Holly's Notes and Condition

Profound Conversations, Compliments and Life Flowing

It's been awhile since I've posted anything on this blog. These days find me writing more offline, where I can go deeper or sillier, than on a public posting - I'm enjoying my privacy.

I've had some very profound conversations during these last 7 weeks. Deep conversations with friends and family.
One of the sweetest things that happened and one I will always treasure, was a big compliment from my Mom telling me that, "in the course of going through all this (meaning BC), that I have become a very good writer."
Huge compliment! My Mom is a professional editor and a retired high school English teacher with 34 years of experience to call upon, as well as being a writer herself, add to that the fact that she doesn't throw out compliments lightly and you get the picture of how much it meant to me to hear her tell me that. Quite wonderful!

Another profound moment came with the Cottonwood Casitas Party conversations with my Harley ridin' friends while on the Sedona and Grand Canyon Ride - Vicki B, Linda C, Kim Z and Sandi H - 'first and foremost to all of you - thank you!' That was a very cathartic and clearing conversation for me to share with all of you. My friend, Sandi H., who I haven't seen in awhile, as she and her husband Bill retired to 'somewhere in Michigan', and had joined us on the Sedona/ Grand Canyon Ride, asked how I had found the cancer and how my breast cancer journey had begun? As I told them and heard my own voice recounting what I had gone through and survived and as I got close to those emotions again - especially recounting how I had to tell Dave and my sons, which happened at the Angels Game on Sept 8th, 2006 - while trying not to share my terror with Dave's company employees and pretend I was having a good time at his company BBQ and game night, and the whirlwind that had followed - I had started to cry and then there was laughter, and that's how it went - laughing and crying, from one extreme to the other. Sandi H. asked me, 'what exactly it was that I found so helpful about being with them, my Harley ridin' friends, as I dealt with all of this 'surviving cancer stuff'?'
It was one of those clarifying and big healing moments for me: I answered that they gave me a life to aspire to again. That I would recover - I believed it and they believed it. That I would be able to ride with them again. They knew me and liked/ loved me before the cancer and they didn't alienate me or turn away from me, or fear me - on the contrary, they embraced me, they gave me strength and hope that my life would not always revolve around dealing with cancer, talking about cancer, living with cancer.

As I thanked my friends and listened intently to what each of them had endured and learned from, those big life lessons - the sudden death of loved ones: a daughter, a sister, the lingering death of a husband and raising young daughters and finding love again or surviving cancer themselves - I was so grateful to have them as friends, because as we laughed and cried, I knew that life goes on and it can go on either laughing or crying, and I have learned from them: that like them, it will probably involve both, hopefully though, there will be a lot more laughing - because I do love laughing with them!

At this juncture of my life, it feels more like life is flowing through me, not just around me, as it has for awhile now - as though I was somehow detached from really living - now it feels like I've figured out how to let it flow - it is a very connected feeling and I'm enjoying it immensely - this gratitude and enjoyment for really being alive, for really living - all the moments of my life - the big and the small, with equal delight and joy.

posted by Holly @ 6:36 AM