Revealing Grace

 I wish they would prescribe nature instead of medicine and stars instead of shots. I wish I could gaze upon wildflowers and the cells in my body would be healed. I want to lay in the grass and soak in the sun and be told that I have accomplished all the treatment I need. I want to meet a doctor on a mountaintop and have them say that s'mores and bonfires are the cure for what ails me.  I wish that instead of doctors offices I was prescribed beaches and sand beneath my toes. The answer! (they will shout) is MORE VACATION! The pill! (they will declare) is higher quality chocolate and puppies that lick your toes.  I wish that instead of the smells of saline and surface cleaners I could go to an appointment and be handed a drink in a coconut and be greeted by sunshine and a large man playing the ukulele.  Instead of death, I would see life. Instead of suffering, I would see joy.  I wish that the answer to my problems was to spend more time in the mountains, gaining...

 It has been six months since I got the most unexpected diagnosis. It has been six months since cold chills flowed through my body reading the words I dreaded on my tiny telephone screen. It has been six months of tears, of hot showers to try and clear the bad thoughts, of making jokes in doctors offices, and closing my eyes for every blood draw.  It has been six months of explaining sadness to my daughter, of leaning into each other when we could barely stand, and of accepting help, meals, babysitting, and prayers.  It has been the hardest six months of my marriage.  And then, one week ago today, I had my final chemotherapy appointment. 16 rounds of grueling treatment came to an end! Finally, the end of long naps, medications, side effects, coming to know my own face without hair, without eyebrows, without everything I counted on to be seen and known in a certain way.  I have been devastated, afraid, and hopeless. I honestly did not think I was strong enough to...

 The other day Emma saw a man walking down the side of the road. He was obviously homeless or struggling, the sort of person most of us generally fail to notice at all.  "Mommy," she said. "I see a man. By the road."  "Oh yea?" I replied.  And with all the love and compassion that a 2-year-old can muster she said from the back seat,  "Yes. He's beautiful."  _____________ In graduate school I used to go to the Norton Simon art museum and sit for a while in front of one of my favorite paintings. They had a wonderful collection of Monet, Van Gogh, and Renoir, but this one was by an artist I didn't know. It depicted a vagrant, or a homeless man, with some rotten fruit.  It was beautiful.  The painter had taken something that is so often looked over and made it into a masterpiece. I bought a print and hung it in my office for a long time to remind myself to find beauty in the things and people that many only see as problematic or unfixable. I ...

 “How are you doing with that aspect of things?” my friends ask cautiously and kindly. I’m quiet for a minute as my mind flashes back to that small, tiny, windowless room where I sat on the paper stretched across a chair, perched above everyone else. “I heard that you were about to start trying for a second baby.” The doctor says matter-of-factly. “Yes.” I reply quietly. “We were supposed to start trying this week.” “That’s probably not a good idea now.” “Yes,” my voice breaks. “I know that. We’ve come to terms with that.” “It wouldn’t be wise to go off medication again, not with a recurrence this soon since your initial diagnosis.” I nod. Unable to form the words. They come out between tears. “Yes, I know we won’t be having any more children.” Sure, we have “come to terms with it” in a sense, yes, but how can one ever prepare for this reality? For the news of cancer but also the news that you will never again carry a baby in your womb? That just as you had prepared...

 Is kindness as potent as medicine? I'm starting to think so.  Last week I really wanted to give up. It all felt so hard and so disheartening. It was a perfect storm of a difficult chemo cycle (including Emma growing molars!) and I really didn't know how to put one foot in front of the other anymore.  And then my people showed up. On Instagram and Facebook you all told me to stay strong and keep going. In my texts and on written prayers dropped off at my house, you all told me that God was with me and that I could do this. You all believed in me. You believed that I was indeed mighty, and you prayed for me.  As I read each and every word of encouragement, I felt my body shore up a bit. My strength reserves started to feel a little more full, and resolve crept back into my bones.  Simple words were my medicine. (Along with a bunch of actual medicine, of course.) With these simple words, like being told I was prayed for by someone who doesn't even believe in praye...

