Chronic Beauty "Growth happens in the In Between"
“It’s a GREAT life if you don’t lose faith.” ~John Herlihy (my grampa)
WARNING-This may be too real for some…
Life Before Cancer (B.C.) was fairly normal. I worked the Monday-Friday schedule, did the dinner, read the books, said the prayers, did the weekend sports, volunteered for church, prepped my food, and hit replay.
My healthy lifestyle did not exempt me from Cancer’s grip and so after the initial shock wore off and a plan was in motion I went into treatment like an Olympic athlete. In an attempt to avoid the darkness from creeping into my every pore I daily posted to Facebook. I shared a sentimental song with a story about an event or a person that had an impact on my life. It was cathartic for me, it kept me from being sucked into my grief and helped me to contribute something positive to the world of social media in an effort to inspire someone else.
I am a pretty optimistic person and although I had my moments of sheer fear, rage, and sadness I was lifted by the gestures of people. People hear cancer and they show up! We had meals for months, flowers to fill a garden and friends cleaning my house inside and out!
I would look to the future optimistically those first few months and thought of all the ways I could use my story to support someone else. That was until I learned that although I was a stage zero, the colorectal surgeon could not save my ass….literally. The tumor was 2’ above the dentate line. Here is the bittersweet…it was low enough that I figured out something was not quite right but too low and entwined in the sphincter muscle for them to reattach me. I would need a permanent colostomy. That brought me from an athlete mindset to a loser mentality. I felt so lost and defeated and honestly lost faith & hope that I would be able to accept my future reality. You see I could not see my life carrying around a permanent reminder of the worst experience of my life. This brought me so much emotional pain, I would literally almost throw up. I was only 40, had been fit, loved the beach, bathing suits and was recently married and cancer’s rage had already altered my body and I was unable to see beyond my pain.
Unbeknownst to me Philip took this picture of me as I was crying
Two months post-surgery Philip (my husband) and I went on our honeymoon in Maui. I had been a single mom for six years and had chosen to wait to be intimate with someone until I was married again. I felt like an alien inside of my body. I was thrust into early menopause, the radiation had done some damage to my girly parts and instead of feeling like a sexy woman, I felt like I wanted to hide. I literally cried most of the plane ride at the thought of putting on a bathing suit and feeling worried people would look at me like I was hideous. Most of my vacations have been touristy since then, there are still areas I am grieving.
The trip to Maui was my first glimpse that life could still be beautiful even though it was different. We parasailed, swam, snorkeled and biked down a volcano. I believe that was my moment where faith breathed its life back into me. I am a physical person, I love moving my body and I was full of apprehension before we began our trek down the volcano. As you can see from the picture below I found a connection back to myself that day and it set into motion more choices to step forward into fear and grow into who I was now a Cancer Thriver.
What I learned that day was that the pain in our lives offers a deeper opportunity to appreciate the simple things like a bike ride. I realized as we cruised down the volcano with all its twists and turns that life is always moving us and calling us to become our most authentic self, the decision to say YES is up to us. Finally, my growth over the last 5 years after cancer has been slow, sandwiched in between highs and lows, holidays, vacations, monotonous routines and intentional practices of personal growth and intimate conversations with God.
This Blog will become the framework for my Fit Chick Cancer Thriver podcast and from there a series of lessons I am learning on this chronically beautiful broken road. My hope is to empower those of you that may feel alone to know someone gets it xoxo
This Blog will become the framework for my Fit Chick Cancer Thriver podcast and from there a series of lessons I am learning on this chronically beautiful broken road. My hope is to remind any of you going through the dark that you are not alone. xoxo