Letting go.

The choice to be free

I was reminded recently about where the power of forgiveness truly resides.

Forgiveness is about you, not the other person. It's exercised for the sole purpose to give yourself permission to let go. It's a choice we make that says we are ready to love again, and be loved. That by letting the other person go, we ourselves become free.

It’s not about forgetting the hurt. It’s about how that hurt is incorporated as part of your story. But it doesn’t have to be your whole story. You decide whether it gets to be one chapter, or one paragraph, or one line, in the memoir you are writing that is your life. 

Three-headed goats.

Listening to our own song lyrics

There I was, banging out the lyrics to one of Australia’s iconic songs, ‘Cheap Wine’ by Jimmy Barnes, alongside some friends one night. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it goes something like “Cheap wine and a three da-aayy growth”. But I stopped half way through the chorus when I heard my friends’ pants-wetting laughter at MY version of the lyrics that instead went: “Cheap wine and a three-headed goat”.

Ok, ok, laugh if you must. I have to admit, in between the heckling, I was also close to falling over in the street, with tears streaming down my face, at what is clearly a ludicrous version of a song lyric. But it was one that I had been repeating for at least 15-20 years in countless bars and pubs (I mean, who can honestly understand what Barnesy is screeching about at the best of times!?).

Then there came Sade’s “Smooth Operator”, or as I have historically preferred to sing, “Oooh Carburetor” (as in a car engine. Yes. I think I have paid unnecessary homage to my inner rev-head over the years. And may need my hearing checked).

We all hear accurately because it's coming from our own ears. We think we are hearing the right words as they are spoken... But then someone points out there are different words. So we listen again... And sure enough, when I listen to that Jimmy Barnes song now, I can clearly hear those OTHER (accurate) words, not my previous long-standing (very funny but very inaccurate) version.

An extension of this is hearing what others say, or what we say to ourselves. We hear what we want to; what we believe to be true. But we must always be prepared to be told there's another version of truth. There's another perspective. Sometimes we just need someone else to offer up new words and convince us to lean in and listen a little harder.

There are always going to messages we hear that say: ‘I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy. I can't’. The song is playing, and the lyrics (so we think) are clear and accurate. But if we take another listen, and adjust the tone, we might just instead start to hear: ‘I deserve it. I am worthy. I can’.

More than just eyebrows.

Love in small gestures

Let’s be honest - there is something about a face that just looks bloody weird without eyebrows. Women lead the charge for ‘eyebrow appreciation’ as they basically act as a photo frame for the rest of our face.  There is so much attention on shaping, tinting, feathering, and waxing, that we have no doubt failed to remember the pure functionality of eyebrows. As someone getting back into an exercise regime (without eyebrows), I now have an abundance of appreciation for why I actually need them: to stop sweat from running straight down my face!  

But it has become more than that when trying to reconcile the weirdness in the mirror – thankfully I’m a fair-haired creature, so an absence of eyebrows and eyelashes hasn’t been as much of a shock compared to what my brunette cousins must experience. And for men as well. Nonetheless, there is something missing in more ways than the obvious. So in an attempt to look (and feel) more ‘normal’, I ordered fake eyebrows (called ‘eyebrow wigs’ … who knew !?). They are made of human hair and are stuck to some adhesive thingy already in the loose shape of an arch that are supposed to just get glued to your face. Sounds so simple! Weird. But simple.  It was therefore a surprise to me when the moment came to inch my foot through the door of ‘normal’ and apply said fake eyebrows, that I instead started crying in front of the bathroom mirror. With one half-stuck half-cocked eyebrow. Had it really come to this? That in some desperate attempt to look and feel more like me, I was sticking someone else’s hair to my face? And that those, plus a fake fringe, would fool everyone else (well, more like fool me) into thinking that I was regaining some semblance of self-confidence.

I was wrong. This was about so much more than eyebrows. This was about finding acceptance and recognition in a face that looked anything but familiar. And it was joining a long line of reasons about why cancer brings about so many reasons to ask questions without easy answers.

It also became about recognising love in small gestures. When my beloved walked into the bathroom to find me in this teary state, he looked perplexed. And not just because I had a half-applied eyebrow hovering somewhere on my forehead! I couldn’t get the first one to line up properly and didn’t even want to try the second. But he just took the glue stick from my hand, peeled off the eyebrow, and said “Let me”.

