Tag Archives: writing

Midlife, Sandwich, Grief

12 Sep

It’s September and it’s been a struggle to write. I’ve kept a journal since the 4th grade to mostly free write but these past few months I have needed journal prompts just to help inspire thoughts and maybe help put my brain in order. I read a Substack recently by a woman in midlife (Linda Cooper) that really resonated with me so I’m forcing myself to acknowledge this current stage of life and how I truly have been feeling. I do have to say that it has been increasingly difficult to stop the mind numbing daily scrolling and I 100% believe that is a HUGE contributing factor for my inability to focus on complete thoughts and just sit and lean in to what I’m feeling and why.

A few weeks ago I watched a Netflix movie called ‘Don’t Say Good Luck’ and I think I cried from about 10 minutes in, all the way to the end which by then was an all out sob. It’s a great movie that I’d recommend but prepare yourself with tissue, a lot of tissue. I think this was around the time I acknowledged that my normal melancholy personality leaned more into the sad/depressed state. I realize I’ve been in a funk awhile now. After being sick almost the whole first quarter of the year things finally settled down a little and now here we are in September. Here is the line in the Substack I just couldn’t shake…’white knuckling through life, I could lift a dumbbell off the floor but not lift the grief out of my cells. I could strengthen my muscles but could not pull the tension out from the years of bracing for the next big (or small) thing.’ The thing about life and living? There’s ALWAYS going to be a ‘thing’ so here we are.

Midlife and being in the sandwich generation is not for the faint of heart. Your kids are trying to launch into the world as fully independent adults but they still need a little help and at the same time you worry about your parents who are aging (and some dying) right before your eyes and also needing a little more help. And then, if you’re a woman, your body is changing and your hormonal changes are making you feel not quite balanced physically and emotionally; more crying, more anger, more impatience, and frankly more visceral fat added to the wrinkles and grays you’ve already been fighting for the last 5-10 years. Throw in a diagnosis, a sad kid that’s far away, a broken fridge, power outage, or even just a missing item in your DoorDash order, well, anything that changes the expectation of what was in your head of how things should be leading straight to grief. Big things=big grief, little things=annoyance, but if you’ve been white knuckling it for a while, well then, big grief.

Another line from the Substack article was this in regard to surviving and strength (paraphrased), ‘holding on, bracing ourselves for what’s next, can feel similar to strength when it is what carries us through…bracing for the next thing until eventually, the holding becomes so familiar we don’t realize we’re doing it until the dam breaks.’ Well, the dam broke when I watched that movie and I am still over here trying to repair it but life doesn’t stop and again, if you’re living and breathing, there is always a next. After my long recovery post flu I had my usual scans and they were stable back in April but I decided to consult with another oncologist at another institution because he is well known for my specific cancer and you know, as patients, we ALWAYS have to advocate for ourselves and sometimes make decisions based on our gut. Long story short, he referred me to a Physical Med and Rehab doc to look into my worsening neuropathy who told me it was from the radiation from my past and potentially could get worse as time progressed. He prescribed a medication that may or may not help that I would have to take consistently for the next two years because if I stopped I could have even worse rebound neuropathy, hmmm. What made me the most sad was the line, ‘it could continue to get worse over time’ because it’s already bad in my opinion and no, I decided not to take the med. The second thing this new oncologist did was order scans again; it had been 4 months and this was a different institution so he wanted his own baseline. Well, for the first time since being diagnosed Stage 4 in 2017, the results did not say stable. Now, the two measurable nodules were still there and stable, the ‘multiple small nodules’ were still there BUT, there were 2 new measurable (meaning bigger) nodules which were probably previously part of the ‘multiple small nodules’ part. My doc says ‘I’m not really worried about it. This is a baseline so we’ll wait and see what they look like in 6 months.’

The first maybe 5 years post Stage 4 diagnosis I held my breath between every scan, always wondering, always bracing myself for something. Eventually, with tons more stable scans, my mind and heart eased up a bit and the scanxiety happened maybe a month before, even a week before each scan as of late. What used to consume most of my brain most of my days had become the small nudge or flickering light that kept the reminder that yes there were nodules but also I’ve been stable for so long. Now, after the latest scan results, I’m back to how I was at the beginning; Are they growing? How much longer? On top of midlife, sandwich generation, aging, and menopause, I feel like I’m holding my breath for the next 6 months once again. I don’t want to normalize holding or bracing mistaking it for strength and making it so familiar that I don’t realize it. Life can feel like a giant cesspool of grief and maybe it is.