Well, it has been a whirlwind. I came back from a wonderful trip to Denmark, had a biopsy two days later, was diagnosed three days later, and had surgery just three short weeks after that. Honestly, I am so comfortable in my body since surgery. Sure, I look different, but we all look different and I'm not 25 anymore, so I look different anyways.  We have had many days of sorrow in our house. Sorrow that we cannot have any more children. Sorrow that I have to go through chemotherapy again. Sorrow for the time I will miss with friends and for the days when I haven't been able to care for Emma.  But we have also had many moments of joy. Joy for good surgery results. Joy for the ways our community is taking care of us here in Tennessee and beyond. Joy for every day that we have together. Joy for kitchen dance parties with Emma, extra cookies at snack time, and for every good and beautiful person and comment we have encountered.  People often exclaim that they are amazed by ho...

Today it rained. If you have been following my story for the past 6+ years, you know that this means something to me. Often, I feel the love and presence of God in the rain. I don’t know why. I think it started almost 6 years ago to the day when I wrote a post about the rain. Today, I am writing a similar post. 6 years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and on July 6 th , 2018, it was removed with a mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and medication. Instead of celebrating my 6-year cancer free anniversary this week, I am scheduling appointments with a new team of doctors in Tennessee because, yet again, I have cancer. I know. We are all mad about it. Here are the practical details: It is on the same side, even though I had a mastectomy. It is teensy-tiny. It is just .4 cm, with my last tumor being 1.6 cm.  Here are the emotional details: We are sad. This puts a wrench in our plans to grow our family. This puts a wrench in our plans to go to l...

 I didn't talk about God for a while.  When I was younger, I never stopped. My oldest friend and I laughed last weekend about how I would pray for her to attend church when we were kids and tell her about my prayers. When I was in college, it was my purpose. On the reservation it was my profession.  When the waves of suffering hit, I still professed God's goodness for a while, but eventually it became too much. The waves kept knocking me down every time I tried to get up. I was sick in a cancer ward. My relationship with church completely upended. My marriage destroyed.  I stopped talking about my God because I couldn't make sense of my suffering or anyone else's pain. I didn't have any of my youthful certainty. I just had a whole bunch of questions and a whole lot of anger.  Until life got better. Until I got perspective. Until I stood in the snow among the Tetons and said to the wind, "Ok, God, I'm ready. Let's do this again. I'm with you." ...

 I've had a lot of endings that are also beginnings.  In fact, I've lived in Jeff's house for 3.5 years and that's the longest I've lived in a single home since I left Virginia at the age of 16. For over half of my life I have been without roots. I've lived in 9 homes in the last 12 years. That is absurd.  And the truth is, I don't want to be rootless anymore. I want to settle in, build something I am proud of, and never have to pack another moving box in my life. This restless, wandering soul wants to plant my feet on the same ground for more years than I can count and raise my daughter like I was raised in Virginia- with lasting friends and mother-daughter book clubs and people you grow up with. I haven't had a single place I've felt was truly my home since I left Richmond as a teenager, and I am ready to change that.  So in one week, we move to Tennessee. It is a place where a lot of our dreams lie. It is where Jeff will continue a career that he ...

People always say that raising a baby is "hard" and I never could quite figure out what that meant. To me, raising a baby is not hard. Washing bottles, changing diapers, and all of the other day-to-day tasks are not hard compared to say, running after-school programs for wild teenagers or trying to drive after your first big dose of chemotherapy.  "Hard" is not how I would describe raising a baby.  "Constant" is more the word I would use. It never ends and each day is an often monotonous struggle to get through the boring tasks and the thrown food and the toys all over the ground, while also giving big snuggles and too many kisses and being licked in the face without warning. It is a struggle, but of a different kind than that for which I would normally use the word. It is constant and a little overwhelming and sometimes maddening. Honestly, sometimes life itself feels both hard and constant. There are days when I feel the constant pressure of trying to ge...

