Did You Ever Think Life Was Gonna Be This Way?

I loved Halloween as a kid. The dressing up for school parades, the running around for (what seemed like) hours, trailing the rumors of full size candy bars all through the neighborhood, our costumes covered by winter coats (I grew up in one of the suburbs of Chicago). The inherent subversive nature of it all was what really made Halloween such delirious fun: for one beautiful evening, the doors to a world outside after dark were flung wide open! The streets would darken, my brother and his friends invariably would tear off and leave me - but it didn't matter, because we knew almost every kid in the neighborhood and so I would find my pals and wander around with them, concocting plans about trying to return to a place that had the best offerings without being called out for repeats, eating candy all the while.  treats When our kids were born, then, you can imagine how excited I was for Halloween. Not only for the candy, but for the costumes! The pumpkin patches! The leaves cr...

I've been neglecting you, my dedicated blog readers. I'm so sorry. Don't worry, I haven't been languishing in the hospital or crawling from bed to rocking chair and back. I haven't even been in hiding. Nope! I've been out and about, and I've been busy! I've been...SPRING CLEANING.  This is a momentous event. Long, long ago, in a world before I was diagnosed with cancer, I was a tidy person. An organized person. A person who would work all day, come home, parent and perform various household tasks, and then end the day with some reading or hanging out with my husband. And then I would get up and do it all again the next day. I had energy! I'm sort of amazed, looking back now, on all that I was able to get done. Spring cleaning was one of those things. On a somewhat regular basis, I would tear apart the closets, purge the dresser drawers, weed out the bookshelves, and all the rest. But that was a long time ago. In my post-diagnosis life, some days...

I have the tendency to leave out the messy, sad, difficult parts of my everyday life with cancer. The reasons for that are legion, but they boil down to one: we all like to present our best selves. No one likes to feel vulnerable and naked to the world. I don't want people feeling sorry for me or pitying me. There are only a tiny handful of people that I really open up to about this terrible disease, and that's because it's a huge burden and frankly, I don't want to trust just anyone with sharing my load.  But I don't want everyone to think life is all rainbows and sunshine, either.  When one of my closest friends, who loves me very much (and the feeling is mutual), urged me to stop obsessing over certain things and gave me a well-intentioned pep talk about how the big crisis was over and it was time to find my "new normal"...well, I knew I had some 'splaining to do. If someone that close to me thinks that we're all done with cancer around her...

Since my last scan, I've been thinking a lot about the next phase of my life.  I've had life-saving medical intervention that has allowed me to banish almost all of my cancer. I've spent some serious time relaxing and pampering myself, and I have the energy and recovering fingernails (they kept splitting!) to prove it. And now I'm ready to move on, to open a new chapter in my life. I feel as though my future wellness is really in my own hands right now. Do I want to spend my life "managing my illness" - or do I want to commit myself to enhancing my wellness? Um, I'll take the latter, thankyouverymuch!! My new approach consists of four "buckets," if you will: nutrition, exercise, mindfulness, and intellectual engagement . I'm not becoming Buddha or anything (yet!), but I've read enough that I'm convinced that a vegan, low-sugar diet is going to serve me best. I'm walking every day and committed to enjoying yoga again 3-4 times ...

It's been a while, because my brain has been too scattered to focus on an actual book, but I like to post recent book reviews I've written, especially when the book in some way intersects with the rest of my life. Today, The Light Between Oceans : If you're looking for a book to break your heart a little, this is the one to read. A sweet young couple pines for a family as they live alone on a lighthouse island, and one day, fate plays its hand and brings them a baby, which they decide to keep. The decision to do so winds up destroying their quiet and isolated lives.  Is it a happy ending? I don't know. Is it a heart-true and lovely story? Yes, absolutely. It's very easy to put yourself into the positions of the various protagonists, and every avenue is an awful one, with agonizing consequences. I was pleasantly surprised that the story stayed strong all the way to the end, after the obviously discovered denouement. That's difficult to achieve, but Ste...