And there it is. The myriad of ways that people need people is beyond definition. It comes in any small gesture that just says: “I’m thinking of you in among all the chaos of whatever else is going on in my life right now”.  When someone passes away, or something devastating happens in a friend’s life (like hearing “Jodie’s got cancer”), people confess to not having made contact because “I just don’t know what to say”.  That is ultimately about them.  The opportunity for connection, for humanness, has been lost. Because it’s actually about the other person and what they need. And for the record, we don’t all need grandiose statements and offerings, because those start to look and feel as if they are about some publicly recognised act of giving for the ‘giver’, as opposed to the gift of simply caring. Of acknowledging that you can’t offer an answer to fix whatever the problem is, or to provide some profound life meaning that will make all the bad news wash away. It’s just about being present. Listening. Connecting. Saying “You matter”. And sometimes it’s just about helping to stick fake eyebrows onto a teary face that otherwise says, “I love you”.

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.”

Taxol, not Taxidermy!

Embracing ‘Slow’

All aboard the chemo go-slow train! It’s one of the most frustrating (but comical, apparently) side effects – chemo brain fog. I was told at the beginning of treatment that my ability to think, multi-task, focus on details, remember stuff, was basically going to be on the ‘wish list’ for a while. That instead, chemo causes the brain to malfunction a tad. My panicked face was because I surely need to do all those things for a living!

But these days, I ‘wear’ a banana, rather than ‘eat’ one. I write my birth date on consent forms, rather than today’s date. I announce that I’m at the chemo clinic for taxidermy, rather than taxol (the name of the drug)… that one had the nurses in stitches.

I’m now embracing it like everything else about chemo – a chemically-imposed trial of SLOW. There are books written about it and workshops and experts teaching us how to de-clutter our lives and, by extension, our heads. It’s about moving slowly, eating slowly, breathing slowly, and thinking slowly so that we all have more time to reflect and ponder and immerse ourselves in the present.

While it is a confronting thing to be shooting blanks at the most basic of conversational times, I am trying to see it also as a way of my brain (and body) taking some well-earned long service leave from what has otherwise been more than 20 years of frantic busyness where my brain didn’t know how to switch off and just ‘be’. I sometimes wonder whether it was an inconvenient truth to not want to do it either.

Becoming disconnected from the world of emails and meetings and ‘busy’ has made me start to ponder how, in a world of instant connection (with devices), that we are so disconnected (with people).

In among the many not-so-great things with this year of diagnosis and treatment, I have been gifted with Time. It can feel like pure self-indulgence. I then question whether I should be doing something more constructive like solving world hunger than going for a walk to my local coffee shop and talking to random people. But selfishness is not a dirty word for me anymore. It’s instead another word for self-preservation.

When I see someone now getting lost in the excitement of their phone’s notifications, I want to scream “Just look up!” You never know who or what you might see right in front of your face. There’s sunlight. Trees. Birds. A big blue sky. Oh, and those unknown scary creatures called people. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a moment of connection with something that doesn’t require a battery recharge. 

I see it with kids too, where ‘fun’ becomes the conjoined twin to smart TVs, playstations, and wifi. What about a 5 minute walk to the beach. The wildnerness. The wonderment. The “why” of life. 

So I’m going to enjoy riding the go-slow train. In fact, I’m not sure I’ll ever get off it. It’s time to welcome some empty space into my head so that I can make more room for new stuff, new friends, new experiences, new dreams, new perspective. And ultimately, a new life.

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.

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.

Surrender builds resilience.

Looking after yourself above anyone else

I hate the word resilience. It’s everywhere now – kids need it, adults need it, we apparently need it at work, home, the gym, even the garden plants need it!

There’s an expectation that you can do a course on resiliency and then “HEY PRESTO” you’re a resilient creature ready to face battle.

For me, resiliency is a factor of who we are at the core of our being that says you can do more when you least want to, and when others least expect you to. Testing my resiliency for me has felt like being slammed in the guts with a railway sleeper - doubled over in pain, barely able to breath, and then a car runs into the back of me and takes my legs out. And while I’m lying on the ground in the fetal position, a bird flies past and shits on my head (that has happened by the way – the bird part).

The end part, the ‘results-driven’ part of the resiliency test is whether I can, and want to, get up. Or whether I instead choose to lie there until someone picks me up and carries me to the nearest doctor. Ultimately it comes down to choice. It’s not something that can be taught because it depends on who and what and when. Some people don’t want to get up unassisted because it takes more resolve, strength, and belief than they have in them at that given point in time. And that’s ok. There are times when I have battled within my own mind about whether I need a crane to pick up my zombie-fied existence and dump me back in the fetal position in the comfort of my own bed. And trust me, I have been there. Not within this cancer diagnosis, but a time not so long ago that serves as a constant reminder that at one point in my life, I gave in. Because I needed to.

