Self care: not just about bubble baths and mani/pedis

It seems that many people equate self-care with treating or spoiling yourself. Buy yourself something pretty. Spend two hours in a hot (lukewarm) bubble bath. Paint your toenails.

Listen, I'm all about treating yourself, but just like I have a thing about being unashamed about mental health stuff, I have a thing about self-care not always being fun. The other day, for me, self-care looked like a too-short nap that left me cranky, taking medicines that I didn't want to take even though I knew it was for my own good, and going to physical therapy even though I didn't particularly feel like it. For me, sometimes self-care means venting because I feel whiny (luckily The Husband doesn't just leave me on the side of the road lol).

Self-care doesn't have to mean look on the bright side and ignore the bad stuff. Sometimes self-care means today sucks, let's try again tomorrow for something better. We can try to be positive all we want, but when things go sideways, we can't just pretend like it didn't happen. We have to be allowed to acknowledge the stuff that is no good. That doesn't make us bad. Sometimes self-care means you understand that timing matters. Now is not the time to have this conversation. Tomorrow I might be in a better emotional headspace to talk about that conversation. If I am not ready for it, I'm not. That has to be okay, right?

Today, self-care meant eating breakfast, writing some mail, and taking a walk because I was sore from physical therapy yesterday. It also means that I need to hydrate because that short walk made me sweaty.

Okay, take your Prozac, get some therapy, be kind to yourselves. Give yourselves grace, and be more forgiving of each other, but remember, nobody is going to look after your mental health for you. Take care of yourself. That's self-care.

That's all I got for now.

Inspired and motivated and random thoughts

Today I feel inspired and motivated. I've been reading and resting and hanging out with my niece who came to visit. But today, I woke up ready to write a real chapter of my book. No time to waste, need to get these words out of my head and onto the screen.

I have joined a few communities recently, including the writing group which I know I have mentioned. I've made some really amazing cancer friends (online, of course *thanks quarantine*). I've been learning from my co-conspirators in this terrible club we are all members of, and I've been able to take better care of my mental health this way. Before, I thought I was too fragile and too afraid to have cancer friends. But even with all the different stages and types of cancer, we are all sharing valuable experiences, even if they are often incredibly unpleasant.

Let's talk mental health. From the beginning, I knew I would need help. If you have a cold, you take Dayquil, right? There's no shame in taking some medicine to stop the flow of boogies and constant sneezing. You might even pop some extra vitamin C to hopefully prevent the flu or some sinus infection from taking you out. I know enough about myself to know that I am predisposed to depression and anxiety, so from the beginning, I knew I would need chemical help to make it through all of this. I'm not ashamed to say that I am on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills and even birth control pills to keep my brain chemistry and hormones evened out and relatively balanced.

So when this all started, I got into regular talk therapy and also tried music therapy. Neither of these was quite the right fit for me. That doesn't mean that therapy doesn't work, but for me, I needed something different.

The wild thing that I truly never expected was my cancer writing group to be more beneficial for my overall mental health and stability than so-called real therapy would be. I've always been a reader, and I've always written when my feelings overwhelmed me; somehow I never realized the connection between the emotion and the release/acceptance of how I was feeling.

Anyway, if you just wanted a regular cancer update: still have it, chemo sucks, blah. Good times.

Fave Quote of the Book: Small Victories by Anne Lamott (Part 2)

From Amazon:

So, where did we leave off? (LINK)

Was I saying that I came from an unhappy family?

What does it mean to have a happy family?

Who knew that I'd be exploring such difficult questions in a silly little blog that is supposed to be about non-cancer. Yet, here we are.

My family is special. I remember a childhood of laughter, silliness, bad jokes, talking lobsters, and spontaneous trips to unexpected locales.

I also remember a childhood with tears, fear, hurt and misunderstanding, and being misunderstood. As a shy introvert from an exceptionally loud family of extroverts, I spent too much time with my own thoughts, wishing I fit in better. I had feelings I didn't understand, couldn't put words to, and as an early reader who read "at the college level" by the time I was 11, it was unusual to be unable to find the words I needed.

