Goodbye Amazing Woman

In memory of Juliet Wilson.

In cancer circles, many of us (myself included) are propelled towards fluency in death – we find ourselves speaking about it, thinking about it, fearing it, and planning what songs we might want played at our funeral every time we have a scare or annual check-up. It’s not about being morbid, but more about creating a false sense of preparedness.  

A related preoccupation with our own funeral is knowing that we are unwittingly walking into a future projected haze of a loved one’s funeral. The blinding density of this haze ironically borne from the light that we receive from meeting new friends. New friends who share the same linguistic talents bestowed upon everyone who lives with the inevitability of death.

Juliet.

Sometimes when you meet a new friend, you see “IT” – the undefinable ‘it’ that makes others gravitate and levitate. An infectious positivity, grace and humility, curiosity about the world and others. Gifted with a loving son, an adoring husband, and above all else, an insatiable and almost ferocious dedication to giving support to others.

Juliet.

We connected through Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) a few years ago – I was invited to speak on a panel with other women who had been through breast cancer to share some of our thoughts about how to deal with the emotional impact of cancer. I was about 2 years down the track from finishing treatment, another panellist was 5 years. And then there was Juliet, half-way through active treatment, radiant in her chemo-baldness, laughing during the sound and camera checks about what to do if she forgot her name mid-sentence (the joys of chemo brain fog). Needless to say, for someone barely over 5 feet tall, she held the space in every square inch of that room and its extension into the world wide web. She was a goddess. And yet she had no idea. We did. I did.

Juliet.

Canada to Melbourne. Acting and art to the law. Researcher to creator. Long-term chronic illness patient (Lyme disease) to healthy living advocate and author. Even while enduring the double-whammy of COVID-social isolation + cancer treatment, Juliet was able to do the one thing that gave her oxygen … connecting with others. Through writing and webcasts, video group chats, advocating for more awareness for breast cancer and Lyme disease, she still found time for masked-up walks along the beach. With me.

Juliet.

Wife. Mother. Sister. Daughter. Friend. Rock star. Heroine.

And now Angel. Juliet passed away on the 22nd of July.

In one of Life’s cruellest twists, a diagnosis of terminal (metastatic) cancer was laid on her only a week after she had walked down the aisle at her long-awaited wedding in her heart-home of Prince Edward Island (Canada) to her dream man, witnessed by her son, family and friends. Two weeks later, Cancer took her, witnessed by her new husband, her son, family and friends. Befitting for someone who deserved and longed to be surrounded by love that she finally was, on all sides.

Even in her last week, positivity and gratitude filled her messages to me and no doubt whatever energy she had left was employed to shower gratitude over her beloveds while they were trying to reconcile their new language forming about the inevitability of death.

Juliet’s last text to me, only a few days before she died, started with the words ‘Hello amazing woman!’ and asking how I was going.  I’m now sending those words upwards, through the clouds, directly towards the sun’s glorious rays, where rainbows are made and the sunsets over Williamstown beach are painted … I know who’s holding the brushes now.

Goodbye Amazing Woman.  May you rest peacefully forever. Thank you for gifting me with some of your light. xo  

Life vs. Lines.

The gift of getting old

I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, but yet I’ve referenced seeing it every day in the mirror for the last 10 years. It’s a massive fault line that runs between my eyebrows (well, used to, back in the day when I had eyebrows!).

I was contemplating a doozy of a birthday-present-to-self last year … Botox. I was being very sensible about it, not wanting to go overboard with the extras like fillers and collagen that would have me resembling something from the X-Files. Just a little bit (famous last words no doubt).

But I chickened out.

And then the strangest thing happened - I got cancer and that Grand Canyon on my face seemed to disappear.

It’s ok, there’s no hidden side effect from chemo that includes creating wrinkle free zones (although the puffy face from the steroids does help fill in the cracks !). It’s because you see what you focus on. The difference in my face is that I no longer focus on it, therefore I don’t see it.  Now my focus has shifted to how many eyelashes I still have left. But I tell you what, my blue eyes seem to stand out a lot more these days!

Lines are experiences, good and bad. A life lived. Loves. Losses. Lessons learned.

For me, that Grand Canyon line used to be just the physical manifestation of a life full of stress/frowning/worrying/thinking too hard about too many things.

