Getting Over Myself

In the past few months I've had the following cancer-related speaking opportunities:

A newspaper interview
A radio interview
A TV interview
A keynote speech
An interview for a documentary film




And I've yet to come away without wishing I'd have said something differently. In fact, I think that I've made some pretty big bungles.



But I'm not going to give up. Nor am I going to enumerate my mistakes, because I'm trying to learn from them instead of marinate in them.


Writing sure isn't easy but at least you get to make as many drafts as you want before you release it.


Pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone is a good thing, right?

Pictures from the Beach:

Turtles at the Aquarium

Flying Our Kite. This was our one-and-only gloomy day; every other day was hot and sunny.

One of Our Sand Castles

Blogging on TV

Ok, this was pretty exciting. My blog was featured on a local TV news station.

Here's the link to the video clip:


Inspired Living: Breast Cancer Blogger

Doing the interview was a fun and pleasant experience (although I did have to clean the house!) - watching it was weird. I'm tempted to pick apart & analyze what I said and what I should've said but I'm just absolutely going to resist the urge.

Seven Random Things

I've been tagged to post seven random things about myself. I'm a bit tardy with my response because

One: I've been enjoying some R & R. We just came back from the beach. I spent a whole week without news. No TV news, no newspaper, no NPR, no internet. Since I'm somewhat of a news junky, I think that the break was really good for me. I did spend a chunk of down-time watching season one of I Dream of Jeannie, my all-time favorite TV show.

Two: I have a great sense of direction and am quite good with maps. I don't get lost easily.

Three: I am enamored with all things Dutch. The painters, the landscape, Anne Frank (yes I know that she wasn't actually Dutch), the culture, the history...I've been to the Netherlands twice. I hope to go back someday. Eventually, I plan to study the language but

Four: I'm already working on Spanish (almost intermediate) and Polish (total beginner).

Five: I have a mechanical engineering degree and an MBA. I haven't worked in my field for a long time. Certain aspects of that career still interest me & I might start re-incorporating them into my grand scheme - however

Six: Someday (looong time from now!) I'll be an empty nester. Then, I want a job that pays me to travel. But what will it be? Travel writer? Long distance trucker? Tour guide leader? Ambassador? TBD.

Seven: Right now I'm reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clark. I don't usually read two novels at once, much less two fantasy novels, but {shrug}.

That was all pretty random, huh? Thank you, Karen Lynch (Discussing Breast Cancer) for the tag!

Essay by Colleen Shaddox: Spot-On

A round of applause to Colleen Shaddox for her recent op-ed essay in the Washington Post "It's Cancer, Not a Moral Crucible". She writes about "the myth of cancer sainthood." Please go read it - especially if you have not had cancer.

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My own observation: it is bewildering to be called "brave" or "strong" because my hair fell out and I didn't spontaneously combust. I did what I needed to do. I didn't like it. I cried a lot.



Sometimes the comments were of the "I don't know what I'd do" variety with a bit of a shudder attached to them. Well, of course you don't know what you'd do. I suspect that you wouldn't like it. And you'd probably cry a lot. But you wouldn't spontaneously combust. Trust me.


I'm all for having a positive attitude. Despair, hopelessness, and general crankiness are not fun, make it difficult to concentrate , and cut down on your invitations to the good parties. However, I doubt that they make cancer cells multiply - and to imply that they do puts an unfair burden on the person dealing with cancer. Sometimes cancer kills good, sweet, joyful people. Trust me.

Cancer Survivor Day

Sunday was National Cancer Survivors Day, and my beloved cancer center has an annual celebration.


This year, professional storyteller Connie Regan-Blake was the keynote speaker. Of course she was entertaining, but on a deeper level listening to her highlighted the essential role of life-stories within the human experience. No one goes through cancer without accumulating at least a bucket full of tales to tell, and so many of us are all-but-bursting to share them in some format.

A few more pictures from the celebration:

with my darling husband

Aren't those balloons gorgeous?!

"Exploring the Intersection of Cancer and Creativity"

Did you notice that I changed my subtitle about a month ago? My subtitle used to describe and summarize my cancer from a medical point of view. I moved that summary to the sidebar under "My Cancer Journey ."

Why did I make that change? I had decided that it was time to give my blog a bit of focus.

Last November I posted that I was going to overhaul my blog and make it less about breast cancer. As soon as I made that announcement, I had a recurrance scare. And at that point I realized that this was meant to be my breast cancer blog, even if (God willing) I move further and further out from active treatment.

But it took me a while to figure out where my blog was going. It's become clear to me that while I'm interested in stuff like the latest research and public policy, that's not the niche that I want to blog about.

So I let it and myself drift a bit, and discovered that what really intrigues me is the intersection of cancer and creativity.

I get very excited when I run across people who are using their Survivorship and their artistic talents (literary, visual, dance, music, quilting, whatever ) to raise awareness or funds, or to help others grow creatively so that they too can know the healing power of the arts.

It has taken a lot to get me to today: my family, my faith, and better-living-through-chemistry.

But without my writing, designing my garden, photographing my garden, perfecting my strawberry smoothie recipe in order to use up the twelve pounds of strawberries that I picked with my kids, working on my Spanish, studying HTML, and planning parties - I'd have starved along the route.

Strawberry Smoothies -Yumm

Memorial Day weekend, we picked strawberries on Friday. Saturday & Sunday we had people coming and going and I kept a bowl of strawberries available. They were so fresh and sweet that we gobbled them up.
By Monday, this was all that remained of twelve pounds of strawberries.

When Blank Cards Aren't Blank

I wanted to send a card to an acquaintance who'd had breast surgery.

I decided against the "Get Well" cards. She's not exactly sick. Sometimes I send the cards that are filed under the "Encouragement" tab, but I have to know the person pretty well. Otherwise, I'm afraid that my encouragement might come off as been-there-done-that-now-I'm-a-know-it-all which would so not be cool.

Finally, I picked out a blank card. OK, that should work.

When I got home, I started to sign the card and noticed -in the inside, in itsy bitsy print -a slogan about finding true happiness in the journey rather than in the destination. Ha! Not this time.

Fortunately, I wasn't as rushed when I signed the card as I'd been when I bought it . If I'd have sent that card, my acquaintance would surely have suspected that chemo had destroyed each of my common sense brain cells.