Rain and Sunshine
“Don’t wait for the sun to shine, learn how to dance in the rain.”- annon.
It’s been a hot minute…
Rounds 5 and 6. Complete. Also, number 6 was the most challenging since the first.
Maybe it’s because the crap that carries the drug is building up in my body and making it harder.
Maybe it’s because I decided to do a 3 day cleanse AFTER the treatment instead of before.
Maybe it’s because the urgency and focus needed for the primary fundraising has died down. The feeling of when a big event is over, is full and simultaneously empty. A sigh of relief paired with the stiffening of your upper back as the uncertainty that lies ahead suddenly becomes monstrous.
What’s left is the actual reality of living the rest of the year on these 3 week rollercoasters…hoping it will pay off in the long run. So I can sit with Jack on our sun drenched balcony overlooking the ocean saying “Remember that time I had cancer, we had 2 under 5’s and the businesses nearly went under?” Then throw our heads back in laughter, followed by a sip of red wine overlooking our perfectly manifested reality.
The response from everyone around me, and complete strangers continues to put me in a state of AWE. I am truly blessed, and if you are reading this, chances are that is YOU. So thank-you. Thank-you. Thank-you from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my soul.
A wee smirk always finds its way to my face when people offer “not long now” or something to that effect. I grin because I know it’s offered with love and intended to offer a more comfortable reality. However, for me, it has a different meaning.
Looking to the future, imagining something different with the knowing that it’s “not long now” was my number one strategy for survival growing up. Or to be more specific, escapism.
I was the escapism Queen.
Didn’t understand something in Science?- Check the diary to see how many sleeps until Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix comes out, just incase I remembered it wrong. Not long now.
Body screaming at me to stop in training? Not long now.
Mum passes out doing the vacuuming after yelling at us for not helping? - Spend the next 4 weeks trying to design a vacuum cleaner that does it all by itself, then praying someone else does it because I have no idea…Not long now.
Orphaned and have to live with Nana and Grandad?- Make my swimming career number 1. Nothing else matters. I train 3 mornings, 5 nights and in the school gym at lunchtimes. I run or pace walk everywhere. Not long now.
Once I ran the orbiter route (which is a green bus that goes around Christchurch) to swimming training…just to get more ‘fitness’ in. It takes 47minutes on the bus, so you can just imagine how long it took for me to run with all my school, swimming and P.E gear flopping all over the place. I arrived at swimming training an hour and a half late, feet bleeding from my brown Mary Jane Mc kinlays and still had 15mins of the session left.
Bonus.
However, my coach told me to go home and my heart sunk. I missed the session, as well being perplexed that he wasn’t impressed I had run all that way to swimming.
Going forward, I took the bus but challenged myself to have a constant downward force into the ground so my legs were engaged the whole time. If I couldn’t build fitness…I would build strength.
Getting to the olympics was my ticket out, and no-one was going to stop me. I dreamed about it constantly. One of my teachers even wrote “If Sarah put in a quarter of the amount of effort she put into swimming, her test scores would be through the roof”
Of course, this routine, coupled with Waterpolo, Lifesaving, Ballet and Jazz was not sustainable and did not result in me going to the Olympics (to my 16 year old self’s complete bewilderment). It resulted in me developing severe body dismporphia, burn out, migraines and random passing out that no-one could explain. Of course…none of this was diagnosed at the time and I was lead to believe that I just “didn’t have what it takes”.
I never officially ‘quit’ swimming. I just didn’t show up one day and no-one said anything about it. So I kept not going and that’s how it ended. What happens next is a story for another time, or maybe even it’s own book, but all you need to know for now is my life went downhill fast from there and the one thing that kept me silent and able to rise up out of my body despite all its pain was…
“Not long now”
Without giving too much away, as it really isn’t everyday reading, I often wish I didn’t have that strategy as my ride or die. Because otherwise I might actually felt the pain which would have driven me to speak up, and maybe I wouldn’t have developed C-PTSD in the first place… and as an extension, the big C.
Cancer..if you didn’t make that connection.
Dr Gabor Mate says “what happens emotionally can have a significant impact on the nervous system, gut, heart, the immune system and hormones. Trauma can affect genetic functioning, more specifically how chromosomes function.”
