Came to Believe

Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.  Sane, soul , soulful, sound mind and body, spirit, immortal – words sprawled on a page, but to what end?  Is it not the meaning we attach to a word that gives it power?  For instance, catastrophe. I often hear this word in reference to the events of the past year. Whether they be political or personal, labeling any event as catastrophic pretty much seals the deal.  Once so labeled, there is little or no room for possibility.  Take the definition of catastrophe, a disaster, a calamitous event, especially one occurring suddenly and causing great loss of life, damage, or hardship and lay it over a life event, any life event like the loss of a loved one, a divorce, a diagnosis, a betrayal, an apparent failure and so on and what is left?  Bereavement, sorrow, irreconcilable resentment and anger, depression, insurmountable grief, and possibly utter and irreparable despair, (the complete loss or absence of hope.)   What is life without hope?  How can there be meaning without trust, without destiny, without the Soul?  I believe that our sole purpose to is discover The Soul our unique blueprint which was to us given at our conception and lies in wait for us to discover it, choose it and live it into eternity.  I find that words like disaster, sanity, catastrophe, and the like impede our Soul’s journey by denying limitless possibilities

I tried for years to adhere to the definition of sanity, (the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner; sound mental health), with little success.  I know now that I am not normal (conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected) nor do I wanted to be labeled as such.  I am supernormal, exceptional as are you and you and you.  We each have within us the power to choose our destinies.  This power is the extension of the soul and is not preoccupied with form.  On the contrary its sole purpose is to give us the courage we need to discover our deepest selves.  The soul accompanied by its innate power is not interested in making people comfortable.  “The soul is who you are in God and who God is in you. We do not make or create our souls.  We only awaken them, allow them, and live out of their deepest messages.” (Richard Rohr)

I heard my soul’s voice loud and clear _ “Stop chemo.  It is killing me.”  I did as I was told.  Does this make me sane?  Who cares.  Certainly not me.  I am more concerned with adhering to the urgings of my deepest self than I am to the meanderings of my wayward analytical mind which makes sensible decisions based on available information.  You know like protocol, statistics, studies, percentages, and cold, hard facts.

So to paraphrase, I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to luminosity and depth of seeing, to the “light.”  May I welcome life on life’s terms and not deny “the wonderful underlying mystery that is everywhere, all the time.” (from Breathing Underwater). Every life event is a call to believe in a power greater than ourselves, to believe in the possibility of miracles, to believe that healing is the byproduct of loving self and others unconditionally.

Thus I came to believe that there are no disaters, no catastophes, no failures, only limitless possiblities to heal. By healing, I mean cultivating the capacity to live out of the clear, simple and uncluttered presence for it is in the present that we encounter The Presence, whether we call it God or not, matters little. What does mattter is whether or not we can learn to let life come to us trusting that God in us, our Soul, has called us, and that God, i.e. The Soul is incapable of failure.

 

haunted

Convalescing – to recover one’s health and strength over a period of time after an illness or operation.  this verb assumes there was health and strength prior to the illness or operation, but what it that were not the case.  What if said patient had spent a lifetime undermining her body’s ability to be healthy, drinking, smoking, provoking depression by brooding on the past?  What then?  Would not convalescing then be the discovery of health an strength, the creation of a new life, one that does not deny prior difficulties but which instead uses them to bolster the desire to live more fully now.

If I am no longer haunted by the past can I now risk living in the unknown, in a life free of fear and resentment, while waiting for the new me to emerge? What will I do?  How will I think now that I have stopped running away?  Seems that every moment of my life, prior to the onset of the disease that has ruled these past 12 months, was pregnant with waiting and wanting…wanting a different life…waiting for the life I had been living to end, perhaps even in death.  What now?  Now that I want more than anything to live.  What does this future hold?  Que sera, sera?

At least we know there has been an end to one haunting.  I am no longer nor will I ever again be pursued by my past.  Now I must learn to release ghosts that hold me hostage to a disease I will never again have.  I release my diagnosis, my doctors, my treatments, my diagnostic tests, the operations, the weeks of recovery, the time away from work, apart from the world, and the time spent in fear of dying.  I now claim my life, going forward with an intention to live fully no matter what the risk, to live into not away from the new life I have been given.

