Best Laid Plans.

Reconciling what was and what now is

I thought I had planned everything in the lead up to my first day back at work. Right down to where I was going to get my morning coffee.  When I drove into work and saw my favourite coffee place had a ‘for lease’ sign in the front window, it was probably an omen of the morning that was coming. If only I had included on my list “managing disproportionate emotional response to Every-Thing”.

I wasn’t prepared for the electric shock every time someone walked past and I saw them pause; their puzzled brain-cells trying to reconcile the familiar face but unfamiliar hair-cut… and then the gradual increase in volume: “Jodie !!! You’re BACK !!!” At first, a lovely, albeit loud, sense of re-connection. But after the 10th time, I hit my ever-so-quick-to-disintegrate emotional threshold. I managed to delay losing my shit for the 3 minutes it took me to scramble for the comfort of the lift and find some outside oxygen.

It’s been two months since I’ve been back at work. Some days I feel like time has stood still for that whole year and I’ve just walked back in from getting a coffee. But other days I feel the weight of a cancer carcass strapped to my leg … Do people see it when I walk by? Do I look like someone who had cancer? (the short back and sides is a bit of a giveaway). Is that what people are saying in the kitchen: ‘She’s the one who had cancer’? I was asked to update my online work profile picture recently because some people simply still don’t recognise me. But I don’t want to – a part of me just wants to look like her again. 

The other day was one of those days when I just wanted to forget about the 12 month time warp. My photo ID flipped open and there she was – Jodie B.C. (Before Cancer). Long strawberry blonde hair, smiling, clueless about what was actually important in her life, and clueless about the extraordinary way that Life was intending on flipping the table she was sitting at when she least expected it.

It’s like it all happened in a vacuum… I was gone. Now I’m back. I’m driving the same route to work (with a LOT more traffic), doing the same job (part-time) with the same people (mostly) in the same building (just with a new fit-out). The danger comes from allowing myself to clamber back inside the hamster wheel to start walking/jogging/running in the same spot with my eyes fixed at the same wall.

The kicker is that Jodie A.C. (After Cancer) has a very different view of the world, and it’s one that I’m forever grateful for that I would not have ‘but for’ cancer. Like going from those old black and white 20-tonne TVs with the wire antennae hanging half-cocked delivering a fuzzy outline of a face at best. To now having a High-Def, 75 inch full colour smart TV that can probably make me dinner while I’m binge-watching Big Little Lies!  The change in view is beyond comprehension. It’s got me asking: Is this all there is? Do people not want more than keeping everything as it always has been? Am I allowed to ask for/expect more?  

I now accept that a disconnect exists between people who have experienced trauma or grief from a health/life crisis and those who have not. For those of us in the “have” group, we each bear scars but also silent strength from being forced to make a set of choices: Change or Forget. Accept or Deny. Conviction or Acquiesce. Resolve or Apathy. The tolerances long-established when we were part of the “have nots” no longer apply. Perspective and gratitude can be lost on those who have never had to claw their way towards acceptance and hope. For our troubles, the “haves” are bestowed the luxury of selfishness (my word for self-prioritisation) and time – we make decisions based on what we need, whenever we want. Let’s call it an ‘entitlement’ … not usually a favourite word of mine, but in this case, it serves the purpose of nourishing and nurturing ourselves, enforcing boundaries, speaking truths, and believing in all that’s possible.  (It doesn’t, however serve to justify the M&Ms binges that I’ve been indulging in lately... but that’s for another post).

You can’t plan for change – I mean, as a change manager in a previous life, you kind of can, but the key principle in change management is that it relies on individual ‘motive’ to get it across the line. The desire to want change. And let’s be honest – most people would absolutely avoid such significant change. Because great change usually comes from great pain. It’s not exactly something we are all sprinting up to the front of the line for….”I’ll have an El Grande serve of Pain, thanks! With a side order of Shit Sandwich.” And then the guy behind the bar says, “No worries, here’s your Change!” (just a little joke, right?).

On a serious note, my change plan for now is simple while I ponder what more I want from my world - to continue to believe the words that are etched on a small plaque hanging in my bathroom: May every sunrise hold more promise, and every sunset hold more peace.

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending." - Carl Bard

A new normal.

