Survivorship

The Language of Cancer: “Stay Strong” and Other Meaningless Platitudes

Navigating the language of cancer is one side effect of diagnosis that no doctor or checklist mentions. A cancer diagnosis becomes an exploration of identity, one that seems to evolve constantly. Survivor versus patient. Warrior versus, well, we’re still looking for an alternate care-forward word. That’s the crux of it.

Loneliness Creeps In But Can’t Stay

Have you ever felt as if you were surrounded by people but still felt like you were alone? I never would have thought that I would feel that way but I did when I was told I had cancer. Those who haven’t experienced a cancer diagnosis will never understand.

Sex and Relationships

How exactly do you tell someone, “Oh, by the way, my eggs got blasted from chemo therapy, and I will never be able to have my own kids”? And when exactly is the best time to bring this up? First date? Third date? Right before or in the middle of getting busy?

Cancer and A Broken Heart

I spent most of my life before cancer on the outside. I was an observer rather than a participant. Much of that was the severe anxiety I was drowning in, but that’s not all of it. All of the things I enjoy most could be easily considered documenting. I’m a writer. I’m a photographer. I am even something of a musician.

Cancer is Cancer

Cancer is cancer. It doesn’t matter whether it’s below the belt or above the belt. The toxicity around word usage related to it is a problem. People get, and too often die, following silence and embarrassment from lack of validation either from themselves, others, or both.

Reconstruction: A Never-Ending Story

My mastectomy scars started out as the midnight blue of my surgeon’s pen, deftly scrawling the path of his scalpel on the white canvas of my chest. After he came, drew, and left, I found myself in front of the mirror over the sink of the pre-op bathroom, staring at the roadmap he’d sketched. I was met with an array of curved and straight lines; dictating symmetry, outlining what would be kept and not kept, and measuring how long, how wide, and how far down.

I Hate Thursdays

I hate Thursdays. I can’t say there isn’t a day in the week where I’m not reminded about my experience, where I’m not facing the reality of everything I’ve been through, where a simple butterfly motif or a duck waddling past won’t bring tears to my eyes or where a small bruise won’t send me into a panic. But Thursdays, Thursdays are the worst.

Am I Still Loveable?

Whether you’re in a long-term relationship, an undefinable situationship, a dating app phase, or you’re happily single, it’s extremely common to feel like cancer tarnished your dateability. Cancer comes into our lives like a tornado and rips down the homes we once called our bodies, leaving a pile of rubble in the aftermath. The emotional and physical baggage we are left with often feels like it’s made us undesirable.

CannaMoms Can

It is high time to abolish the stigma attached to cannabis-using parents. I am a proud bong-ripping, bowl-roasting, dry-vaping, joint-smoking mama that LOVES my kids to the ends of the universe. 

I am a CannaMom. 

Judgments, side-eyes, whispers, unsolicited advice…I face these criticisms far too often. Simply because I choose to be a CannaMom. 

Cancer and Creativity

Can pencils cure cancer? Of course not, but drawing with them helped me illustrate and express my cancer trauma. Their colors and potential were a powerful force. It wasn’t obvious at first. Yet the creativity of cartooning with pencils became an important part of my cancer odyssey.