.

potential danger

heart pounding, throat tight

sitting on a powder keg

anxiety brews

 

lurking

no sign of danger

a silent, invisible

time bomb – cancer

grim reaper

life a race with death

which way am I running to

or away from me

Sweet Sunday

Woke bright and early with a welcome jump in my step.  Until today my post radiation fatigue had debilitated me.  Loved drinking my morning latte as I walked the yard admiring our gardens both edibles and the spectacular flowers.

I picked 6 more yellow squash off the vines we have nursed all summer.  Hard to believe they are still producing.  I checked the cukes and okra, but everything present and accounted for was still in the formation stage.  I will go back out later in the day.

Just another day in the life of Sarla Nichols.  Fed and walked the dog.  Picked up her poop.  Meditated for 30 minutes.  Every time I sit now I recall the 6 night, 5 day silent sesshin I just completed last week at the Upaya Zen Center outside Santa Fé.  No talking, reading, or writing.  No electronics thus no Facebook, email, texting, twitter, and so forth.  You get the picture.  I loved it.  I craved the silence.   Even after almost 10 hours a day on the cushion (sitting was interspersed with walking meditation, a work period spent cleaning the kitchen while my roomie scrubbed the bathrooms, one dharma talk per day, the choice of a silent walk or yoga for 45 minutes and a short rest period in the afternoon) I wanted to sit more.  On the last day, I sat for the optional period from 6:00 – 7:00 am and have sat almost every day since my return on July 24.

After sitting I went on a 17 mile bike ride.  When it got hard, when I got tired, I imagined that I was meditating.  I always have moments of urgency right at the end of any 25 to 30 minute meditation.  My mind starts to rebel and demands that I get up immediately.  So as I rode, just as when I sit, I reminded myself to settle in and breathe.   Stay steady.  There is so much joy in completing a challenging bike ride, in sitting for extended periods, in exploring this new frontier in my life, the frontier of the steady mind, where joy outweighs suffering and stillness is more valuable than money.

Went with my neighbors, David and Mark to both Home Depot and Lowe’s searching for any last-minute beauties to plant in our yards.  I bought a pool side lounge chair at Lowe’s to replace the one we had to throw away.  The seat rotted out.  We stopped at Cheffie’s a little sandwich and salad place around the corner from our street and had lunch.  Fun and out of the box.  Me eating lunch out for the second time this week.  We, Jimmy and I, always eat at home, but he is in Canada.  Miss him.  As much as I enjoy peace and quite, I like sharing it with another person.

All in all good weekend.  Amelia spent the night on Friday night.  We had what she calls, “A girl’s night Gigi.  We having a girl’s night, Gigi?”

“Yes, Amelia, we are having a girls’ night,” which included swimming.  I should say skinny dipping.  I guess I am a bad influence.  I have taught my grand-daughter to skinny dip.   She will never want to swim with a suit again.  She said, “Gigi, your butt in the water.”  And I said, “No, Amelia, your butt in the water.”  And so it went back and forth.  What a blast.  I laughed out loud.  We ate a chicken salad in front of the TV watching The animated Robin Hood for the second time.  Can’t say that it is one of my favorites, but she loves it.  A little bite of ice cream and 3 story books later we are in bed for the night.  Not asleep, mind you, but in bed.

1:14 pm.   Already.  Good to sit down and write, just put some words on paper.  I am more than a little nervous about the Dani Shapiro writing workshop that Cyndi Lee and I will be attending in just two short weeks.  Hope I am ready to receive criticism.  I ask myself every day, Am I a writer or did I spend all that time writing about my past as a way to heal?  Do I have a story or stories in me that would benefit the world, would be written for the greater good?  do I want to spend hours in front of the computer, alone, writing?  Time will tell.  Time will tell.

cycling with post radiation fatigue

hot head wind pushes

my heavy limbs, urging me

to move slow and steady

Still reeling

“You look great.”  That is what everyone says now when they see me.  “No, I mean it.  You really look great.”

