Tag Archives: grief

It Always Catches Up

8 Sep

It’s been over a year since writing this blog.

When I was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic cancer in 2017, I thought it was the worst thing in my life that could’ve happened. This was my 4th recurrence, my youngest was in middle school, my others kids were not much older. I spent lots of time staring and hugging my kids as much as they would let me, and of course, crying and praying not just for more time, but at the very least, to see that youngest child graduate high school. Two years after my diagnosis, that youngest child had a devastating stroke which left him right side paralyzed and needing brain surgery to remove a tangle of arteries and veins in his brain. 2020 brought the global pandemic which messed everyone up… in the world. Then I became an empty nester with all the kids far away, and in 2022, just after Thanksgiving, we rushed my dad to the hospital thinking he was having a stroke because he kept dropping his fork at breakfast. He walked himself into the ER and 2 days later he was confused, couldn’t verbalize properly and was diagnosed with CNS Lymphoma quickly taking over his brain. He passed away 11 weeks later in 2023 and then our beloved 7 year old dog who had been by my side throughout the heaviness of my diagnosis, my child’s side after bringing him home post stroke, the joy of the family while on lockdown, who comforted us while we stayed around my dad in home hospice, died suddenly just weeks after burying my dad. This year started for me with a sudden lay off on a Monday afternoon; no warning, just a call letting me know I, along with my boss and others, were done after a reorganization. These were the big ones but I can tell you there were many other frustrations, heartaches, and not so great things that happened weaved throughout the days, weeks, months, and years.

In my head, I had to keep going strong with a smile on my face. I worked hard, kept my chin up, started and ran The Lipstick Journey and went to events and pop ups, I volunteered, went to work, kept smiling and ‘people pleasing’. Motherhood is 24/7 so there were still meals to plan, dances, college drop offs, FAFSA forms, travel sports, etc. Becoming an empty nester in 2021 around the same time menopause hit brought grief to a whole new level. The sudden quiet house with mostly empty rooms after years of chaos hit me especially hard because I have cancer and how would I get more time with the kids if they were leaving?…Especially after the heels of the pandemic; stuck all together for a long time and then they were gone. Cancer feels like a ticking time bomb and the emotional toll of that as the base and all the other big things that happened took me and my energy down. Social media took my thinking brain away with too many continuous dopamine hits leaving me in a stupor. Grief caught up because it never really goes away. I stopped writing.

The good news. My cancer has been stable for 8 years. STABLE. EIGHT. YEARS. Those pesky nodules on my lungs haven’t grown or spread. Yes, they’re still living, but so am I. Fun fact, today is scan day; every 6 months, still. My child who had the stroke just before his junior year of high school? He made a full recovery and graduated college with honors this past May and my wish to see him graduate high school had me seeing him graduate college (obviously there were tears). The other kids are living their best lives and although none of them are near, I am now in a place of gratitude for raising amazing and independent human beings. There will always be hard days when my mama heart aches to be near them but mostly I’m excited for them and grateful they are good people and are independent. We got a puppy who will soon turn 2 and he’s the best doggie. I got another job quickly after the lay off and although it’s not my ideal situation it has been a blessing. Although I loved The Lipstick Journey lipstick company, I decided to close after 5 years. It was an amazing run and I needed it. The stories of other cancer thrivers who reached out to me lifted me up and the connections I made and support I felt, all incredible. No regrets and still wearing the lipstick. Just like heartache and sadness weaved through, there were plenty of joy moments-sometimes I just had to look a little harder. ‘Our circumstances shouldn’t narrate our stories.’~Lori Gottlieb