Walking out of the treatment bubble

Despite the long list of ‘crappy’ inevitabilities from treatment this year, there is a level of comfort and protection created from the constant hospital visits, cancer-fighting drugs, specialist appointments, and general routine check-ups.

But then the day comes when you burst the treatment bubble. The last day of treatment. In anyone’s book, this would be a day to celebrate. And it is. But like any good party, there is a massive hangover waiting for you…

It’s one thing to manage and push through the staggering list of physical changes/impacts/side-effects of treatment. In some ways, these are the easy things to manage because most of them are, by nature, temporary, while undergoing treatment. Like chemo nausea and fatigue or radiation burns. Within all of it is the emergent emotional roller-coaster that serves up heavy doses of fear and anxiety from dealing with treatment, such as hair loss or infertility or waiting for pathology results. But again, these are largely temporary and eventually pass through you the closer you move towards acceptance.

Now, at the end of treatment, the physical side of ‘normal’ is beginning to return. My hair style is resembling that of Johnny Howard – the back and sides have filled in, but I’m sporting patchy bum-fluff/bald patches on top (always the last bit of hair to grow back!) instead of a desert wasteland of hair follicles. Even my eyebrows and eyelashes have started to emerge (no more stick-on eyebrows!).

But the longer-term emotional changes and impacts have apparently been sitting patiently on the sidelines in wait.  I felt the first sting when packing up my make-shift pharmacy (in my bathroom) – the bicarb soda/saline washes, dressings, anti-nausea tablets, etc were easily thrown in the bin. But then I came across the over-shoulder bag that I carried my surgical drains around in for three weeks. And then I looked at my chemo caps. And fake fringes. Should I throw those out too? What if I need them again? And the fear almost winded me – “What if it comes back?”.

It’s like throwing out the ‘big’ clothes you used to have hidden in your wardrobe because you don't want to give yourself permission to gain weight again, yet you find yourself hanging onto them just in case you indulge a bit too much over Xmas... But by holding onto things like surgery bags and chemo caps, am I passively giving into the thought that it could come back?

Cancer feels like it has left me with a port-wine-stain birthmark ... it is now permanently and visibly a part of me and my identity. And while I could wish it away or choose to cover it up, it has changed who I am, how I view myself, how I view others, and how I view my place in the world. I could not possibly have achieved such a dramatic change in perspective without the enormity that comes from facing one’s mortality.

I appreciate, however, that some instead choose to sprint to the finish line of treatment and slam the door in Mortality’s face. It comes from a deep, desperate desire to feel the comforts of ‘normal’, familiarity, routine, and everything B.C. (Before Cancer). I can only imagine the purge that must come in the form of a skip-bin-sized dumping of all physical and emotional traces that would suggest life was “back to normal”.

But I don’t want to go back. I don’t actually think I could, even if I wanted to. I have grieved many aspects of my life this year, and permanently laid them to rest. Some of that grief is wrapped up in relationships that have not withstood the emotional burdens that have come with supporting me in my need to fall and break so that I could rebuild and reclaim my life. There is also grief in the way I used to work – my professional identity. I am no longer willing or able to quantify my self-worth or my confidence on the basis of job titles, status and a long list of career achievements. They are now part of my story; my world view, but they no longer define me.

The largest part of the grief pie has been divided up for me and my personal identity. Never has this been more absolute than looking at an old photo of myself from last year - laughing, long hair, care-free, and cancer-free. I will never be ‘her’ again.

The laughing is returning, and in fact held my hand through the worst of times this year.

The long hair is at least five years away, but it’s just hair, and I’ve come to accept my reflection and embrace my bald head as a way of respecting that this entire year gave me the strength to be laid bare.

The care-free is now a mandatory part of my approach to walking slowly and smelling the roses/jasmine/frangipanis on the path to living a happy life. But it’s a qualified state of being, where I am both humbled by, and grateful for, the randomness of life, while also keeping Anxiety in my peripheral vision about whether the other shoe will ever drop …

Which brings me to the cancer-free part. That part will reside in a silent prayer every night and every day for the rest of my life. But it keeps me grounded in the super-human powers I didn't know I had. It keeps me grateful for the new strengths to relationships I didn't know were there. It keeps me connected to new friends and new experiences that I would have never had ‘but for’ cancer. And it keeps me forever appreciative of the infinite wonder that the human body (my body) represents, as each eyelash, eyebrow, hair follicle, and healthy cell regenerates and offers me renewed life.