There is something powerful about surrender. It’s about accepting that sometimes stuff feels a bit bigger than just you. While I would have got an A for Acceptance, the resiliency test score would have come up with a big fat F for Fail. But yet I see it as one of my greatest accomplishments. The fact that I did collapse, I allowed myself to stay down for the count when the TKO was declared, and at some point when I felt I could trust my body to lift my limbs, and my belief in my gut that I could move my legs forward, I got up.  It’s a critical part of my story and how I ended up where I am right now. My ability now is to take all that has come my way and wrap it up in a pledge to find where this path may lead, because I clearly didn’t get the message from my previous time in Life’s boxing ring.

What I did learn was that resiliency comes from within. From experience. From belief. And ultimately from the choice we make on a particular day. My choice for today is to get up.  My choice for tomorrow is to believe that I can and will get up. And if I can’t, my choice is to nurture and trust that my body is getting exactly what it needs… rest. So that the next day, I can start again. 

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.

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

Moving from Regret to Accept.

The infertility reality check.

This is not a lesson about mutant genes and mutated cells. There are hundreds of expert information sources out there to explain the medical reason about why cells develop at a certain rate within certain conditions and create the perfect storm for cancer to grow in your body.

There is no blame, no misdirected responsibility about ‘if only I didn’t drink soy milk’ or ‘if only I had eaten organic vegies’ or ‘I should never have gone on the pill…’. There is, however, a tougher task ahead to accept that cancer does not care about timing, or whether you’re ready, or whether you’ve got all your ducks in a row before it punches you in the face. For me, the twisted gene pool may suggest it was just a matter of time. But time was not on my side for this.

At 40, the world of breast cancer still considers me ‘young’, but in the world of maternal matters, I’m geriatric. In fact, I’m past geriatric. I’m graveyard. It’s like the worst oopsie moment in history … Had a baby yet? Oh ! Oops !  There I was thinking that, even if the geriatric ovaries were already in retirement, surely IVF would sweep in as a superhero and deliver me a time machine so I could go back to my 20s and plan for the next 20 years before 'life just happened'. 

You see, I seem to have forgotten to take on the advice of my smug-married friends to just settle down, get married, and pop out a kid in between building a professional career and falling in love with all the wrong guys at the right time and falling in lust with all the right guys at the wrong time and having a mental break down and building myself back up again and moving towns, cities, states, jobs, desperate to find something more than what I had. What I was. Who I could become. How many times had I felt the sting of loss and disappointment that ‘he’ was not going to be the one. That my window was closing. And you know what, for most of that time, I was not exactly prioritising procreation. It was all about recreation. But along comes a magical man when I'm 39 who would finally love me for me. Would see what truths lie behind my eyes, would breathe life into my heart, would inject hope and happiness into my soul. For a moment, I allowed myself to dream that stupidly girlie girl dream of a wedding dress and a house on a hill and a chance to create a new life from new love.

But this is where Injustice and Unfairness and Regret all came to dance at my pity-party. The options of having a baby when you’re about to take on cancer are less than great. It’s basically a done deal – without exploring a myriad of options and impossible timelines/risks/consequences, it aint’ gonna happen on my terms. I have one shot that's sitting in a freezer somewhere waiting to see what's possible in about three years. Until then, I will find time to grieve what could have been. But for now, it’s something that I’ve added to my arsenal to remember why I need to take this time for me to heal, to recover, to regenerate, to re-emerge as something and someone who refuses to sit in the passenger seat waiting to arrive to meet Happiness. I’m done with the bullshit rhetoric about ‘when x happens, and y happens, and the planetary alignment joins up with the sun and moon in z’ … THEN I’ll be happy. No. Today I am happy. I am ecstatic. I now move into the world of preserving and protecting my next phase of life. A phase that is still going to be full of love and hope that offers sanctuary for my soul. Of actually living. Chemotherapy and radiation are my friends. So too is my cold press juicer, some turmeric and wheat grass shots! And I will embrace all of what is to come, including the crappy side effects, to make sure that I am not sitting in another hospital bed unless it is when I close my eyes for the last time at age 93. I may not be surrounded by my borne-children, but I sure as hell will be surrounded by love.

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.

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.