Ok too many words. I haven’t written in over a year but I FINALLY feel like I’m coming back to myself and I’m excited getting to know this current version of me. I feel joy and hope breaking through the muck that’s been weighing on me. It took this whole year (maybe even more) to get back here. How? Waking up EARLY and keeping a morning routine of silence, prayer, gratitude journaling, and reading poetry (you can’t read a poem quickly). I take long social media breaks and I can LITERALLY tell the difference on the days I’m not scrolling. I’ve mostly only said yes to the things that I want to do and that bring me joy. I try really hard to stay in the present moment, not worrying or planning the future and not dwelling in the past. Living with cancer has made this part easier. When you understand the brevity of life, everything becomes a little more special. Life will always be filled with inspiration AND tragedy, good AND bad, joy AND grief—all of which forms us and we carry in our bodies, no one is exempt. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold; the cracks are part of the object’s history making it more beautiful for having been broken. My comfort is through all things, God is with me, He is the gold holding me together and it’s what’s beautiful. David Gate said in one of his poems, ‘In the accumulation of loss, retain an affinity for joy and know that some truths are only illuminated by tears.’ There have been many tears but despite heartache there are many moments of sweetness if we can just sit and open our eyes.

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Plunging Through Grief

20 Apr

I lost two greats within 6 weeks of each other, my dad who I wrote about in my last blog, and then my dog, Moose. Both were diagnosed with cancer out of nowhere and both passed away quickly after diagnosis; my dad 11 weeks after and my dog, 5 days after-just a little over a week ago. It has been a lot. There are moments the sadness overwhelms me, sometimes without warning. Losing Moose was the tip of the iceberg, and I honestly wasn’t sure I could bounce back from all the grief I’ve collected over the years. Moose was my comfort after my Stage 4 diagnosis, through Alex’s stroke, the global pandemic and lockdown, my sadness over being an empty nester and missing my kids who are all so so far away, my dad’s diagnosis and passing, and all the times in between. Moose was the loving, always present, positive thread throughout the most difficult times. His sudden illness and death was the pin prick that finally popped my already stretched balloon full of grief. 2023 has been rough but SLOWLY I’m feeling life come back without tears attached.

Two things happened this week that helped me a little, the first was a quote I read a few days ago and it impacted me so much that I wrote it on a sticky note and stuck it to my laptop, ‘We live daily and die once, so we must make the most of the time we have.’ ~Dr. Howard Tucker, the oldest practicing doctor alive at 100 years old (he’s in the Guinness Book of World Records). Take a pause right here and repeat, ‘We live daily and die once…’ One thing I remember my mom saying in her grief just moments after my dad passed, ‘We still had so many plans.’ As hard as it was to hear that, it was a reminder AGAIN that life is so brief and we need to steal those moments of joy, but not just that, we need to REMEMBER and make the most of them.

The second thing was an interview on Kelly Corrigan’s podcast with author and journalist, Michael Lewis whose high school daughter died suddenly in a car accident. I resonated so much with his insight as he processed through his grief. First he acknowledged that we all want easy stories, and of course, who wants a life complicated by grief and sadness? But spoiler alert, fairy tales don’t get a happy ending without all the crap in the middle. Next he used the phrase ‘radical gratitude.’ I have heard the phrase ‘radical love’ from therapists and I get it. Radical love to me is loving someone ‘despite’ or ‘even though we don’t agree’, or ‘even though I’d rather not be in the same room as you, I still care.’ I believe in Jesus and I believe his life and death were examples of radical love and I try, I really really try. I’ve never heard the phrase ‘radical gratitude.’

Radical gratitude (to me) means the act of taking all your circumstances, good or bad, and consciously choosing gratefulness. It is the exercise of being completely devastated but still actively searching for one thing, one tiny thing to be thankful for. It’s hard but it’s the magic sauce. In 2008 after years of singing at church, on tv, on the radio, at events, I got cancer in my neck that cut the nerve to my right vocal fold. What once was what I was known for, my identity, and also what I LOVED to do, was gone, but after that surgery and radiation, the cancer was gone too. I was grateful to be alive. In 2009 and 2010 when cancer came back again and again, they took it out without harming anything else even though both were high risk surgeries. And then in 2017 when the cancer traveled to my lungs, well, I’m still here. I have had LOTS of practice, too much practice in my opinion, being devastated and having to focus on things to be grateful for (and not just from having cancer). I’ve learned that grief over what’s lost never goes away, you just build your life around it. Life is NEVER what we expect and most things we can’t control. Grief transforms us and it’s radical gratitude that keeps us soft and hopeful for another day.

