbles me.

I found hope in a community of women making decisions about surgery options. I discovered my power when deciding for myself to remove both breast and not reconstruct.

I cried that I had this decision to make.

I felt relief and empowered that it was my decision alone.

Months later with my body healing and my move to New England complete I sat in a UU church.

The speaker began her beautiful sermon with the story of the cracked pot. The moral being that even cracked pots bring gifts.

Unexpectedly tears began to flow.

My scars are my cracks.

My scars are my cracks.

Gifts of friendship and courage had already flowed from them.

What else could be ahead?

And then at the end of her powerful sermon we sang Amazing Grace.

More tears.

“Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come.
T’was grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home,
And grace will lead us home.”

I have a long road of healing ahead. My soul. My body. My Spirit have been altered by this experience.

I begin again in a small New England town.

Surrounded by Amazing Grace and gifts abound.