But that line is now a proud Harry Potter-style face stamp of accomplishing great things in extreme circumstances in my life. Like living interstate away from my family from the age of 17. Like spending nearly 10 years working while I was trying to complete two university degrees. Like drowning in tears from broken hearts, that were once also great loves. Like busting through 2000 applicants to get my dream job in the criminal justice system when I finally graduated. Like driving through regional Victorian communities devastated by the Black Saturday bushfires, crying silently in sympathy every time I drove those roads or listened to a grieving parent or school principal about children and families that didn’t survive, and asking what I could do to help them. Like bearing witness to the horrors of humanity through child sex abuse, rape, domestic violence, and murder, and carving out a career that would allow me to help them too.

Those stories and faces were the reasons why I worked so damn hard. And now my stress line is my badge of honour. They are reminders that I’ve been a part of greatness. Of great change. That I’ve been around the block a few times. That I have perspectives that I can share through experiences. That I have survived near-drowning in emotions that have shaped my capacity to love, to feel, to fold. And there’s the lines around my eyes and cheeks. Those are from the happiness and the joy every time I’ve giggled or nearly wet my pants laughing from some ridiculous story or movie or joke shared among friends.

So why then would I now set out and erase all of that? (Spoiler alert: I won’t be).

Why do others then? Is it because people don’t want to wear their emotions for others to see? Or to attempt to not feel them at all? To be frozen, emotionless.

In other cultures, lines/wrinkles are a sign of respect, an honour bestowed upon others through experience. It’s wisdom through living. Fears. Failures. Wins.

If all you choose to see are the flaws, that's all you'll ever see. If the concern is that you'll end up on the single shopping shelf without erasing them (in some attempt to look 10 years younger), well, maybe you need to re-think the quality of the potential buyer … And maybe you should also reconsider what your lines represent to you. If there’s only pain, sure, go for the needle or the knife. But remember that there are those who will instead only see the mother of their children. The love of their life. The future potential of a life long partner. A soul connection. 

Growing old is a gift that not everyone receives. And yet we tend to fear it and wish it would go and visit someone else. What we forget is that it is a privilege to age, not a punishment.

Now, where others choose to focus on lines or wrinkles, I see life.

And so it’s Happy Birthday to me … this week I’m 41 years young.

Welcome Poss.

Wearing self-confidence

My new best friend is Poss. Short for Possum (aka Roadkill).  It’s because she resembles a piece of roadkill attached to a head band … Enter stage left, the fake fringe. She is by far the best $30 I have ever spent. Versatile little bugger – front, back, even doubles as an Adam/Eve fig leaf if you really need a giggle!

Despite my best attempts at embracing all that chemo brings, including a bigger bank balance (no hair care bills for the next two years!), I still look like a chemo patient.  And I still feel self-conscious at times that there’s just no way of hiding that bald section near my ears or covering my massive forehead that was once the background to a flick-over fringe.  

People who don’t otherwise know me have actually commented on my cool hat/scarf/Frenchie chic look (that would be Poss+ when she's out in combo with my ‘couture bamboo soft cap’). I smile and thank them... if ONLY they knew what lies beneath…  

But other than fluffing out my head wear and my self-confidence, Poss brings a big lesson: that even the smallest of gestures can counter the greatest of grief.

A chat with Joe Black.

Acknowledging the near misses

Cancer has usually meant death. Thankfully these days, there are more people that survive a diagnosis than don't, but it still feels like a limp handshake ... it just lingers until you feel like you've finally washed it off.   

For people who hear you've got cancer, the inevitable silent thought arises: "Thank God it's not me". Like a near miss in the car. It is only natural to be confronted with your own mortality. The what ifs. But then the moment passes. Rarely do we think about the need to change our entire perspective on life - no, because that's happening to someone else.

I've always been curious about how people respond to traffic jams caused by a fatal accident. How many of us really do pause to think about the person whose life has been lost instead of just the inconvenience of running late for something apparently far more important.

Being on the receiving end of a cancer diagnosis can be the same - thank God it was caught early. What if it comes back. And there it is - the face of mortality looking at you wanting to have a chat. (If only they could look like Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black).

It's confronting. It's frightening. But if we allow it, it can also feel exhilarating. What would it mean to start again? I've done it before from the point of view of moving states, changing jobs, kicking off a new life full of possibilities. But ultimately the view changes but the vessel (me) hasn't. And without a cancer diagnosis or some other near-miss, why would I? Why would anyone? I'm not suggesting that everyone shaves their hair off, stands naked in the mirror, assumes their superwoman pose, and questions "who could this be?" rather than the usual "who am I?" But this experience for me has absolutely demanded it because I don't want a repeat. Another brick wall. My view and my vessel are both changing and yet I'm standing in the same spot.

It's a choice how we care for our bodies to help recovery (although I'm sure my impulse buy cold press juicer could have been a little smarter!).