I’m now standing in front of the blank canvas that is my life, being invited to paint my hopes and dreams A.C. (After Cancer). The paint palette is the same as B.C., but I can now see so many wonderful new ways to mix the colours.  

Post-traumatic treatment disorder.

Dealing with delayed grief

I had a follow-up appointment with my surgeon recently, and it felt like I was approaching this huge milestone in ‘the year that was’. It had been about 8 months since my surgeries, and I turned up, having nearly finished my cancer treatment regime, feeling on the verge of heroic. But sitting in the waiting room, I was confronted by six women, one after the other, standing at the counter booking in their pre-admission clinics and surgeries. I was like seeing myself six times over, walking in and out of a revolving door. Each of them wearing their own stage of shock on their faces; their bodies covered in the C-bomb [cancer] residue.

It was like I was experiencing it all fully for the first time again, on repeat. That day when I was standing at that same counter mechanically going through the motions of writing down my own pre-admission times and tests and follow up appointments. I don’t remember crying that day, although I’m sure I did. Many times. But I cried instead when I got to my car after leaving the doctor’s clinic. I grieved for each of those women, and I extended my heart to each of their families standing by their side, witnessing their loved one’s life forever changing before their eyes.

It’s the start of a long meandering grieving process, regardless of the diagnosis and prognosis. And by the end, it will become an acknowledgement that there are certain things that will never, and should never, be the same.

Like the way we overly complicate what happiness means.

Like the way we love, without the protections of our armour, that allows us to suffocate in the embrace of hope and joy.

Like the way we take for granted the smell of frangipani flowers. Or fresh coffee. Or babies. Or an open fire. Or rain.

Like the way we grant permission to change our choices, decisions, purpose, perspectives, that honours our self and others.

It sometimes feels like I’m carrying a new burden of hope and possibilities – that I’ve been gifted a second chance in Life’s Lottery. When I think about the beautiful souls of people that I’ve met this year that are instead planning their funerals rather than a New York holiday, I stop to catch my breath. It’s a funny expression, ‘catching one’s breath’, but it’s the most obvious reason to exercise gratitude. It’s almost like a perverse survivor’s guilt syndrome because I’m taking on a renewed responsibility to live my best life, and in doing so, am living for those that will never get the privilege.

My ultimate promise to myself and others is now to embrace change and uncertainty; to embrace the courage to be imperfect and vulnerable; and to embrace a new me.

Conquering change.

What it really meant to finish chemo

“I conquered this moment”. That’s the sign on the wall of the chemo clinic above a big brass bell to represent whatever people need it to represent. Most of the time, the ringing of the bell is about celebrating the last chemo session ... But for me on my last day recently, it felt more like an apology than a party. Like I should have been standing at a private wake rather than a public celebration. There was an applause and cheer from the nurses and even the patients. But I just went back to my hospital chair and cried quietly while I packed up my bag and walked away. 

I thought I'd feel elated, excited, proud. I thought I'd be breaking out the Hawaiian shirts and pina coladas and balloons. That the only heaviness I'd feel would be from the world boxing champ belt that I would have otherwise been wearing after going 12 rounds with chemo. But the heaviness was on my heart (and my backside from the weight I've put on in the last few months). 

I did feel proud that I had come through all of this (relatively) in one piece, but I realised it was much more than finishing chemo. 'This' was really about the last six months since diagnosis when my world decided to flip on its own axis.  I was also just unsurprised by it all... Did I ever give myself permission NOT to get through it? Was there ever any other choice I offered myself? Well, yes there was. I could have put on the pink boxing gloves and taken this all on as a fight. I could have pushed back in denial. I could have allowed myself to become victim to my anxiety about all the things that could go wrong. 

But I didn't. I surrendered to it all with the perspective of treatment, not toxins. I surrendered to the facts like I would lose my hair and that I would have some really crappy days. What I also did was trust. I trusted that there were medical experts who deal with people like me every single day.