 I’m sitting in the airport with Emma, delayed, again. I’m pretty sure American Airlines never manages a round trip without delays, at least in my experience. It’s been part of the game of traveling with Emma, often on my own, which I do a lot. Thankfully I’ve learned from my mistakes and have plenty of extra baby supplies on hand. And thankfully she’s a trooper who is able to nap anywhere. But seeing as today, in this airport, is also my 34th birthday, I figured some reflection was in order.  When my flights get delayed, I inevitably utter a few curse words (cue the early 2000s classic, “I’m not a perfect persoooon”). On the way home from England it was supposed to be straightforward, but instead became a 13 hour plane ride, a stay in a roach motel, and a flight the following afternoon. Today it’s me and Emma desperately wanting to get home to spend time with Jeff, who prepared imitation Chipotle for this farm girl with city tastes on her birthday. It’s so easy to get annoyed...

It has been five years, this December, since a judge declared my marriage officially over. It was the culmination of the worst season of my whole life. It was the end of something I had believed was forever. It was a season of bitter tears, struggles with depression and thoughts of suicide, and complete and utter hopelessness. Everything I had believed in had been shattered and in the end, I hadn't been chosen by the one who I chose to marry. I believed the false narrative that I hadn't been good enough, strong enough, or healthy enough. I was certain happiness would never find me again.  Over the next five years, I had to rediscover myself. I had to relearn my strength, my worth, my value. I had to heal from what had happened. I had to be angry and learn how to let that anger go. I lost my relationship with church and grew new relationships with a team of doctors when I got a cancer diagnosis just four months after my divorce was finalized. I had to figure out who God was, who...

I've always been fiercely independent, a bird with restless wings, the human personification of a Viking River Cruise (if you watch PBS, you know what I mean). But when this restless bird settled into a quiet life, I wondered if my wings would be clipped. Perhaps my passions would be lost to duties, my travels replaced with "it's not going to work," my love for new experiences put neatly in a box of memories and placed in the back of the closet.  You see, my husband is tied to this land we live on. It is a tether of his time. For most of the year he has no flexibility to leave. There is no such thing as weekends, PTO, or summer vacations when you are a farmer. Jeff loves adventure like I do, but often he has to place his commitment to the land before his own desires or preferences.  I thought that this would mean that I would become tethered as well, but Jeff has never tried to tie me down. When we met, he learned that my people are spread from coast to coast and that...

I have to tell you that our little farm town has one of the best pumpkin patches in the country. Run by some friends of ours, it is a treasure trove of joy and fun. For me and Jeff, it has been a stalwart location in our lives each year.  The first year I went to the local pumpkin patch, Jeff proposed in the corn maze. I was just a month out of active cancer treatment. Just one month from walking into a room full of cancer patients to have a needle stuck into a port on my chest as medicine flowed through my veins to try and cure an aggressive cancer. I thought, at the time, that I was handling it well. Looking back at the videos we took that day, I can now see how worn out I was, how weary, how fragile. You can almost see the pain bubbling right below the surface as I try to be carefree. I look exhausted, yet obviously relieved to have Jeff as my person. On the surface I was smiling and excited, but I can now see an unsteadiness I hadn’t realized was there at the time. Cancer trea...

The moment Emma was born, the sun began to shine. She was brought into the world during a rainstorm, a precious gift, and when her first cries rang out, the skies cleared (true story). It took a while after they handed her to me to cognitively come to terms with being the mother of this human being that came from my body. I’ve wanted to be a mom for my whole life and with one last push, there was a baby now mine. Wild.  Each day I fall more in love with her. Each day becomes a little easier, a little more secure.  Each day I view as a precious gift, for I wanted this life for so long and now I have it. I never, for a moment, want to take that for granted.  It might sound weird, but I am acutely aware of my own mortality. It’s not morbid or obsessive, it’s just a product of being a cancer survivor at 33. I know that my old age is not guaranteed. I know my daughter’s old age is not guaranteed.  But I hope every single day that I will be at her high school graduation. I...