My response when they repeat themselves:  “Do you want to see my boob?”  Yes that is exactly what I say followed  by something like, “Yeah, that is the funny thing about cancer.  If you do not have chemotherapy and lose your hair,  you look good, like you are not even sick.  I call it the secret disease.  If you did not know me, you would never know I was sick.”

I do not feel like a sick person.  I felt the best I have in years when they discovered my most recent tumor back in March.  Never better.  Strong, steady, happy. . .  all that.  Then boom, they dropped the C-Bomb.

“Ms. Nichols, I am sorry to tell you but we have found a mass in your right breast.  I think we need to do a biopsy.”

“Today?”

“No you will have to wait about 10 days.  Please see the nurse.  She will set you up with an appointment. ”

My mind is racing.  Ten days.  How can I wait that long to find out whether I have cancer?  You just will.  And I did.  I convinced myself the results would be negative.  Well they were positive.  Surprise.  My second round of cancer and only two years after the first bout.  Two frigging years.

But I did not begin this post to tell you about my cancer.  I am trying my best to write about my experience after cancer, after surgery, and radiation.

“Now the surgery is a fairly simple procedure.  We will remove the mass and the centennial lymph nodes.”  Okay how did I miss the part about injecting dye into my breast to find that “node or nodes?”  Did the surgeon tell me I would be placed on a cold metal table only to have a plate of concrete lowered to just inches above my face?  No he did not, because I would have explained that I could not do that.  “I am extremely claustrophobic.”  Let is suffice to say that I survived this ordeal, but I did have to ask once to be pulled out so that I could close my eyes, recite my mantra and use my breath to stay calm and in the moment.

Did the surgeon tell me how painful the catheter that he placed in my boob after the surgery would be?  No.  Nor did he tell me that the radiation itself my be painful.  No.  In fact, all medical personnel stated unequivocably that the radiation would be painless.  Let me make this perfectly clear.  I am do not consider myself a wimp, but I suffered, yes suffered from extreme discomfort when anyone touch the device which I wore in my right breast for 8 days and 7 nights.  All the gauze padding in the world did not relieve the stabbing sensation in my breast.   When the doctor asked, which he did each time I came in for a treatment (twice a day), “Are you in any pain?”  I said, “Yes, all the time.”

His response, “Take another Percocet.”

“But they give me such terrible stomach cramps and constipation.”

“Get a stool softener.”

“Any suggestions.”  He blurted out a couple of words I never heard of and immediately forgot.

“Okay are you ready for the treatment?”

The radiation did not hurt, but hooking the machine up to my boob was excruciating.

“This should no hurt.”  the nice man administering the treatment said condescendingly.

Crocodile tears are rolling down the sides of my cheeks.  Every time he touches one of the limbs of my device, my body convulses.  Radiation doctor says, “We will have to give you a stronger pain medication.  I am going to write a scrip for long release morphine.  That should do it.”

“Morphine?’

“Yes you will take on every 12 hours and continue to take the percocets an hour before you come to treatment.”

And so it went for 5 days.  At one point, lying on the table, reciting my mantra, I thought, I am going to have post traumatic stress from this.  I did and I am.

My emotions are off the charts.  Giddiness moves quickly into boredom, into anger and resentment, into bitchiness, into fear and foreboding and finally into deep sadness.

When I joke about cancer, people’s expressions reveal disdain and shame.

“Look, if I can’t joke about cancer, who can?”  There is humor in every situation and I plan to look for it.  I only made a crack about all my friends buying me dinner the week of my radiation.  I guess that is one of  the cancer “perks.”

Hardest part about being well now is everyone still looking at me with deep, questioning eyes when they ask, “How are you doing?”  To most who inquire, I say, “Fine.  Really I am good.”  To my closer friends I reply, “Physically I feel great, but mentally I am off the charts.”

“Oh, but I thought you got a good report.  All clear, right?”

“Yes, all clear.  No cancer now.  But will there be more?  No one knows.  No one knows.  Each day is a gift.”

 

 

 

okay

cancer wants to live.

the universe wants to be

noticed. love is painful.

 

 

what next?

torrential, relentless

rain, darkness, obscured vision

void after cancer

 

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.