It's a choice how we cobble together supports that may come from so many surprisingly wonderful people if all you do is ask and be open.

It's a choice about whether we view chemo drugs as lifesaving medicine or demonic poison.

It's a choice whether we walk towards accepting that yes, our hair will likely fall out rather than painfully waiting for handfuls of devastation to wash down into the shower drain.

It's a choice whether to take a chat with Joe Black (mortality) as a reason to pause, question and potentially change our view. Or whether we're just thankful that the near miss passed us by and keep driving.

I came across the concept of 'mortality motivation' recently. It now causes me to have a set of questions ready next time I meet Joe Black:

Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?

Until that time comes, my goal is to make choices as though I already know his answer: Yes, he will say. Yes, you did.

A serve of self-love (with a side of coffee).

Support can come from the most surprising places

Self-love lessons can appear at any time, assuming we’re open to it. For me, a stand out was the day that my beloved local barista, Michael, invited me around to the other side of the coffee counter to do a baldie selfie (me, newly follicly-challenged; Mike, a result of the natural course of men aging gracefully!). I had not ventured outside once with my new chemo-do. And other than the occasional hot flush/fever at home, I rarely walked around with my noggin doing a nudie run. But this day, I was embraced by compassion and comfort as I stood for an iphone selfie pic that was surely in need of its built in ‘best portrait’ option!  

I didn’t know if I was going to laugh or cry when I saw my reflection in the camera lens. But the beaming smile to my right told me that crying was NOT my story today. All I felt instead was proud. Proud that I could stand in public and be accepted. Proud that perhaps one person who may see Mike’s social media post might just be one little bit less self-conscious about their own reflection. That they may borrow some of my self-love in that moment and help celebrate that I conquered that moment on that day; that I chose that moment to be happy. And that a good guy (a bloody awesome guy!) helped me believe that I was going to be ok.

Here's Michael and Me @ Walt's Espresso Bar, Hamilton, Brisbane.  

Love Hurts.

Moving through disappointment  

Some have stood in the doorway of my cancer diagnosis and walked away. Those that were expected to be there front and centre at ground zero. And yet they weren’t. Or they couldn’t. Or they didn’t know how. And so I’ve cried. And I hate crying – I used to view it as a sign of weakness and would swallow my tears in front of others and replace with ice cold steel resolve. Until I got home, alone, and then I would let it come. I did this in part to save the awkward moments for others, because trust me when I say that I am an ugly crier. The pasty pale face with a solid dusting of pink (thank you rosacea) means that I just look like a swollen beetroot. The kids at school had it right, ‘Beetroot Face’ – that’s what happens when you’re fair haired/faced, growing up in Alice Springs smack in the middle of the central Australian desert.

It takes a good half hour for the heat and colour to leave my face, so it’s not like I can just let the tears roll, and then gracefully wipe them away and convince others of my regaining composure. Like those glamour pusses that prance around like …well, Prancer, and don’t even break a sweat in their 5 or 10 km display of the latest in leisure wear. Doesn’t even look like they left the brunch table. Me – Rudolph. Cardiac arrest warning. You get my drift.

So, yes, crying in front of someone is/has been a big red no – civic duty to others, tick! The other part is just that I just don’t know how it's going to end. Or when it will end, because sometimes it just feels like It could last forever.

What makes me cry more than anything is when I’m crying because of love. We’ve all been there – at the bottom of a tissue box, an ice cream tub, a secret chocolate stash, a bottle (or three) of wine. Because when it's love that hurts, I have to wonder what on earth will help me heal? The expectation we have as kids is that love will conquer all. Life will be ‘Happily ever after’. The good guys always win.

But what I’ve come to realise is that the one little caveat to all the above is that the answer doesn’t lie with someone else. Especially when that someone else has gone just when you need all the love you can get. What will help me heal from all the crying lies within. Self-love will conquer just about everything, if I believe I can. Self-love means that I can live happily ever after because I choose to be happy in every possible moment I can muster a smile. Self-love means that I will always win, even if the game ends, because I did all I could. We search for so long to find someone to love us, to be loved, and yet forget that we can’t possibly expect of someone else what we can’t do for ourselves.  In the end, love presents in the unexpectedly familiar - the hand to hold is mine. The arms to embrace are mine. The consoling voice that ‘it’s going to be ok’ is mine.