 I thought it would be simple. After all, I had always longed for a baby, to be a mother, to have a family. And then the miracle happened and it was almost unbelievable. To this day, at 34 weeks pregnant, I still can hardly wrap my mind around the fact that my body is growing a baby. For years I never thought this would be possible. For years I longed for this and now it is here.  Growing a baby has been, I will admit, a magical experience for me. I have been blessed with a very easy pregnancy. No morning sickness, no swelling, no complications. Sure, I hated random foods in the beginning, my hips hurt when I lay down, and my body aches when I sleep, but generally I forget I am pregnant. . . until she gets the hiccups. Until I see my reflection in a shop window.  Seeing my reflection feels like a mirror at the carnival. Certainly that cannot be me. Where did that belly come from? I still am caught of guard when I realize that everyone can now SEE that I am pregnant. Most ...

 The timeline is short. In fact, we once thought there would never be a timeline at all.  When my oncologist first told me about the impact chemotherapy could have on my ovaries, the ten years of hormone treatment post-chemo, and the medical menopause I would be in during chemo, I wept for a future I had always dreamed of that was now in jeopardy.  I remember looking at my friend with tears in my eyes and uttering four devastating words: that means no babies.  In reality, it didn't mean no babies, but the swift weight of how complicated life would now be hit hard.  Cancer makes many seemingly easy decisions a challenge. When I first met Jeff and he asked about my hot flashes (super sexy first date convo) I told him about the medical menopause I was in to try and save my ovaries from chemo and how I may not be able to have children in the future. It wasn't a conversation I ever thought I would have to have with a cute guy I was falling in love with.  Once we...

 Sometimes this blog feels foreign and far away. It feels like a relic of a past life and I have no idea how to connect my typing fingers with my current reality. In many ways, I am simply happy and no one really wants a story of a happy girl on a farm without any drama. But I am content in this little life, expect for the summer flies. I do despise the summer flies. But the flies are nothing compared to the thrill of putting seeds in the ground and watching them grow. There is something grounding to the right here and now of pulling up potatoes and checking on tomatoes, as if when I am in the garden, time stops. It is in many ways, the life I always dreamed of- the pioneer life without the diphtheria and snake bites. I have chickens and vegetables, unconditional love from a hunk of a husband, and a growing field of alfalfa right outside my door. Now I just need a bonnet and a milk cow (milk cows not allowed at our house unfortunately).  At the same time though, I am watching ...

 We had underestimated the interstate, that much was clear. After a long day snowmobiling in Yellowstone, we had driven to Bozeman with no problem, but now we had an hour drive to our lodging in Paradise Valley and the sun had set. Being from the south, I figured that the interstate would be no problem- they get snow all the time, of course it will be clear!  But we had not considered the dreaded ground blizzards- a flurry of dry snow whipped across the road by wind. And we had underestimated the snow that was falling. And we had not expected the 18-wheelers to be so intimidating. I almost threw up. Jeff drove like a pro, but I could tell he was nervous.  We both were worried we were in trouble, but we didn't see a way out. You can't pull to the side on a busy highway in the dark in the snow as that can be dangerous too. We were stuck.  As I was clutching the armrest and prayed more than I've prayed in years, I looked down at the directions on the screen- ironically ...

 I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who has cancer. We talked about all of the things that only us cancer patients know, our affinity for bagels, and our lives.  If you know the man, you know he is a force. He is joyous, gregarious, and quite a presence. I've known him almost my whole life and we talked about some of those memories and what he had taught me through them.  What he had taught me and my siblings was that we were stronger and braver than we believed. He always made us do things we were scared to do like hold the giant slimy ocean fish we had just caught or ride the four-wheeler. As little kids this was challenging, but afterwards we were always grateful that he had pushed us beyond what we thought possible. In the end, we always left proud of what we had accomplished. And it didn't hurt that he kept a drawer of full-size candy bars as well.   I have been rolling this lesson and sentiment over in my mind the last few days. It will pop into m...