I also trusted myself. I have come to realise the hard way that the strongest and most reliable friend I had in all of this was me. And when I say me, I really mean my mind. The messages I tell myself. The choices I make for myself. The decisions I commit to that are about looking after me. Sometimes those decisions and choices have been to shut out the noise of the "should" list and instead spend a morning in my linen cupboard throwing everything on the floor and creating a new colour-coordinated Tower of Towels. And sheets. And cushion covers. And crap I didn't even know was in there (And who can really make those damn fitted sheets have square edges!?). Sometimes it's not answering a phone call because I'm simply too tired/brain-fried/wired to try and string two words together. 

I couldn't tell you what I've done in the last six months. Sometimes it feels like its been one continuous day. People keep asking me though so I've started to think a bit more about a better way to answer it other than coordinating linen cupboards and binge watching house renovation TV shows. 

What I've done is lived. And the last six months is really just a snap shot in time of a life. A life that could belong to anyone. I've done whatever I've had to do to survive. And I don't mean from a life/death perspective (even though it's in the context of a life-threatening disease). I mean to survive each day by nurturing myself enough or asking for help enough to know I can get up the next day. 

I have grieved so many things - lost plans, lost opportunities, lost choices, lost identity, and lost confidence. 
I have persevered with love and compassion in the face of bitter brutal disappointment from people closest to me who were never supposed to know how to deliver such blows. 
I have suffered pain, fear, hurt, anxiety, sadness, grief, anger. 
I have surrendered, fallen over, laid down naked, and not gotten up. 

But I've also received with absolute clarity the gifts of trust. Of kindness. Forgiveness. Openness. Vulnerability. Hope. Love. Laughter. Courage. 

I have honoured myself, my life, and the choices I’ve made.

I have embraced all the unknowns and all the choices I still have in front of me.

I have heard quiet for the first time in a long time. 

I have given myself permission to shred the Should list(s) and replace them with Today I think I feel like...lists. 

And above all else I have evolved. I have changed. Pain had gifted me that.

Labels and limitations.

Finding courage in connections

“So, what do you do?”

I used to define myself by the response to that question. My title. My status. My list of achievements. Me having a good day/a good life was dictated by whether I was rock-starring it at work. Mostly because I didn’t really exist outside of work. I was so wrapped up in all the ‘other’ important stuff that I simply didn’t have time to, or know how to, have a conversation with myself about what I actually wanted to do with my life.  

Now that I’m on an extended break from work, I have to dig a little deeper when answering that question from someone I’ve just met. I almost start to apologise for the misunderstanding – that I don’t have a job at the moment, so am suddenly unqualified to answer the question.  Then I start to say something about recovering from cancer treatment, but that seems all wrong too. I don’t want to be defined by a disease any more than I want to be defined by a job title. I am so much more than that. But it got me thinking about whether it’s time to dream up something a bit bigger and believe it.

I was out with a friend once who managed to convince a guy that her job was grading the St Kilda beach in Melbourne at dawn to make sure all the drug syringes had been picked up before the morning swimmers were out and about. She even went so far as to describe how the indented lines in the sand were formed. I stood there, equally as shocked and impressed as the guy asking the question, but only because she was so damn convincing! Mind you, she was a 6ft sassy glamazon woman, so she could have said she was one of Santa’s elves and I’m sure he still would have believed her… but the fact remained, at that moment, she had painted a picture of doing something completely UN-believable, and yet had such conviction, EVEN I nearly bought it! 

What she could have said was “I’m a [insert label here]” and he would have nodded and imposed his own assumptions about her label, and then said “Oh, well I’m a [insert next label here]”.  And she would have likely done the same. Then there just would have been copious amounts of more nodding to fill awkward silences and more assumptions, and eventually someone would have run to the safe haven of the bartender.

We start by wanting to get to know who someone is but instead seem to focus on what they do. The real shocker is that we do it to ourselves just as much – instead of asking ourselves what we have to offer, we define our worth by what we do: our title.

Labels only lead to limitations. We forget that life is about so much more. It’s about our capacity to love. To accept. To connect. To understand. To share with. To learn about. Those are the real qualities we offer as humans.

So when meeting someone new, what if we ditch the old “So, what do you do?” (and the cheat sheet list of assumptions) and instead try something else…What do you believe in? What did you dream about as a kid? What do you dream about now? If you could change the world, what would it be? Do you sing in the shower? What’s your favourite way to spend a rainy Sunday? 

What if we asked ourselves the same questions. Answering may not be easy, or maybe they should be.

