Books: When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron (part 1)

I was talking to a friend several days ago, and the topic of Hard Times came up in conversation. Hard Times include my cancer, but it also includes the other difficult things that life throws at us.

In American society, there is so much of this idea that if we work hard and have a good attitude, then everything will work out the way it's supposed to. As a result, when people are going through a particularly difficult time, whether it's chronic or terminal illness, whether it's death or divorce, whether it's mental illness or heartbreak, we feel compelled to grin and bear it. Be strong. Don't air your dirty laundry. Think about that stigma around mental illness, for example. We don't tend to talk about depression or anxiety disorders, as if they were shameful, yet we are not ashamed to admit that we caught a cold or flu. This idea that a positive attitude and a go-get-'em spirit will prevail can be so problematic, especially when considering what that means if you don't have a positive attitude. Does that mean that we deserve whatever life throws at us if we aren't positive enough?

This book is by an American Buddhist nun, which immediately piqued my interest because I can remember reading the Dalai Lama's The Art of Happiness about fifteen or twenty years ago. It fundamentally changed how I view and interact with people, and so far, I am finding When Things Fall Apart changing how I view myself.

Amazon has this to say:

How can we live our lives when everything seems to fall apart—when we are continually overcome by fear, anxiety, and pain? The answer, Pema Chödrön suggests, might be just the opposite of what you expect. Here, in her most beloved and acclaimed work, Pema shows that moving toward painful situations and becoming intimate with them can open up our hearts in ways we never before imagined. Drawing from traditional Buddhist wisdom, she offers life-changing tools for transforming suffering and negative patterns into habitual ease and boundless joy.

I haven't finished this book yet, but I have so many thoughts and feelings that I decided to just jump right in and start doing my thing. You may have followed along while I was responding to and discussing Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler. I plan to follow a similar format where I talk about this book for multiple posts.

This is only the introductory post for this book, if any of you would like to get your hands on it to read with me.

The Venerable Pema Chodron  says this in the first chapter:

"It's not a terrible thing that we feel fear when faced with the unknown. It is part of being alive, something we all share. We react against the possibility of loneliness, of death, of not having anything to hold on to. Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become clear when there is nowhere to escape" (Chodron 2).

Another dear friend of mine once told me that sometimes you have to "embrace the suck." In fairness, this was my Badass Marine friend, so his version is a little less poetic, but the sentiment remains the same.

I will be the first to admit that I am afraid of a lot of things, including but not limited to my cancer, heights, snakes, catching the flu, and the dark.

The truth is that somehow, at some point, I became the kind of person who enjoys doing frightening things. Skydiving. Ziplining. Swimming with manatees*.

When I went skydiving, and I jumped was pushed out of that plane, even though I am afraid of falling, afraid of flying, and afraid of heights, I suddenly realized one key fundamental point: No matter how scared I was, no matter how hard I screamed, the outcome was inevitable: I would hit the ground.

Of course, it was important to trust that the parachute would work, and we would have a nice soft landing, but even if it didn't, fear is not stronger than gravity, and no matter how frightened I was, fear would not allow me to spontaneously grow wings. I had to accept that mind-numbing terror and sit with it. That gave me the opportunity to just be in the moment, where I was, 13,500 feet in the air.

Being unable to escape the pull of gravity, I realized how big the world is, and how tiny I am. This was unexpectedly comforting for me, because it made me realize that I was just a tiny little scared blip. In reality, we are all tiny little scared blips. Some hide it with arrogance, some with vanity, some with emotional walls built to keep people away.

What happens when we embrace that fear? What happens when we stop trying to run from that fear?




*I know that manatees won't hurt anyone, and they are super cute, but I am still afraid they might be secret carnivores. Don't judge me.

Books: Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler (Part 5)

So let's continue talking about the cancer book. As a reminder, here's what I've talked about so far: I told you some before stories. I talked about the American Dream. I talked about Today. I talked about grief.

Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler

I didn't realize until I read this book that I felt like I deserved this condition. Like there must have been something that I had done, thought, said, imagined, that made this make sense. Even though I knew (and know) that life isn't fair, I still felt like this was something that I had coming. Like the title says, everything happens for a reason, right? It's just karma.

But what if I changed my perspective on this?

Instead of deserving an incurable cancer, essentially a death sentence, maybe I need to look at this as simple bad luck.

I mean, it was simple good luck that I just so happened to not be working for the summer, and the reality is that if I had felt these symptoms that sent me to the hospital while I was teaching, I would have ignored them, because it is far too important to teach my weird awkward and awesome students how to write essays. My diagnosis would have been delayed. The fact that I did not have classes for the summer may very well have saved my life. Simple good luck.

So, sure, it is bad luck that I am one of the however many who get this particularly sh*tty form of cancer. But I don't deserve this bad luck. I don't think I deserve this bad luck.

If I don't deserve this, and this didn't happen for any reason other than bad luck, that leads me to decide that the universe is a chaotic place, and some people get hit by the chaos harder than others. The universe is not out to get me. I didn't deserve this. It isn't fair that this happened to me, to us. Sometimes, these things just happen. And I'm allowed to feel sad about that.

