In low fields by the sea

Like barley bending

In low fields by the sea,

Singing in hard wind

Ceaselessly;

Like barley bending

And rising again,

So would I, unbroken,

Rise from pain;

So would I softly,

Day long, night long,

Change my sorrow

Into song.  

~ Sara Teasdale

Complex

Instead of those words, someone wrote these - - - 

Six

On this anniversary, I have a profound sense of the distance I've travelled over the last six years.

Then, I was stumbling around weakly, without understanding which fractured part of me had gone missing. Now, I feel whole, not sheared in half. Regardless of my lost breast, my lost memory, my fatigue, I feel whole. It's as if the intact part of my spirit needed to battle it out with the most broken parts of my life, to reclaim my essential strength and energy. In the cataclysm that ensued, in the long, slow healing that followed, I was remade. Incrementally, my own truest Self was restored. 

Now, I feel whole. 
I am whole. 
I am awake. 
I am alive.

Quotalicious

The wound is the place where the Light enters you. ~ Rumi

Overshare?

So it was Thursday (AGAIN), and therefore writer’s group day. 

Theme for the month:  When I was young…

Shortly after the theme was set, my mother (who I maintain a degree of contact with) made a comment about all the reading she did with us when we were little.

I don’t remember it.  Neither does my sister.

Unremarkable, except that I have very vivid memories of my young life, and they are perfectly carbon dated by the details of the house we moved out of when I was four.  I remember being a baby on my tummy, and being able to see the underside of the couch. That was when the floor was still sea-grass matting, and a long time before my mother went wild with the funky wallpaper and a can of lime green paint. 

I remember the morning of my 2^nd birthday, and my 3rd, and the desolate footage of Cyclone Tracy on our black and white telly on Christmas morning when I was three.  I remember the arrival and mysterious departure of various furred and feathered family members, and a million small details like the cupboard where Dad kept his liquorice, the pattern on the floor in the kitchen, the smell of the flowers along the side of the newly poured concrete driveway.  But I don’t remember her reading to me. 

I remember our books, and I remember sitting by myself trying to read them.  The day I started school, the teacher explained that you sound out the letters and run them together, and I remember my astonishment that it was so easy, and the anger that no one had explained the single crucial detail that meant I could now read.  But I don’t recall any moments of closeness, snuggled up, listening to my mother’s voice.

Interesting disconnect, don’t you think?

So I thought I would explore this more, by letting the books in my life tell a story.  I was interested in the device of writing about one thing (the books) to talk about something else (the real story).  I got to the point where, at age 10, I decided I was a writer.  Short of time, I finished it, gave it a quick edit, printed it off and headed out straightaway for the meeting. 

I prefaced my reading with a request for people to comment on the effectiveness of the device.  I thought I had achieved a fairly dispassionate telling of the details, without straying into the emotive.  I was wrong.

I read aloud ok right up until I got to this:

Then one day she buys me and my sister new zip-up cardigans and packs a pair of jeans that are too small into a Jetset overnight bag, and puts us on a plane.  I’m nine years old and clutching a soft toy dog.

The sobs rose up in me.  Someone offered to read on for me, but in that moment there was nothing more important than speaking the words myself.  I pulled out a tissue, took a deep breath, and continued reading with my voice and face contorted with emotion.  

 Without warning or even shoes, we are going to live at Nanna’s.  Mum doesn’t look sick at the airport, but it must be very bad because she doesn’t ring us or write any letters, except once, when she sends us a bookmark. Mine is a kitten sitting on a stack of books.  It is instantly my most treasured possession. I hold it while I read, and keep it inside its grubby yellow envelope until the edges are so worn they fall apart.  When the colour wears off, I carefully restore its tabby striped tail with coloured pencils.  I read a lot.

So, I guess this counts as a Public Ugly Cry.

Overshare?  Or free therapy?

I have lived with this experience for thirty years now, but never openly grieved it.  I guess it took looking at the stark, unadorned details through the eyes of someone else to realise the depth of the injury to the child who was me.  It’s only one paragraph in a long catalogue of displacement, disregard, and disempowerment.

The group was kind. Afterwards, one person said to me that I should always feel like I can read whatever I want to, and how important a process that was for her.  Another spoke to me of all the 9 year old children she had taught with stories like mine, and how powerful it was for her to hear mine and know something of the ending.  Maybe there are some in the group that resent me serving up another chunk of me-me-me, but there again, this may give them permission to reach a little deeper next time they sit down to write. 