One of best things I’ve done is made new friends that don’t have the last 5 or 10 or 20 years of baggage to throw at me when I say I can’t do something. Or when I say I want to do something different. Like water colour painting. All I hear is “But you can’t paint!” from those that ‘know me’. It echoes my own thoughts “Oh yeah, that’s right, I’m not creative“.  I’ve not picked up a paint brush since year 6 art class. But you know what, I was wrong. And so were all those people who supposedly knew me for the last however many years. Apparently, I AM creative. I just needed some belief and opportunity and the blank slate offered by someone new. The art teacher didn’t say “How many people can paint?” she said, “How many people want to give it a crack?”.

The only limitations you will encounter are those you impose on yourself. This was the advice I used to give young grads coming through the workplace. “I can’t” vs “I can”.  There’s only a one letter difference there, but it creates a lifetime of whether choices are granted or taken away.

As children, we all get given one gift – to dream. As adults, we all get given the additional gift of making decisions. They’re not mutually exclusive, but yet we treat dreams like Santa or the Easter bunny – they eventually get erased or forgotten with ‘growing up’.

Limitations and boundaries will always have a place in our lives… it’s called a coffin.

So in the meantime, my own response to the ‘what do you do’ question, should anyone ask me, will be something like: “I dream big. Walk proud. Breathe free. Live gratefully.”

Beyond the art of bald head maintenance.

Embracing the opportunity to start again  

Who knew the words: “Can adults get cradle cap?” would ever leave my lips.

Who knew there was such a thing in Google’s search results as ‘bald head maintenance’!? Apparently my chemo-inspired nudie noggin’ requires the same love and attention to that of a new born baby.

But dealing with the fallout (pardon the pun) of chemotherapy has raised a few questions that go far beyond an absence of hair.  

Cancer, despite being a life-threatening illness, seems to strip us back to the day we were born – when we came into this world free of self-imposed limitations or others’ expectations (or hair). It's now both liberating and yet bordering on debilitating to feel the freedom of a new beginning… Maybe that’s why we are born screaming – overwhelmed with the power of breathing in life, but also the fear of what and who we may become. Or not become.

Who are we when we stand naked, alone, no hair, no labels, no presumptions, and no clue about what happens next?  

Losing one’s hair brings with it a physical confrontation, because it’s a critical part of our exo-skeleton; our body armour. It’s how we identify ourselves, and how others, unintentionally or otherwise, place a value on us.  Not many would seek an opportunity in our adult lives to rip off the suit of armour we spend years building and reinforcing. But without one, I’m asking the question now, to what end did I fight so furiously to uphold mine over all these years? To protect myself on the inside from hurt, pain, failure, or fear? To give out some external representation of status or success; confidence or identity? Underneath the clothes and hair, regardless of the brand names and colour/style, we’re all the same.  We think and act in ways that try to protect our hearts from feeling anything but rejected, unwanted, unloved, or alone in this world.

And that brings me to the other question, which is almost a spiritual confrontation. There’s an honesty that comes with being stripped bare. It’s an unapologetic honesty because the body armour has been removed completely, and what’s left underneath is, by nature, vulnerable and raw and unprotected. And yet this is probably the strongest version of myself I’ve ever known.  

Why then, without cancer or chemo or complete hair loss, and with access to a full suit of body armour, did I used to find it so hard to be unapologetically honest with the simplest of truths: You hurt me. I’m scared. I think I love you. I need your hand. 

I will need to rebuild some kind of exo-skeleton again, because I won’t be existing in this cancer treatment bubble forever. But I will make sure that it does not have electrified razor wire this time, or an emergency eject button if I’m having a bad hair day. I now trust that my greatest strengths remain on the inside; borne from vulnerability and a voice that speaks my truths.

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.

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.

Heart sounds.

My first day of chemotherapy

I heard my heart today. Loud. Strong. A statement that this is where the leadership role is forming to carry my body through the next 9 months of treatment.   

My mind...usually the form of concrete, no cracks, just rock solid foundation for whatever chaos may ensue. But today, resembling more like the sand to mix the concrete. Panicked about where things were, what bag, what I'd thought I'd packed but clearly left in another bag within a bag. Frantic pulses disguising fear. Chunks of confidence and composure mixed in with moments of inner madness. Silently crying into the wall during the heart ultrasound. Staring at the edges of two holes in the wall. Tracing the outline with my mind, wondering what it would be like to crawl up inside one of them and feel nothing for once.

