It’s been over a month since my last post. It was time to take a break. I simply had no more words to share. It was time to cuddle up and hide away for a while. It’s been a rollercoaster of a year, my time of becoming older than my own mother ever had.
I started in a good way, gathering with my fellow women sharing our knitting and our souls, giving eachother baskets of strength and joy to take out into the world.
It was after I left that gathering that the rollercoaster picked up speed and threatened to crash. I decided I couldn’t continue working as a special education teacher. I loved the kids. My fellow teachers were mostly great. But each day I walked into the building and it felt as if those concrete walls were closing in on me. I saw myself giving up my ideals for a system that I could never believe in. Despite all the love of the teachers, we were all a part of paving the road to prison. Many around me held up tiny flames of hope and dreams for a better tomorrow, but my light had gone out and it was time to go.
Four months after starting my new job back in the land of childcare I got my diagnosis. I had breast cancer. While there are parts that are frightening and sad, somehow it hasn’t been a surprise. That’s strange to say. I don’t smoke, don’t drink, hadn’t even eaten cane sugar for most of the last ten years. In so many ways I am what healthy is supposed to look like. Yet, I knew it was in me and that I had little to fear. It was supposed to happen. I don’t know why, other than it’s helped me know my mom better and know myself a bit too. We’ll see where the journey takes me. I suspect it will teach me more.
So, there I am in June new job, epilepsy, and breast cancer. Surgery in July and most of August just laying at home recovering. Discovering a circle of care and teaching myself to ask for the help that I need without fear or shame. The waning summer leads into asking for support that gets me out of town, something I hardly ever do due to the fact that I don’t drive. I get out hiking, touching the earth, and saying my words of goodbye to my mom and hello to my self.
It also is a time of knee injuries, a failed attempt at an estrogen blocking medication for my cancer, and the suicide of an old friend. My energy was waning and it was time to climb into myself. I couldn’t take anymore of the stories I was hearing. So many around me worn down by the world we’re living in today. So many who could understand far too well why people were leaving the world. My own memories were coming back from those days in my teenage years when I wanted to leave, when I didn’t think I could handle the pain anymore. I had to do something, many somethings but one to speak of here.
I believe in the energies of the world. My life has taken me to sweat lodges, tent shakings, sun dances, and allowed me to listen to the jingle dancers and the waves of the lake and seas. Acupuncture, meditation, running, and a little cranio-sacral therapy were keeping me above the water during this difficult time. Then yesterday I went to see an old friend who does energy work. We looked inside and pulled out the pain, casting it off and allowing space for healing. I held my inner child and we played on the swings. Today we danced and laughed. Tonight we’ll cuddle together inside my heart and she’ll grow stronger, knowing that it’s okay for me to be who I am and part of that is that inner child who draws me to my creativity, tells me to dance, pleads for me to play with her and visit with the unicorns. We walk together again now and we’ll tend the seed that lies inside my being and grow the magic of simply being.
I know that may not make any sense to many of you reading this, but it needs to be written. Take it simply to encourage you to nurture your own inner child, let yourself dream and play and ride the swings. We’ve got to look to the sunlight if we don’t want to be lost in the dark.