That's it.

So, I'm done with this book. It was really quite good, and I do recommend it. What book shall I read next?

Books: Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler (Part 4)

So let's continue talking about the cancer book. As a reminder, here's what I've talked about so far: I told you some before stories. I talked about the American Dream.  I talked about Today.

Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler

This book led me to do far more introspection and self-analysis than I ever expected. My therapist mentioned to me once that one reason she got into oncological social work is because she found her patients discovering their best selves at the worst of times. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before (I have a really good excuse (it's brain surgery)) but it's something that stuck out to me. The weird thing is that even though I have people telling me that I'm so strong, so brave, so inspiring, I don't feel any of that. People tell me that they see the best parts of me, and I struggle to accept that when it feels like nothing more than a facade. It's like wearing a mask. Everyone else can see what is on your face, but you can't see your own face, hidden or not.

Instead:

"There is an inchoate sadness in the pit of my stomach, hard to express" (Bowler 102).

Down in the deepest and darkest corners of my heart, I am still grieving for my future unmade and dreams dismantled. I am still grieving for an extraordinary life made ordinary. I am still grieving for a Me who is no longer Me. This grief is all-encompassing, all-engrossing, all-consuming. I'm not screaming and crying anymore. Instead, I've reached the stage of grief that is still and unmoving, ever-present, hovering quietly over my shoulder.

I grieve for the students I'll never get to teach. The adventures I will miss out on with The Husband. The extraordinary. The time that I thought I had.

"I used to think that grief was about looking backward, old men saddled with regrets or young ones pondering should-haves. I see now that it is about eyes squinting through tears into an unbearable future. The world cannot be remade by the sheer force of love. A brutal world demands capitulation to what seems impossible—separation. Brokenness. An end without an ending" (Bowler 70; emphasis added)

I am 38 years old, and until very very recently, I did not feel 38 years old. In my mind, in my soul, I am still that invincible 25-year-old that packed up my crap and moved to Texas sight unseen because I needed a change of scenery. I am still that awkward 16-year-old who dressed up as the road (all black clothes, two white stripes of tape, get it?) for Halloween. I am still that 28-year-old getting married in a courthouse and feeling the joy of forever in front of us. I am still that excited 34-year-old getting my Master's Degree and feeling excited to finally be able to work with my passion, finally able to work my dream job.


I look back, and I have very few regrets.

I look forward and I grieve.

Books: Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler (Part 3)

So let's continue talking about the cancer book. As a reminder, here's what I've talked about so far: I told you some before stories. I talked about the American Dream. Now let's talk about Today.

Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler

Not today, specifically, but the idea of Today in general. Today, you woke up with a list in mind of things that need to get done. Pay some bills. Feed those children. Work that job. Scrub the floors. Work that second job. Work out. Eat a meal. Hug those children. That's just for today.

"I am stuck in present tense. With a scan around every corner, I have lost the ability to make extended plans, to reach into the future and speak its language" (Bowler 143).

Today, I wrote. I rested. I begrudgingly allowed myself time to recover from the hell that is chemo/radiation lingering side effects AND multiple prescription medication side effects. In several weeks, I have a follow-up scan. Until then...

No plans.

No anticipation.

No social schedule.

Nothing.

I can only process one Today at a time. I might plan to see my HeteroLifeMate* tomorrow, but Today, I don't know if I'll have the physical or emotional energy to see this beautiful beast.

I'm not an alcoholic, but I have to learn to take things one day at a time, and that is just so frustrating.

The last time I went out with friends, I had a panic attack in the middle of the restaurant. How does a person make plans when I can't even trust my own body to do what I ask of it? When will I be able and willing to try another social outing again?

Not Today.

"[M]y own suffering began to feel like it had revealed to me the suffering of others, a world of those who, like me, are stumbling in the debris of dreams they thought they were entitled to and plans they didn't realize they had made" (Bowler 121).

It is so easy to feel like we are the first and only ones to suffer our particular trials. To feel alone in our tribulations. Even though this book wasn't exactly made for me, it helped me to understand that, whether it's brain cancer, breast cancer, bowel cancer, or anything in between, we are all struggling to clean up the debris of a future unmade and dreams dismantled.

What does this mean to me now?

Now, I need to learn to remake my future with grace and forgiveness of my own body that betrays me every Today. I need to learn to build dreams that take into account the abilities of Today's Melissa. Today, I need to learn how to plan when I can only be certain of one Today at a time.

*Best friend from college, celebrating TWENTY years of friendship because she is OLD.

Books: Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler (Part 2)

So let's continue talking about the cancer book. As a reminder, here's what I've talked about in Part 1. 

Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler

I told you some before stories. I don't want to talk about after stories yet. Instead, I want to talk about the American Dream.

"Fairness is one of the most compelling claims of the American Dream, a vision of success propelled by hard work, determination, and maybe the occasional pair of bootstraps" (Bowler 7-8).

The thing about the American Dream is that we all know that if we work hard, we can and will succeed, right? It's only fair.

