I’ll be honest with you. This blog/website is a big treat for me. Sure, I hope others read it and gain something from doing so, but I created it so I could sort things out. Throughout my entire life, the best way I’ve found for me to figure out what I think about something is to write about it. Writing about my thoughts in front of an audience is terrifying, but I felt like I needed to do it, and so here I am — logo and all.
I spend way too much time thinking about things I can do nothing about. My husband constantly tells me what a waste of time this is, but still I persist and let the world weigh on my shoulders as if I’m the only person that can do anything about global warming, the Middle East or female teens’ obsession with BTS. The pressure is just too much, folks.
Last week I found out that my close friend Jessica’s cancer had returned. Not only did it return, but it relocated to a dangerous place in her body. I was stunned when I read the news on Facebook. The kind of stunned that you try to file away as a dream, only to realize a few hours or days later that it is indeed reality and not something that you watched on Netflix.
I have thought and thought about why Jessica has to go through this, especially since she’s been through so much already, and I’ve come up with zilch. There are a lot of clichés I could insert here, but the whole idea is to come up with new ways of looking at things and hopefully find something good.
I’m still processing her diagnosis — a young mother of four with stage 4 ocular melanoma in the liver — and am now in a working state of shock. But Jessica, the person this yucky hand was dealt, is so brave. It’s like she’s shooting this diagnosis between the eyes with a shotgun while wearing a blindfold. She’s a total badass, and I am in awe of her.
Every day the world sends us reminders of how good it is to be alive. Today a monarch flew across my path on the way to the library. It circled around my son and I before it went on to flirt with someone else.
When we got to the library, a vase filled with pink azaleas greeted us, a nod to spring and a beautiful Wink of Goodness. I learned that one of the librarians, who is also a yoga teacher, was given these flowers by a yogi in her class. You can’t enjoy these things if you’re not alive, which is why it’s so wonderful to receive these beautiful messages and then realize just how lucky you are to be in the audience.
I’m lucky that I’m friends with my friend who has cancer because she is an awesome person who has always made me laugh and isn’t scared to share her crazy mommy moments — we all have them. As soon as my friends and I found out about her returning cancer, we began planning and organizing ways to help her and her family. Whether we were discussing meals, gift cards, travel points or money, each text was an expression of love and hope for her, a building block for her future.
Though I am heartbroken and angry that she has to go through a second of this, I’m grateful that I’m part of an incredible army of people supporting her, and I’m so very grateful for her. Friendship has so many parts, and each one has its time to shine. Right now, we need to shine our strength for Jessica because she’s certainly shining hers. She refuses to allow life’s gravel unravel her, and if she’s not going to let that happen, neither am I.