Then feeling everything walking into the chemo ward.

Disbelief and relief at once. Grieving for all the people next to me dying of the same disease. And yet guilt-filled gratitude that I wasn't one of them; at how truly random cancer can be; at how truly random life can be. 

Life. This had to be about letting go of the one I had, metaphorically thank God. How else can I honour those who do not get this second chance. The mothers, like the one I met today, who have to bury their children. The people who don’t get the early warning signs.

And there it was again. My heart. Beating. A little faster, yes, and feeling a little bit like it was sitting in my throat. But it was charging that medication with full force around my body. It was fighting for me and whatever was waiting for me. 

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

- Joseph Campbell

How I got here.

A bit more about me.   

In my past life, prior to this diagnosis of breast cancer, I was immersed in the world of important meetings, structure, routine, coffee breaks and chasing clocks. I was building a career narrative that said I’m making a difference – I was changing the world and fighting for those who couldn’t necessarily fight for themselves. Instead of using my law degree to rack up billable hours, self-fund a lux yacht and push myself into an early heart attack, I worked on changing how government does its business of supporting its people.  Everything from child sex abuse, bushfire trauma and recovery, anti-corruption, mental health, alcohol abuse, and domestic violence. I walked tall and proud with my cape under my black skirt suit (with undies on the inside).  I felt like I was put on the planet to fix stuff, because I was damn good at it. Implement the impossible project.  Meet the impossible timeline.  The higher the degree of difficulty, the more I said, “Just watch me”. Unfortunately, I applied that same Ms Fix-It approach to my relationships. I would find the next broken-winged bird to help put them back together but ultimately, every time, I just ended up watching them fly away. They were healed, and I was alone. So, I would dive right back into the next impossible work task and get busy saving the world again.

But three years ago, it was my wing that broke. I was so busy fixing everything else and everyone else, I didn’t even feel the first snap of bone. It wasn’t until I was hanging from the cliff of depression that I realised I had forgotten about how I should be saving myself. And by then it was too late. The person I knew had gone, and instead I was left staring at the face of a stranger. Someone who couldn’t decide whether to have a shower, stay in bed, get dressed, eat, talk. The ins and outs of me going back in time and re-examining that story will come later, because that story is not uncommon. Just like breast cancer. But I write this blog in the knowledge, or at least the gut feel, that the two are not unrelated in my story. The cause of both lies in my absence of compassion. Not for others, and every social justice cause – for those, I delivered compassion in bucket loads. It was the absence of compassion for myself and using the noise of ‘busyness’ to drown out the quiet voices of self-care and self-love. 

Cancer, for me, is now history repeating, just with a different punch line. I managed to piece myself back together with what probably resembles a patch up job with sticky tape, because I clearly hadn’t finished healing. The toll now is on my physical health. And ironically (or not), its breast cancer – surely something for women that represents the purist source of nourishment, nurture and love.

I had two choices when I was sitting across from cancer – to invite anger and rage to join in or ask them to quietly leave the room. In the end, it wasn’t a hard choice to make because of the power of a story that could just as easily have been mine. It continues to serve as a sign post that doesn’t say “why me?”, but instead “why not me?”.

The story was gifted to me on my first day of chemotherapy. I was sitting next to a woman, a mother, whose beloved daughter (my age) was going to die in the next 6-12 months. Cancer had returned for the third time in five years.  It was a factual story. By the end, the tears were mine, not hers. She wasn’t angry, not one bit.  She was instead proud that her daughter was ticking off her bucket list with her husband in quiet surrender to the inevitable injustice that Fate was going to deliver. It was the most graceful ode to acceptance I have ever heard. 

And so I chose at that moment to commit to myself that I would do everything I could to change the tone of my story. To accept any and every opportunity I had to find a ‘something’ where others may only see ‘nothing’.  This story of mine is still being written, I’m only part of the way there, but that’s all it is – my story. I haven’t set out to represent the collective view of every person who has met cancer or lost someone they love from it.

What I hope to share above all else is that, in amongst a hundred choices that may have been taken away, including how the story may end, we can still choose how we turn each page.

Copyright: Image provided by Marina Locke Photography.