“With cancer, it is rarely a matter of either-or; there is seldom a choice between hope and despair. Patients face both simultaneously, or serially.”- Azra Raza, The First Cell How much can a heart take, figuratively but also literally? This is a question that has floated up to me through the fog over and overContinue reading “The Back and Forth”
Monthly Archives: May 2020
Breaking Through
“Which part of you will you let live again?”-Mary Lambert, “Sum of Our Parts” “Let ’em laugh while they can,let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind.I have been to the movies, I have seen how it ends,and the joke’s on them.”-Brandi Carlile, “The Joke” The kittens arrived in early spring. Their mother birthedContinue reading “Breaking Through”
Save Your Prayers
This is not a story about the loss of faith or its restoration (sorry, not sorry). This is the story of awakening. Of autonomy. Of going from closed to open. This is a story of reclamation. I was raised in a religious household. We called ourselves born-again Christians. My mom was a Sunday school teacher.Continue reading “Save Your Prayers”
Broken System
In 2017, my life, and the life of my sister, dramatically shifted, and it had nothing to do with cancer. We’d planned to visit our parents that Christmas. They’d visited us the year before, and we hadn’t seen them since. We decided to make the 14-hour drive rather than fly because our old pug couldn’tContinue reading “Broken System”
The Final Silence: Cancer Walks 