But also, we have all heard that life isn't fair, right?

So how do we reconcile these conflicting ideas?

This is the hardest part of having an incurable cancer. I've worked hard. I've been determined. I haven't pulled myself up by my bootstraps because that is impossible, but I have done all those things you are supposed to do: got my education, got a good job, got The Husband, got to travel, got to have adventures, and generally got the American Dream. This life certainly hasn't been easy, but karmically speaking, I have felt like most of it made sense.

And then Diagnosis Day happened.

For the first time, I found myself thinking, saying, screaming, "It's not fair!"

Frankly, I never really actually thought that life was fair, but I never expected it to be so monumentally and fundamentally unfair.

This whole American Dream leads you to believe that if you work hard, you'll succeed. Logically, this means that if you don't succeed, it's because you didn't work hard enough; therefore, you deserve your failures. To follow this logic through, it means that I and every one of you deserve the doo-doo that you get, because if only you had worked harder and been a better person, this wouldn't have happened to you.

But I see too many bad things happening to truly good people. I have trouble really believing that any of us deserve any of this. So what does that say about the American Dream?

Books: Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler (Part 1)

Guys, guess what! I finished another book!

Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler

Until this point, I've avoided reading cancer books because I am far too much of a sarcastic jackass to be able to take their approach seriously. See, I know my condition is serious, but if I can't make fun of it, what can I do?

My therapist recommended this book to me, and because I absolutely judge books by their covers, the title drew me in immediately. So, if you are as curious as I was as soon as I saw the title, here is the blurb from Amazon:

Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son.

Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with “a surge of determination.” Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you “can’t do” and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before.

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.

With everything that has happened in the last four months, I have tried so hard not to think about dying, and here I sat, reading this book in two days, and thinking about my own mortality so much more than I ever thought I'd be prepared to think about my own mortality.

See, we have all said or thought about the idea that we could be hit by a bus tomorrow, right? For most people, that's as much examination of their own mortality as they have time or inclination to do. The thing is, for the vast majority of people, that bus is abstract. It's the idea of a bus. A shadow of a bus. A vague daydream of a bus.

When we say that we could be hit by a bus tomorrow, we don't actually believe it, and we don't even live on the bus line, and we have a car, and we could call an Uber, and we work from home, and we have no reason to ever leave the house.

Meanwhile, I'm looking at a bus right now. I don't know how far away it is, I don't know how fast it is going, I don't know if it is even able to swerve. For me, the bus is not abstract. It is real, and I am staring it down.

Reading this book forced me to look at the bus. Really look at it. That bus is holding a lot right now.

In the preface, Bowler says,

"One moment I was a regular person with regular problems. And the next, I was someone with cancer. Before my mind could apprehend it, it was there—swelling to take up every space my imagination could touch. A new and unwanted reality. There was a before, and now there was an after" (Bowler xiv-xv; emphasis added).

Before diagnosis day, I would have said that the life that I have with The Husband was ordinary. We do the things that we do, no big deal. But if I look at it from the outside, our life together has been truly extraordinary. We have road-tripped all over the country, had spontaneous adventures, and embraced the unexpected in so many ways.

I have been stuck grieving my before life because there is not enough room for the extraordinary anymore. I can't skydive (I assume the rockstar neurosurgeon wouldn't approve). I don't have the stamina to go for a multiple-hour hike and multi-day camping trip. Frankly, I am far too anxious to try the things I used to enjoy trying for the sheer fact that they scared me. I feel like there is no more room to be Before Melissa anymore.

Before, The Husband took me on a short helicopter ride at the county fair because it was reasonably priced and I am terrified of helicopters and I occasionally enjoy doing things that frighten me. I cried and/or hyperventilated because helicopters are terrifying, and I loved every minute of it.

Before, The Husband took me zip-lining even though I am afraid of heights and in my mind, the zip-line is always thisclose to dropping me to my ungraceful and messy death at the bottom of the forest floor. But I got on that zip-line, and cried as my knees shook. I watched everyone else go in front of me while I stood there and cried, snot bubbles and everything. The guide had to hook up and push me to get me to go, and I cried the whole way. And suddenly, I realized that zip-lining is amazing! It feels like flying. But also, I was crying because I was scared to death, and sometimes, scaring yourself to death makes you feel alive.

Before, I got The Husband skydiving tickets for Christmas one year even though I am afraid of heights, afraid of flying, and afraid of falling. I didn't eat or drink anything the night before because I was worried about puking on the guy who was my tandem guide. The next morning, we got on the plane, and I thought maybe I would pass out. The plane climbed to 13,500 feet, and they opened the door. I had already signed the waiver that basically said skydiving is stupid and you might die and you can't sue us, so it was too late to back out, right? The tandem guide pushed me toward the open door and yelled in my ear that we would go on the count of three: "One! Two!" That sneaky bastard pushed me out the door! I screamed. I blacked out. I cried. The photos show a giant grin on my face. But you better believe that I was terrified. But by the time we landed on the ground, I was ready to go again, so we did! And it was just as scary as the first time!

I have so many before stories.

What after stories will I have to tell?