We fought (and still fight). We cried (and still cry). We try to understand each other, even though it often feels like we all came from different planets. Are all families like that? I honestly don't know.

We had love, but we also had an unfair share of unhappiness. Well, I call it unfair, but I don't know if that is true either.

We have hard conversations, hard feelings, and hard hearts, and all the wishing in the world can't undo some of the terrible things we've done, or unsay the terrible things we've said. Lamott says,

"Forgiving people doesn’t necessarily mean you want to meet them for lunch. It means you try to undo the Velcro hook. Lewis Smedes said it best: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” (Lamott 117).

As family, we should always be prepared to forgive, because we are family, right? Even the Bible says we should turn the other cheek, so forgiveness is the word of the day, yes?

Maybe.

For me, explicit forgiveness is not free. Again we come back to the idea of grace. I am not full of grace, I might be full of something, but grace ain't it. Forgiveness comes at the cost of acknowledging the wrong, committing to never repeat it, and apologizing. An apology involves the words "I am sorry" or "I apologize for the hurt I caused to you."

A non-pology might include the words "I'm sorry if..." or "I'm sorry but..."

"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings" is NOT an apology. "I'm sorry but I didn't mean it that way" is NOT an apology. I'm sorry for anything that I might have done" is not an apology. It is so difficult to find grace when trust is broken. Trust might be healed if the apology includes a commitment to not repeat the transgression. Trust might be healed if the transgressor takes some action toward healing. Trust might be healed by respecting boundaries.

I am no expert on grace, but I have so many expectations. I love the idea of grace, of love undeserved and without conditions. I want to learn that grace.

My therapist tried to teach me about giving myself grace. Do you want to know what is even harder? Giving grace to others. But as Smedes above said, forgiveness sets us free. Perhaps that is the grace that I am looking for. That doesn't mean that my heart is left open to be trampled by any and all who wish to stomp on it. The doesn't mean that I have no hurts left, because I do. But in my quest for giving myself grace, I have to try to let go of those hurts and move forward. Unconditional love is not the same as unconditional trust, but maybe we can learn to get closer to that, no matter how far away that grace might seem.

Read this book. It is by far one of the best I've stumbled across in a while.

Surprise! Surgery!

Well, I hate to surprise you like this, but this goat rodeo got dropped on us with very little notice.

So, as you read this, I am having my THIRD surgery in 8 months. Surprise!

I've had multiple scans, both MRI and CT, in the last couple of months, and what appeared to be a spot may actually be tumor. My Rockstar Neurosurgeon is cutting the thing out. Due to a series of unexpected scheduling obstacles, we did not have much notice about this surgery.

So, as of right now, all I know is that I'll be in recovery for a few days before I'm released from the hospital. I will update as much as I can, but please be patient. It will be a loooong day, and I will post an update as soon as I am able to. In the meantime, please be mindful that The Husband has to go through the stress of waiting for me to get put back together like Humpty Dumpty, so he will not be able to personally update every person who calls or texts.

Also, as it is still flu season, it is unlikely that I will take visitors. This includes in the hospital and once I am home, at least until the surgical wound is healed.

The Husband will be taking care of me, like he always does, because he is awesome.

I know that many of you will ask what you can do to help. Right now, because we haven't met our out of pocket max, this surgery will cost a few grand, I'm guessing. To put it bluntly, if you want to help, you can donate through my GoFundMe, CashApp, or a good old-fashioned check in the mail. I hate to put it like that, but we are still working on paying down the last three hospital stays.

Well, I've never been to a goat rodeo. This will be awesome. Right?

Fave Quote of the Movie: The Shape of Water directed by Guillermo del Toro

Now, I acknowledge that I am deviating from the original plan, which was to highlight my favorite quote of the book. But because I'm the boss of this blog, and because I just watched this awesome movie again recently, I decided I'm going to modify the plan. Instead of fave quote of the book, it will be fave quote of the whatever I just consumed: book, movie, poem, etc.

