Breast Cancer

Things I’d Want You to Know

Dear Younger Self,

Things I’d want to know: you will have a son then a daughter. Both will have your luscious, loose brown curls and wide eyes wrapped in blankets of long, black lashes. Sometimes you will look at them and think “I would, literally, withstand anything for you.” And you will.

Love and a Higher Power

Content/Trigger Warning: Sexual Harassment. Does a higher power exist? I believe so and always have. Although, throughout my life, I have had a hard time connecting with it.

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

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.