He goes onto say that women with PSTD have double the risk of cancer, according to a Harvard study a few years ago.
So, my healing here is not just about the cancer, it is about my past and where I am still subconsciously unaware of where I am carrying and projecting it into my life.
And so far, the cancer has done exactly that. Given me a huge opportunity to heal the wounds from my past, as well as the space to do so.
The 6th round of treatment, the one where I fasted 3 days afterwards, was a complete turd rocket. The minute I stepped on the scales at the oncologists office and they read 78.6kg. “Surely, my weight hadn’t been that 3 weeks ago? Had it? Seems high…especially compared to when I was rowing. I was 68kg then right?” and down down down the voice spiraled.
My head started to spin so fast I had to sit down. Then I proceeded to drop straight down into a fawn response (that’s people pleasing on steroids). I was in and out of the consultation in 4 minutes…when it usually takes at least 20. I just answered, “No I’m fine” to everything.
As I sat with Sandy, waiting for the drugs to be administered, confusion ensued. I thought I had healed all this body stuff already. After all, carrying and giving birth to Emma and Hugo showed me how miraculous my body really was. It made complete sense to me that the patriarchy would be terrified of power like that and want us to be as small as possible. Control. Intellectually I understood this concept, but never really felt until giving birth. I was happy with how my body looked…right? and as I thought deeper, it was because breastfeeding, parenting, being sick and working out had kept my weight into what I classified as “acceptable”.
Which isn’t healing….it’s managing.
Over the 4 days, I fasted to control my weight, not to flush out all the shit that had just been pumped into my body. The pain of my mouth ulcers made it easy not to eat. My body checking was out of control. I didn’t want to leave the house, not because I was feeling crap from treatment, but because I didn’t want people to see how much weight I had put on.
As I type this, I see how ridiculous it is. But when you are in it…man. You are in it.
I went to therapy to see if I could shake myself out of it, to no avail. I was too far down the rabbit hole. Then something happened which I didn’t expect, and reinforces my belief that no matter what is happening, it is all happening for us.
There is a wonderful new sauna project in Napier that is next to the ocean. This is where you can do hot/cold exposure while bathing in the glory that is nature. Inside the wee sauna that morning, was a girl who showed me exactly what I needed to see.
Let me explain
This girl talked, or should I say, performed the entire session. About how successful her P.T business was, the inspirational things she would tell her clients, her weight and what she ate, her muscle/fat composition and training. All spoken from a place of pride, passion and projection.I noticed her need to control the room. Telling everyone how much time we had left until we were supposed to go in the ocean, coaching us through the heat with phrases like “not long now” (irony?) and telling us when the ‘steam part’ was happening and what it was.
As she kept talking, other parts of her story crept through that were the complete opposite of what her big story was telling. How she felt unsafe where she lived, the challenging relationship she had with her child's dad and his new wife, the car she had to buy…
I recognised my 14 year old self in her. The one that was desperate for love, to feel safe and to be in charge. And all of a sudden, like a key in a lock, it all clicked together.
A wave of relief swept over me because I realised, this younger version of myself was in charge. Trying to keep me safe any way it knew how. One of the strategies she had was to be hyper focused on what her body looked like, and to deny herself food.
The uncertainty and vulnerability of going through these treatments and not knowing if they will work. The guilt of not showing up for my businesses like I ‘should’ be. The feeling in the pit of my stomach that worries about how all of this is shaping my kids. All mirror the terror of my 14 year old, recently orphaned, terrified self.
Finally, I could see it for what it was and afterwards, I went home and made the best bagel I’ve ever made, and ate with zero guilt and 100% pleasure.
And so, where for others, cancer brings an opportunity to relish in the beauty and fragility of life, it continues to serve up bonus chances for me to heal.
I like to think of it as a rubber band, stretching me further and further back so the power in which I move forward with when the time is right is 10x what it used to be. I don’t want to “not long now” all the way to the end of my life. Because one day it will be, but not for a long time yet.
So when people say, “not long now”, I am reminded that the most important thing is to be all in. Let the moment engulf me so I can move through it, rather than hop over the top.
Afterall- We don’t wait for the sun to shine, learn how to dance in the rain.