visualize this

I have written here before about being overwhelmed by all the advice about how to vanquish this cancer. I am finding, as I proceed along the treatment path, that some things are beginning to fall away, that they just don't make sense to me, for me, at this point in my life. And other things do make sense, and I'm giving them a try. And it's not just the easy stuff I'm keeping, or the hard stuff that I'm letting go. Okay, I'm not going to become a vegan, or eat all raw food, or give up gluten just yet. Those things would be hard for me. But more importantly, they just aren't resonating with me as part of my solution.

I am still in the process of discovering my solutions, but they are coming to me, as I guess I knew they would. Process is hard for me; I am impatient. I would rather know the answer right away, get to the end result quickly. But it is slowly dawning on me that life will be hard if I can't relax and let it all unfold. Because life is a process, and I don't actually want to know the whole answer, or worse, hurry to the end. 

So part of this healing process has been listening and reading and considering all the information and deciding what might work for me. A lower fat diet and a lot more exercise both make sense, though I'm cutting myself some slack on both those fronts until the worst of the chemo crud is behind me. And though I'm still struggling with it, meditating regularly makes sense to me. There have been many studies done on the changes that meditation and visualization can bring about in your brain and in your body. Changes to your heart rate, your immune system, the pain centers in your brain. These studies are comforting to me, I guess, but I'm staying with it because it feels good, despite the deep challenge. The calm that I feel, though fleeting so far, seems to be very valuable indeed. And along with the meditating is a second piece, visualizing. 

Just writing the word brings new age visions of gauzy glowing goddesses to my head.  Many write or speak about "the white light", sitting quietly and visualizing glowing light entering your body and clearing it of cancer cells. I really wasn't getting that. When I closed my eyes and pictured the process of being cured, I kept getting a vision of PacMan. You know, the good little gobbler cell racing around the maze of my blood and lymph vessels, munching up all the bad little ghosty cells. That is what I pictured, and I knew from what I had read that whatever worked for me was fine. But it wasn't actually working for me, wasn't bringing me much by way of belief or relief. Maybe it was the violence of it. Not that I've ever thought of PacMan as being particularly violent, but all along the idea of cells "attacking," and "doing battle," and of the struggle to be cured as being a "war" has been unsettling to me rather than comforting.

Then I was speaking with a very wise friend about the meditating and visualizing process. I didn't tell her about the PacMan, just that I was trying, but the visualization piece wasn't really working for me. And she shared many thoughts about meditation and visualization, but the word that stuck, the word that resonated, was "purify." That I should focus on imagining the chemotherapy and all my other attempts to cure myself as purifying. I'm not sure I've ever thought of myself and the word "pure" in the same sentence before, but the possibility was intriguing.

The next time I sat to visualize this disease leaving my body, a new image came to my head. It is of a stream that flowed behind my parents house, down to the ocean. I played beside it often growing up. It cascaded down out of the woods, crystal clear, over rocks and pine needles and moss and into the cove. And now I picture crystalline, sparkling water like that, flowing through my body, taking the black, slimy gobs of cancer (or is it rotting leaves?) out to sea. Out of me. And I don't know if it is leaving me pure, but I like to believe it is leaving me cancer free.  

here and now

I went to work for a few hours today. Being back in Lisa's studio was wonderful, even though my beloved workmates were all elsewhere. In fact, it was hard to leave after half a day. I am realizing that if Having Kids was Lesson #1 in Learning to Let Go 101, then Having Cancer is my Lesson #2. 

I've always been a bit of a control freak. I've been independent and self-reliant since I left the house at age 4 to walk to the store, purse slung over my arm. (My grandfather retrieved me, about 1/3 of a mile from home). Those qualities served me pretty well in high school, and quite well through college and my 20s. Boy, those 30s threw me for a loop. I developed not one, but two very important relationships in which I was a partner, and bore my children. To say that it has been tough for me to loosen my grip and let other people have a bigger say in my life would be a laughable understatement. In fact, thinking about it now, I'm not sure I'm very good at it still. Perhaps that brought me to the second lesson?

I don't know, but I can tell you that wrestling with the frustration I'm feeling at not being able to just live my normal life is one of the hardest parts of this ordeal so far. I think that I've been pretty patient, paying attention to what my body is telling me about how much I can do, and when I should take a nap. It doesn't stop my mind from whirling, though. I want to be in the shop, helping to prepare for the season. My own designs have been pretty well received on a small scale, and I want to move them to a larger scale. I want to be going to Jacob's baseball games and taking Claire to school every day. Feeling that my life is on pause, or at least in slow motion, is very hard for me. And so much of the time and energy I do have is being spent talking on the phone, going to appointments, making decisions about my health. I realize that it is what I must do, that there is nothing more important at the moment. These tasks are an integral part of increasing my chances of living to see my children grow up. So there is no question that these duties need to be at the top of my priority list. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that I enjoy doing them, and it doesn't mean that I can reason my frustration away.

Perhaps there is a lesson in my meditation practice for this. "My meditation practice" makes it sound a lot more established than it actually is. But I have gathered enough so far, with my little baby steps, to know that perhaps I would be more at ease if I were engrossed in each moment, in each task that I am focused on. Even when–especially when?–I would rather be doing something other than the task at hand. After all, I am alive, and can do these things that may save my life. When I look at the lives of my peers, it seems hardly fair that I have to spend so much time focused simply on surviving. But when I think about the lives of people all over the world, there is no question that I am still a very lucky person. Simply by virtue of my birth time and place, I have been handed more than my share of "fair".

I know, too, that I should be taking this time to appreciate the tiny joys and to breathe deeply, as a wise friend recently told me. I try. Really I do. Okay, maybe I could try harder. Maybe that will be my goal for this next week. It shouldn't be that hard, with the lilacs and apple blossoms in bloom.