The next meeting will be in a month’s time, and by then we’ll all have moved onto the next thing. 

Fallow

The reaching tendrils of winter have wound into every recess, chasing out the last of the autumn warmth.

In fact, the solstice, the darkest night of the year, is nearly upon us.  In years gone by I have called fabulous women to my home, and made merry with spiced wine and the ordinary magic of gathering.  This year, however, I’m still weary and I have not the energy for celebration.  I find myself contemplating instead the deep stillness of winter within the longer arc of my life.

I’ve finally taken myself along to a psychologist for some assistance with my cracked brain and scattered wits.  She is encouraging but realistic.  She tells me that a recent study indicated that 49% of cognitively disrupted folks had regained their normal function by the five year mark.  I’m sitting on the 20 month mark. During the second half of that time, I have seen a huge improvement (then, I was having trouble counting money at the shop and dialling telephone numbers) but even so I recognise I still have a way to go to restore my full cognitive wellbeing.

The reality that I’m confronting is that I’m not as capable as I have been in the past.  Not in terms of my skills or intelligence, but in terms of my capacity.  With multitasking stripped away, and fatigue nipping ever at my heels, I simply cannot achieve the same quantity of anything in any given day or week.  I must leave my ego at the back door, amongst the untidy tangle of house shoes, and deal with the practicality of doing what I can.  And surrendering the rest.

This time was preceded by years of frenetic activity when the bounty of my youth lay ripe around me, and was followed by a stark harvest that laid the bones of those years open to the frost.  And now I rest.  Bare.  Fallow.  Still.  Dreaming under the wide sky while the good rain soaks through and the mysterious signs of life work their oblivious transformation from within. 

Who knows what possibility lies dormant, gathering strength from the earth that cradles it, waiting for the returning warmth of the sun?

Spirited! Feng Shui

If this blog were a room in a house, it would be time to redecorate.

It’s been quiet and more than just a little bit gloomy in here of late.  Apologies to any regular readers (you who have stopped by more than once) who have noticed the absence of oomph.

It’s not like I haven’t been blogging. I have.  I write the posts but somehow they don’t get finished.   I’m distracted.  Or tired.  Or I’ve spent so long just gathering my thoughts that I then need to attend to something else more pressing.

So the blog is much like many other parts of my life.  Shambling.  Disorganised.  Suboptimal.  In real terms, I’m achieving a huge amount more in each week than I was even six months ago, but it’s all too easy to compare this with my life “before”.  Before a few funky cells started their loud, chaotic party and trashed the joint.  Somewhere along the way I’ve lost more than just a breast and some brain cells.  I’m rebuilding not just my life, but whole chunks of who I am as well.  Which, rightly so, cannot be rushed. 

See, there I go again with more of the gloomy, insular talk.

In energetic terms, this represents too much Yin, not enough Yang.  In Feng Shui terms, I need to encourage more chi through the front door.  I need to move the metaphorical furniture and install a happy plant.  Splash on a fresh coat of paint, hang up some art, and scatter some funky throw cushions.    

So, redecorate I will.  Maybe not today.  But the nauseous olive green has got to go, in favour of something fresher, and… more Spirited!   Stay tuned.

Surrounded by grace

"Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing and you were in the best possible place on the world for it - in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace. Take this time, every minute of it. Let things work themselves out..."

from "Eat, Pray, Love", by Elizabeth Gilbert

These words resonated for me today. I read them while sitting in the hospital waiting room where I waited, jangled but hopeful, for biopsy results 18 months ago. I was there again today to meet the surgeon who will soon remove my chemotherapy port. This marvellous device, my “bionic vein”, has nestled inside my chest this whole time, so long that I’ve nearly forgotten it’s there. It is no longer needed, and I’m looking forward to farewelling this last vestige of treatment. Looking forward, and also looking behind me, reflectively.

I’m really feeling the 18 months that have passed, and especially the months devoted to recovery since the mastectomy. I was blessed with the space and time to be in my grief, ragged and deep and undone, and in my healing. Although at the time it didn’t feel like healing, I trusted that I was experiencing a transformative process, and not stagnating. It was overwhelming at times, and for months I was largely unable to attend to practical things. My GP tried more than once to give me antidepressants, but I wasn’t depressed. I was in mourning. And by honouring it, I found myself “…in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace.”

I feel as if I’m closing a chapter softly behind me.