January, 18th 2025: Join us for food, drinks, dancing, and author sharing — all to support our mission. Learn more here!
Breast Cancer
Night Vision
Some years are a dark tunnel / claustrophobic with exhaust / Some, an open field / the biggest sky and the slightest breeze / And I suspect some years / fall somewhere in between / But my memory lately / is of the extremes
Read More...Let Your Grief Help You Find the Light
“People talk about grief as emptiness, but it’s not empty. It’s full. Heavy. Not an absence to fill. A weight to pull. Your skin caught on hooks chained to rough boulders made of all the futures you thought you’d have.”
Read More...Business As Unusual
It is hard to resume
business as usual
when you’ve watched the clock’s hand
move toward midnight
as flesh
Fear as a Moat, God as My Fortress
This week, on July 9th, I’ll go for my 16th and final round of intravenous chemotherapy. I’m praying to the God I believe hears us, and asking that this is the last one I ever have to do intravenously, but also hopefully, at all.
Read More...The Botany of Breast Cancer Awareness Month
It’s a wonderful coincidence that elephants are my favorite animal. My elephants, my cancer, were lurking inside my private rooms. I’d been very reluctant to go public, to put a big reveal out into the world that I have breast cancer. I didn’t want to post an announcement online about my cancer.
Read More...Finding My Herd Through Writing
“Finding your herd.” At a first glance, what does this mean? My first thought was that I should look for a group of animals. Then I realized that I should be looking at people instead.
Read More...The Holidays: Befores and Afters
I was diagnosed with breast cancer on December 4th, 2018. I didn’t know it in that moment, but my life had been permanently fractured into befores and afters. Before I found the lump. Before the scan. Before the phone call from my doctor.
Read More...The Evolution of Holidays in my Life
Holidays – they are indeed a special time of the year. But the word holiday may mean different things to different people all over the world. Let’s start at the beginning, when we were all kids looking forward to holidays.
Read More...The “How” of Grief
He holds up the object in front of him with a wide smile on his face. A cookie – seemingly innocent and yet it looked enough like a breast. The first Pinktober after my mastectomy and lymph node dissection, I stumbled into ‘a bake sale for breast cancer’ and “boob cookies” were being sold – sugar cookies frosted pink with nipples.
Read More...The Power of the Community
My community of support has been a major factor within my breast cancer journey and has gotten me through many years. From the moment that I was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer, over 22 years ago, to my first diagnosis with metastatic breast cancer just a couple years later, I have always had an army of support right there with me to help me throughout this journey.
Read More...