Lift. Carry. Step.

Hi everyone,

It is 5:46pm as I start this post and there is still light in the sky! Yay, for the light staying longer. I am watching my hummingbird friends come to the feeder that hangs right outside of my bedroom window. Hummingbirds have always brought me tremendous joy and it is one of those rare things I have in my life that never fails to send a little thrill up my spine when I see or hear one. I feed them religiously at both my houses.

This week has been interesting. I have been focusing on finding and putting together my pack of healers. My dear friend, Julie (who I did my Waldorf teacher training with and is a non-FB user) wisely told me a couple of weeks ago that is is me who makes the medicine whole. This statement has become one of my mantras. It has helped me embrace the wholeness of this journey. It is not just black or white, alternative cancer treatment or conventional cancer treatments. For me it is a combination, I will even call it a balanced approach, at lest for who I am. So...

I had my first ever acupuncture treatment and the woman treating me noticed several blocks in my body. She suggests that we first work on those blocks before we begin the chemo support and cancer acupuncture. I agreed to let her treat me aggressively, she explained that there are generally three ways to approach a condition with acupuncture and three general healing reactions to accompany the level of treatment. It breaks down simply to least aggressive, moderately aggressive and very aggressively. Wow that is a lot of usage of the word aggressive...

Anyways, my the first treatment, which included cupping, scraping, acupuncture, and herbal heat pots placed on the backsides of both of my breasts, let's just say there was a deep expansion into some very old emotions. I got pissed. I was a walking tea kettle full of boiling hot water after my session.

My mom received a lot of that direct steam, and it was really good, even though it was yucky and awkward and uncomfortable and super freaking hard at first. She and I are in the midst of working on, and through, a whole bunch of stuff that I know will strengthen, and help to authenticate our relationship even further.

I went with my daughter on her class nature walk and was really surprised at how winded I got. I didn't like that much at all. I am so used to being strong and fast, it is quite humbling to feel weak and slow. I am feeling drawn to try Tai Chi. I have seen it a lot, but never tried it.

When we moved to Fremont, CA when Sylvan was six months old, we spent our days around Lake Elizabeth. So did so many other people including groups of older folks doing Tai Chi. I watched, fascinated at the patience these people were demonstrating. The only thing I do that helps me slow down like that is Eurythmy. Now, being in Cancer College, I think it may be time to give Tai Chi a try.

It is really amazing to me how full my week can get when my main focus in nourishing and nurturing myself. My days are formed around various doctor's appointment, both east and west doctors, and somewhere in between with my anthroposophical healers falling into a category of their own.
I am currently practicing eurythmy for about an hour a day. I seriously do three-fold walking for a long time.

Three-fold walking is essentially a walking meditation. I learned it from the dear woman who is teaching me different curative eurythmy moves. Three-fold walking entails lifting your foot, carrying your foot, and stepping your foot. Lift. Carry. Step.
The meditation that I use is to think spring, summer, fall, winter. For me it goes like this: lift (think spring), carry (think summer), step toes down (think fall), and step heal down (think winter). And on to the next foot. I do that for a while. Like a half-an-hour while. It goes really quickly.

The woman who is teaching me these eurythmy moves told me that Rudolf Steiner had a beloved friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer. He suggested that she do three-fold walking for an hour a day. Oh, Steiner, you crazy cat....but, whatever, I'm three-fold walking it up over here for 30 minutes a day. As the chemo progresses, three-fold walking may be my biggest form of exercise each day. Perhaps I may one day soon, find myself doing it for an hour a day. I'll keep you posted!

My son is gone on his big, fourth grade overnight field trip to Ft. Ross. He is almost as tall as his most awesome teacher, Sylvia, who I know is enjoying her self something fierce camping out with her class tonight! Thank you Sylvia for all that you do and taking such good care of my shining star.

My daughter had her first day of gymnastics today and LOVED it!!!!! She could climb the rope. I was so proud because that was always something I struggled with and it was a thorn in my side since my nemesis in elementary school could do it. I just did never had the upper body strength to succeed at elementary rope climbing.

I tell you these things to let you know that even with cancer, my life goes on. Not everything in my life can be about cancer. How Debbie Downer would that be?? That is just SO not who I am. I know it is one of the reasons why losing my hair scares me so much. A bald head pegs me an obvious cancer patient. Then people will know just by looking at me. Strangers will walk up to me and tell my about their loved one who had cancer and died. Yeah, people do that. It has already happened. As a wannabe therapist, usually I would enjoy helping someone process their grief. But right now, I want to hear about those loved ones that lived.

This morning, after all had settled down after the morning buzz of the people in my household going to school and work, I was left with just me and the cancer. It was a cold, gray sky and I was feeling the shift of the weather in my own body. I was wondering so hard about how my body can have these numerous and major blockages (says the eastern doctor) and cancer in various locations (say the western doctors), but I don't feel sick. The chemo made me feel sick, for sure, but before the cancer diagnosis I had said something that I didn't feel like I was at my regular 100% energy and mental level. I am shocked that I can have serious health issues and not really feel it. It makes me question everything about my own instincts and feelings.

As I sat by the window looking out at the sky today, I came to this thought. All this deep and serious questioning about my own sense of self, is like the sloughing off of skin that a lizard has to do to grow. Of course cancer is a death process. It is a process that is determined not by whether one lives or dies, but by how one grows and changes while staring death in the eye. So, even on the cold, gray days when I absolutely don't want to have cancer, I am learning to stare back.

