Divided Reality
In this journey with cancer there is a very strange reality of feeling cut in two or bisected, if you will. There is the well grounded reality of my life in my body, familiar with it's rhythms and healing power, in tune with my health and well being. Then there is what sometimes feels like an alter ego, a side of myself I have had to develop that is choosing to receive chemotherapy, choosing to take drugs to offset or counter the effects of other drugs that are at some levels wreaking a good bit of havoc on my once "I feel great, thank you very much, body!" I struggle with all of this bisecting of my self and in between chemo treatments I am working with my amazing network of long term health care providers who help me reassemble my whole.
This feeling of two lives, I guess, is helping me manage the bizzare and surreal circumstances every cancer patient finds themselves thrust into. I don't care to identify with being a cancer patient and I have a visceral negative reaction to people who cast me in the light of being unwell, even though I must admit I am not in great shape just now.
I must just say right now that I am still an athlete, I am still an artist, I am still a strong woman, I am still an arborist and teacher, I am still gifted with a miraculous amazing body capable of great healing and striving to wholeness according to God's design. I am still an entrepreneur and a mother, and a grandmother, whose breasts nurtured my babies and are not organs filled with disease but life giving parts of all of me. I am still a wife and a friend. I AM still me, and that me is a fighter and a peacemaker.
I am NOT defined by my genetics, I am NOT defined by my past hurts, I am NOT defined by my diagnosis of breast cancer, I am not defined by others view of me, I am NOT defined by chemotherapy or its side effects, no matter how all those things are weighing heavily upon me just now. I am, like each of you, a child of God, defined by His love. This is the reality I am seeking to step into. With the help of all who are choosing to love me, I am choosing wholeness in spite of all the signs to the contrary. I am learning to live in the now, and I am a survivor and I am still me. I may feel like death, but I am choosing life.
Lord have mercy.