It also means that I can receive and recognize support in many other ways, I just have to ask for it and accept it gratefully. Because while some have walked away from the doorway, others have bounced in (Tigger style!) carrying care packages and kindness. Friends from ten years ago who reach out ready to pick up where life left off because somewhere along the way, stuff just took over and life moved on. Disconnected friends who heard from someone who heard from someone else that “Jodie has cancer” becomes a wonderful (but shitty) reason to reconnect. New friends who just want to ask if I'm ok, and would I be interested in a wooden spoon carving course...because we can!

Those that can stand with you, beside you, and even offer to kick and carry you around that marathon track are all part of the story of how we love IF we let them in. Because sometimes we need them to remind us that we can and should start with our own heart first.

Copyright: Image provided by Marina Locke photography.

Under the shower.

Losing my hair from chemo

I sat in the shower as the water washed over my head and ran my hands over, knowing that I was about to bear witness to loss. At first it was wonderment. And relief that this moment was finally here - the one thing everyone fears the most with chemo. I'm always one for planning and preparation, but I just couldn't reconcile that there were literally hundreds of hairs on my palms each and every time I touched my sore head. It was as if I was seeing it for the first time, every time. Like those tv infomercial ads that never stop..."But wait!! There's more!!"

Then I cried. I'm not sure why. It's not like I didn't know it was coming. Maybe because this was about more than just hair, because it felt like a moment to be reborn. Under the shower. Peeling off hundreds of layers. Of memories. Of lost wishes. Of new hopes. Is this really what it means to have so much of ourselves wrapped up in our hair? Men are now becoming more able to save/regrow/regain otherwise lost youth or confidence. But for women it's so much a part of our path into becoming a woman and owning who we are. It's every compliment. Every touch of a lost love. Of a heated embrace. Running fingers through fringes - that was my thing. Every hairdresser that would comment on the colour, the wave, the texture. Red. Ranga. Strawb.

My self-confidence, like almost every other woman, was so intricately tied up in my hair (pardon the pun). I applaud anyone who, like me, has sat in a hairdresser's chair, waiting for the big reveal to match the expectations and future hopes that come from the new look - sometimes it's for a new job, or to cut/hack off the pain of a breakup. But there are also those times we silently cried at the realisation we just didn't look like the photo. Or that the pain was still there despite the dead memories on the salon floor. And yet we still paid our hundreds of dollars only to walk out, go home, and find ourselves in this exact moment... crying under the shower.

The 'C' word.

How having cancer becomes about everyone else. 

You’ve got cancer.

Three (well, three and a half) little words that echo throughout your brain space, soon followed by silent ‘What The F*’ screams.  Nothing else matters. No one else exists at that moment, except the poor doctor facing opposite you, telling you that your life has forever changed.

Cancer should be eligible for a UN peace prize – it doesn’t discriminate. People. Pets. Babies. Mothers. Criminals. Saints.

I just sat there, alone, wondering how I had managed to walk onto the set of someone else's movie. 

For whatever reason, today, cancer chose me. 

So far, it has become a timely reminder that the strength and resilience (I hate that word by the way) that I thought I had lost years ago was in fact still within, ready and willing to face war.  And it does feel like that – a war.  But you quickly realise that the battles (most of which are all ahead of you with a big ‘To Be Confirmed’ sign attached) are being fought on many fronts.  Family, friends, loves of life, all hear the ‘C’ word and it becomes all about them. It’s about you, yes, but it’s also about their fear of losing you, of not having any say in the matter, of picturing what life might be like without you.

Mothers – the ever-enduring and self-sacrificing “it should have been me.”

Sisters – the silent hugging and sobbing. Followed by just silence.

Fathers – the palpable pain and regret for not being able to protect their daughter.

Life loves – the collision of helplessness and hopefulness etched on a face.

Friends – the tears on standby as they feel the weight of the bomb residue left behind after hearing your "news".  

Then there’s the complimentary reminder from the insurance company that you’ve got death coverage, should you need it.

And the remarks from people who are parents that my impending infertility is a blessing because they could quite easily strangle their beloved Little Johnny lately... 

And so it comes again. In waves – the pity party for one, followed by the stench of stoicism. Then anger masking complete fear and panic. Then disbelief.  An out of body experience. The desperate need to go and lose yourself in a cheap comedic cinematic experience to just forget for two hours that This. Is. Actually. Happening.