Be well dear ones. Much love and light,
Georgia

Return to Wholeness

This post's title is a title of a book written by Dr. David Simon in 1999. The subtitle is: Embracing Body, Mind, and Spirit in the Face of Cancer.

Dr. Simon self-diagnosed his own brain tumor in June 2010. He died 1.5 years later in January of 2012. I feel connected to this man and his work. It is beyond the cancer that is connecting me to him. It is how he said the word 'sweetness' in the videos that I watched, produced by his son Max.

Here is the link:
http://returntowholeness.com/

The title "Return to Wholeness" is my mantra right now. In Dr. Simon's introduction to his book he explains how Diane Connelly once said, "All sickness is homesickness." The healing journey is the returning to home. But where is home? What does that mean?

These are not new questions for me. I have asked myself this before. I was first prompted to allow this question to come up after encountering the book Women Who Run With the Wolves. I have been working with WWRWTW for years now. I have been living and breathing the teachings by this beloved author, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Honestly, I have been struck a little numb and dazed by chapter nine, the chapter is titled "Homing: Returing to Oneself." I have thought before that this is the chapter of WWRWTW that has perplexed me the most. I couldn't understand why I wasn't receiving the messages that, say, my friends seemed to be getting.

I gave a copy to one of my friends, the fearless leader of our fire dancing troupe, and she was so inspired by chapter nine, that she created a whole fire spectacular performance based on, and dedicated to, that chapter alone.

Right now sitting right next to me, I have my own sweet copy of WWRWTW that Dr. E signed when I traveled to Colorado last June to start a training with her. (More on that later)
It is worn and torn with coffee grounds spilt into the chapter list. I carry this book with me almost everywhere I go. It went with me to my first chemo treatment. I am going to re-read chapter nine on Homing and Returning to Myself and invite myself to listen at a deeper level inspired by Dr. Simon's work and, of course, the fact that I have cancer.

I personally don't believe that my cancer is happening for no reason. Perhaps, I need this life belief to make sense of it all. But really, it matters not, for I know that part of my own inner and outer work is to find my own soul reasoning behind my illness.

xoxog

The last day as who I used to be.

Today begins my first semester at Cancer College. Well, truthfully it began months ago when I discovered my lump, but for this, my first post on this blog, my semester starts today because my first session of chemo starts in a little over an hour from now, at 8am.

For now, I am likening my journey with breast cancer to going to college for a couple of reasons. One of the being that yesterday at 9am in a room on the CSUS campus, a kindly professor starting his Psychology of Death and Dying class called my name while taking roll. I did not answer because I was not in the classroom. Instead I was walking around campus visiting the various offices I needed to collect signatures for my semester withdrawal form.


I am 37, so being on a college campus I am "older than average" and yet have never really felt out of place on campus. I have been there for three semesters working towards the goal of finishing my undergrad in Psychology with intentions of going on to grad school to become an MFT (Marriage and Family Therapist). The spring semester that started yesterday was to be my last at CSUS, and it was indeed emotionally and mentally painful to walk around campus yesterday watching all those young and healthy bodies roaming all over the place.


One of my friends, who I had not yet told about my three week old breast cancer diagnosis, texted me at 12:03pm, three minutes after what would have been my second class started. "Where are you? Aren't you in this class with me?" I texted her back that I was withdrawing due to medical reasons and that I would let her know more of the details soon. I ran into another friend who gasped when I told her that I had breast cancer, "YOU?!!?" Yeah, I know. Tell it sister.


Another reason why I am looking at my cancer journey in semester/college terms is because I have been a student for years and semesters seem to be my default rhythm. My ACT chemotherapy is four months long. That is how long my semester would have been. I will be graduating from chemo when I should have been graduating from CSUS. BUT here I am right now with what I have got.

I woke up at 2:30am to my sweet dog whimpering outside of my door. He wanted in, and of course. I could not get back to sleep. I wanted to start this blog last week, but my days have been full. Just yesterday included getting my children to school, having my labs run, getting radioactive sugar injected into me (PET scan), withdrawing from my semester, having a lovely craniosacral session with a dear friend, and enjoying an exquisite night with my dear children. I had to begin this blog somewhere. And I am grieving the loss of my semester something fierce. So Cancer College...


Before I met the chemo doctor (last Friday 1/25/13) I wouldn't even entertain the thought of withdrawing. But then I FELT the chemo doctor's response after I told her that I was a full-time college student. It wasn't even what she said right after I told her, it was the way her breathing changed. It was so subtle, but in that moment I knew that it was in my highest good to put this last semester on hold. She was extremely diplomatic when I told her I had every intention of starting my semester. She said she has seen people do amazing things through chemo, but that I would be on a particularly strong regimen and that many patients go on disability during this type of chemotherapy. Ouch...fuck...double and triple ouch.


So Cancer College it is for now. I like to write and it is extremely helpful for me as a healing process to write my stuff out. I have intentions of shaping this blog up to have links to books and the various resources I have already begun to use (like mistletoe injections) and all that I find to help support me through this journey. I am approaching my cancer wholeheartedly, which also means that I will be treating it wholeheartedly as well. So yes, chemo, mastectomy, and radiation will all be happening, alongside a whole toolbox of complementary cancer care. My major for this semester is to become a layperson cancer expert with a focus on integrative cancer care. I am a serious student no matter what college I am attending. For now this is just the first step towards putting myself out there in the blogosphere.


Much love and light,
G