I came home tonight from a couple days of travel and broke down. It was the first time in 7 years that I’ve come home from being gone a couple days and my 90lb Moose was not bounding after me, happy and longing for pets and hugs from his human. Ugh, I was so sad..and then I saw a box. It was a care package a friend sent to let me know that she was thinking of me after the loss of my dad and Moose. I cried harder. It was my fairy tale happy ending to the day. That is life, brutal and beautiful. Sure, fairy tales are not real but happy endings happen all the time in the in between. We get to narrate our story, we get to react and grieve how we need to, but practicing radical gratitude is perspective changing. Grief can make us hard or soft and I choose soft because life is too short and too difficult to walk around with that heavy coat of armor. I’ve heard time and again that I don’t look sick. Not everyone who is sick or sad or struggling internally has that on their face, they just carry it in their bodies and hearts. EVERYONE carries some form of hurt and grief from an imperfect life, is it possible to start looking at people from that lens? Yes, and hopefully it changes you and allows for more grace, patience, and understanding. I will caveat this by saying there are still jerks, abusers, and those who cause harm or pain–try to understand where that came from for them and leave it at that; forgive, let go, and radical love them from afar. I’m no expert.

I am still sad, I will be for a long time and it’s ok. I have carried grief around like a siamese twin for years and it has continually broken my heart but I refuse to let it harden my heart. There is still magic. There is still love. God has been so good to me.

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Blessings and Battles

7 Jan

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Rick Warren says that he used to think that the Christian life was a succession of battles and blessings but now he thinks of life as being on two tracks. At any given time there are usually blessings, but also battles to face (from bibleinoneyear.org).

There’s a lot of grief to process when you have cancer. I honestly don’t remember the feelings I had when I had cancer the first, second, or third times…I guess it’s like giving birth; you don’t really remember the pain until it’s happening again. All I can speak to is now and now my cancer is Stage 4. Ever since I declared joy as my word for 2018 I’ve been processing and working through all of the grief and sadness I’m feeling, mostly if not all, revolving around lost time. This past week I grieved my voice again. I have not over the years post cancer really thought too much about the fact that my voice was altered from a paralyzed vocal cord after my first cancer surgery, but the fact that I no longer do something I was able to do so well and was so passionate about for most of my life is sad; church, weddings, radio jingles, guest appearances, and even a Broadway stage one time…gone. Imagine something you feel was your special gift, your love and your passion, but you really can’t do it anymore, it’s a little heartbreaking. Then there’s the years of trying to please different people that in the end could never be pleased, the years of trying to be something for someone while giving up pieces of yourself, time wasted. Then there’s all this time looking at my life wondering if there was/is more I could do for my kids, my social circles, for humanity in general. I grieve and I fear that I have wasted so much time. I guess I’m a little angry too because I feel like I’m always battling my body. Maybe it’s normal. ‘Grief does not change you,… It reveals you.~ John Greenannabeach

I read what Rick Warren said about life being a series of battles and blessings, or I should say blessings with battles interspersed, and it really resonated with me. I also met with an incredibly wise woman who told me to be gentle with myself and to sit and think about all of the blessings that have come along despite the trials. I do know that my past has made me stronger and wiser and cancer has given me hyper-awareness of time and being intentional with time and relationships. I am still sad about lost time but it’s ok because we bend and grow through our experiences. I am a ‘feeler’ according to Myers-Briggs personality type and with cancer, my ‘feeler’ personality is magnified. Hurt is doubled, pain is doubled, but so is joy and happiness. When one of my kids says something hurtful it’s hard to bounce back because my hurt is magnified, I know my daughter is graduating soon and leaving for college and I think in normal circumstances I’d be sad, but now that sadness is magnified. It’s so strange. Blessings? Too many to count but with any health issue the battle part is always in your face. This week I shed a lot of tears but I still found that joy. I decided grief and tears are ok.

‘There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love’~Washington Irving

‘Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.’~Leo Tolstoy

Today I wear Urban Decay Vice lipstick in Backdoor which is a really cool metallic brown. There are a ton of colors and finishes available in this lipstick line and most are pretty moisturizing. I chose this color because I felt like I needed a little sparkle! Cheers!

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