Without further ado, let's talk about The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo del Toro.

IMDB link:

At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.

First, a warning: This movie is rated R; it contains both graphic sexuality and violence. If you choose to watch with your children (or parents, or any other family members) the sex scenes might make you feel extremely awkward. It also contains exactly the amount of racism, misogyny, and homophobia which you might expect from a movie taking place in the 1960s.

Even with all of that being said, this movie is visually stunning. There is so much to unpack about this story, but before I get into all of that, I want to tell you my favorite quote from this movie:

"Unable to perceive the shape of you,

I find you all around me.

Your presence fills my eyes with your love.

It humbles my heart,

for you are everywhere."

I had to look up this poem; I needed to know more about it. At first, it was possibly attributed to 13th century Sufi poet Rumi, but additional research found that "a translation by Priya Hemenway on page 41 of The Book of Everything (first line: “Unable to discern the form of You, / I see your Your presence all around.”) is actually much closer in wording to the text of the poem at the end of the movie" (Armenti).

This sourcing seems to take this poem not necessarily as a poem of romantic love and loss, but one of faith. It is talking about God, about Allah. I acknowledge that even taking this direction may be off-putting for some, but I hope that we can all agree, regardless of whom or what we believe in, there is a nearly universal understanding that we should be kind, we should be loving, we should, as much as we can, avoid being jerks.

So, then, what is the shape of water? It is life-giving, ever-changing, so powerful. It is everywhere. It can flow and it can crash.  The shape of water is a paradox. Quenching our thirst, filling our eyes and our lungs.  How can we rightfully describe something whose form cannot be discerned? Is that faith? Is it love? Does it truly surround us? Are there answers to these questions?

This sci-fi/fantasy movie is lovely. It washes over me like ocean waves. I feel compassion and disgust, I feel comfort and imbalance. I feel water all around me.


Remember Bruce Lee: Be water, my friends.

Books: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly (Fin)

I am finally and unfortunately finished with this story. This is the kind of story that I wish I could start again and read it for the first time again. Immediately upon finishing this story, I realized that I would need to rearrange my top 10 favorite books, because this Book of Lost Things was firmly in the top 5. At the ending of this beautiful book, David returns to the land that is not quite like our own to find that it continues to reveal surprises.

"[A] woman appeared. She had dark hair and green eyes. In her arms she held a baby boy, barely out of the womb, who clutched at her blouse as she walked, for a lifetime was but a moment in that place, and each man dreams his own heaven. And in the darkness David closed his eyes, as all that was lost was found again" (Connolly 338-9).

Damn you, John Connolly, for writing a book that brought actual tears to my eyes! It has been quite a long time since a book has made me cry, and every time I re-read these last few sentences, I feel that tingle, as if I were cutting onions.

I don't know if everyone fears death, but I do know that there are only two innate fears that every human is born with: falling, and loud noises (the "acoustic startle reflex"). Do I fear death?

Sometimes.

Sometimes it terrifies the hell out of me. One thing that I struggle with is the unknown (as I am sure is common for many of us). Death being the ultimate unknown is terrifying. But occasionally, every once in a long while, I will find a moment of peace. Was I afraid of being born? What, fundamentally, is the difference?

Unanswerable questions.

Back to The Book of Lost Things: a death like David's seems almost unfair. No pain. No trauma. Just the final literal steps in a journey, only to be greeted by those whom he had loved and lost and found again.

If death is like this, there is nothing to fear. There is nothing but joy and love at the end of the journey. We could spend a lifetime regretting the things we may or may not have done, but regret is meaningless in the end. Regardless of what you do or do not believe in, and regardless of your faith or lack thereof, save the regrets. Instead, spread joy and love where you can.

So.

Instead of regrets, I will try to cherish my memories and my mistakes. Those mistakes have made me who I am today. In the end, I can only hope that sharing joy and love will balance out any mistakes I have made.

Anubis casting judgment in S1 Ep3 of American Gods