I kept hearing the words "you’re a fighter, you’ll beat this, cancer has no idea who it picked a fight with". But I could not, and would not, identify comfortably as a fighter or a survivor. To me, it means I’ve allowed cancer to determine roles and responsibilities from the outset – me: the fighter, and cancer: the aggressor. I was very fortunate to have acted on early warning signs and avoided an all out assault.  I chose instead to view my experience as a life preserving mission, not a fight to the death. Literally. Because to me, ‘fighter’ respectfully belongs to all those souls who have been given the worst odds that life could offer, like a woman who dies within 6 weeks of diagnosis because a recurring chest infection was actually stage 4 lung cancer. Or a man with brain cancer who valiantly leaves his life on his own terms because he knew he’d done all he could and it was never going to be enough. They are the ones who have to fight against the knowledge that nothing, short of a miracle, was going to reverse the carnage that cancer had bestowed upon their bodies. Fighting is about finding the courage to keep moving when there is nothing to move towards except death. It is about the strength to claw onto every inch of dignity and independence when all that is left is silent acceptance of the truth that you cannot win this round.

I instead move politely out of the way when someone is using words like fighter or survivor. I’m just someone who copped a crappy body-intruder, who now needed some treatment with crappy side effects. But more importantly, I'm someone who is gripping tightly to a reason to make a lifelong pledge to myself and my beloveds to truly live and honour the value of life and also hope that this MOFO never finds reason to come back for a follow up visit.

Breast cancer is a funny one – we all grow up feeling self-conscious as young girls, especially ones like me who ‘developed early’. I had boys flicking my bra strap in year 6 that left me begging, pleading my mum to only make me wear the bra at night time so that I would stop being picked on and laughed at. Clueless of course that the law of gravity was not on my side! But this marked the start of a long journey into womanhood rejecting the reflection in the mirror. I was too tall, too pale, too heavy, too nerdy, too ambitious, too stubborn, too independent, too much to warrant the acceptance of myself. How ironic that it was the reflection in the mirror years later that would now save my life. 

In the absence of an apparently never-ending list of 'I love me nots', I focused on my two greatest assets: my hair and my ‘epic cannons’ (aptly described once…). They became critical to defining my self-worth but had never really extended to self-love. A dear friend once said to me that one day, I would meet a guy who saw me for more than just a pair of boobs and long hair. And she was right. But cancer has re-planted that resounding fear in my head about how I embrace who I am as a woman if I didn't have my long hair, or boobs, or uterus, or ovaries, or having birthed a child.  

In the meantime, I am replacing the list of baseless fears with an Indiana Jones-style re-make with me front and centre in the search for my own holy grail. I found out that in eastern medicine the heart meridian line runs from my left hand up my arm, through my left breast and under my arm/shoulder. Bingo. That gap in self-love is exactly where cancer has taken up residence. So, in part it’s understanding my gene pool, but more importantly it’s about treating myself with care and kindness and understanding and acceptance - all the things I have offered to others but rarely myself.

The first step is making this all about ME in the ultimate act of honour and self-preservation. No one else can do that, no matter how hard they want to. Part of that is learning how to give love back to whatever the mirror offers me, especially the days when I don't even recognise the reflection. 

Hitting brick walls.

Processing a cancer diagnosis.  

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I ran smack into a brick wall.  I hit it with the full force of 40 years’ worth of dreams and plans, and mistakes and regrets.  Alanis Morrissette was screaming “Isn’t it ironic?!” loudly in my ears at the point of impact. There I was talking about fertility planning with my doctor one day, only to be told the next that I had invasive breast cancer and would be rendered infertile by the treatment that would destroy it.  

At times over the last few months, it has felt like the moment of hitting that wall is on repeat and being replayed over and over again in slow motion. And yet at other times I’m bearing witness to it, observing and documenting every scene in some feeble attempt to figure out how on earth that brick wall appeared in the first place, and how the hell I failed to avoid it.

In my search for answers, I started researching. I treated it like I would my work where I have spent over 20 years immersed in plans, projects, law, facts, evidence, and data.  And boy, do I love a good plan - I have a plan for my back up plan, and a contingency plan if that back up plan fails. And so, I set about project managing the shit out of that first 6 weeks when I was otherwise at risk of drowning in a tsunami of hospital admissions, tests, scans, specialist appointments, and forms.

What I couldn’t easily find was information about how all ‘this’ might feel.  Now, the A-Z of emotions to expect when facing your own mortality is a pretty hefty-sized book. And I’m confident I dog-eared the edge of every page in the first week after being diagnosed.  But what I wanted was a sign post, or just a smoke signal, to point me in the direction of the missing chapter of ‘N’ for ‘Normal’. 

I came to realise that there was no such thing as normal through listening to other people’s stories. Instead I listened to random chance encounters about how someone had come through the other side of cancer, and sobering reflections about those who did not.  And from there, I allowed myself to create my own normal by accepting how I was feeling when I needed to feel it, and to listen to my body for the first time in a long long time.