What now? Acknowledge. Ok yes, I’m freaking out. Pray. Faith has carried me. Faith=hope. Hope for me is the same as joy. Put the phone down, be present, and pay attention because today is what we have. Spend time with those you love if you can. Let the dam break and don’t wait until it’s the size of the Hoover Dam. Think kintsugi, fill those grief gaps with gold/glitter/joy moments. Life is beautiful and brutal, not alternating, simultaneous.

Inhale. Exhale. Live

Today I wear Rouge Coco Chanel satin lipstick in Mademoiselle 104. It’s a beautiful neutral pinky brown with a little bit of shimmer. The medium brown base with a pink shimmer looks like hope over the ‘normal’ neutral of everyday. Perfect for how I’ve been feeling. The formula is moisturizing and the feel is weightless. Cheers!

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Bring Back the Joy

4 Mar

Months ago my husband pointed a couple things out to me that I did unconsciously all the time; one, I hum a few notes randomly whether it’s picking something up, grabbing something from the fridge, sitting down in a chair-random. Two, when music plays even if in the distance or if he decides to make up a song, he says I can’t help but start dancing or moving my body. Hmm. Throughout my youth and into college music and dance were my passion and great loves. I grew up taking dance and piano, singing came naturally for me. In college I started as a music major but as a first gen immigrant, switched to the more responsible science route. I continued singing into adulthood at church, events, weddings, funerals, even radio jingles. Then it stopped.

During my first round of cancer surgery my right vocal fold became permanently paralyzed and the singing stopped. The third time with cancer, after 3 surgeries and 7 weeks of external beam radiation, I developed left arm and hand neuropathy from damage to my brachial plexus-the piano and dancing stopped. The grief over losing my music felt heavy so I stopped participating. Music turned to podcasts and books, I couldn’t watch musicals or singers try out on American Idol without feeling something heavy on my heart. Even watching the worship leaders at church was gut wrenching at times. Over the years the grief has softened, but it bubbles up sometimes.

A couple significant things happened over the past couple of weeks. Let’s talk about the flu. Last week I had the worst flu in my life. I mean, I don’t remember ever being that sick (outside of cancer of course); high fever, body aches, migraine headache, cough, killer sore throat for DAYS-8 to be exact. Then suddenly as quickly as it came. It was gone. I woke up one day, no fever. The next day, sore throat and headache were gone. Unfortunately, my voice has not returned and it’s been days. Now, for regular folks this would be ok having complete confidence their voice would return. For me however, I have PTSD. Remember the first cancer surgery and my paralyzed vocal cord? Yeah, I couldn’t speak for about 6 months, just air. Back then I had lots more to worry about (kids, still having cancer), so not having a voice was hard but not entirely my focus. Now though, wandering through the quiet house, smiling and snapping at the dog, pointing and hand motions with my husband…I can’t describe the feeling of helplessness. Not to mention my job is also speaking to people in-person or virtually. I miss my voice and it scares me not to have it.

Back to the singing, dancing, joy part. Last week was also 3 years since my father passed away. It has felt both like it was just yesterday and also a long time ago. My dad was probably my single biggest musical influence in my life. He always played music in our home. I grew up with ginormous speakers in our family room and my dad would put classical music on the turntable and pretend he was conducting an orchestra. He was always singing, answering questions to some made up tune, and was always humming a few notes here and there. In his last week at the hospital before hospice he was pretty much non-verbal and mostly sleeping so I decided to look for Spotify stations of music I knew he loved. Classical stations but also oldies-Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, etc. I started singing When I Fall in Love close to his ear and with his eyes closed he started singing with me. I know in his head he was singing it perfectly as a duet with me, I could see it in his expression and when the song ended, he smiled. I have the sweetest video of this moment that I will cherish forever.

So there it is. What I thought left me and no longer brought me joy was just grief. The music didn’t stop, I stopped it to avoid the grief. Now, I can just rest in it and be grateful realizing that it has carried me all along. My dad and I share the humming and now when I catch myself (because now I’m more aware of it-thanks Jim), it makes me smile. My voice? Kate Bowler says ‘Honesty is a casualty of illness.’ I’m nervous I don’t have it right now and it is bringing me a flood of memories from cancer’s past but I know it will come back as I give my body time to rest and heal. I saw this pic online and it was captioned ‘seeing the melody’, made me emotional.

What brought you joy as a child or young person? Go back there, sit with it awhile. We all need some positive triggers right now.

‘In the accumulation of loss, retain an affinity for joy and know that some truths are only illuminated by tears.’~David Gate

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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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