Tag: transformation

FINAL ROUND

by Maasaisis

I’ve just completed my 8th and final round of chemo, and I didn’t ring the bell.

I actually had to think about it and even ask for guidance. What does it mean to ring the bell? It means I achieved something difficult. I followed through. It is the sound of, “I did it!”

To tell you the truth, chemo was a walk in the park compared to the intense protocols I put myself through. I probably would have rung the bell at that time—for being diligent, determined, and disciplined. But I’m not who I used to be. There is a quiet part of me wanting to turn toward an inquiry: What is this for?

It’s not that I want to downplay the act of completion with a celebratory ring for all to hear. I have witnessed enough people in the chemo lounge looking sick, tired, and withdrawn while we all face the uncertainties of being in that room. I get it. Healing can look like a step-by-step process, and to finish one process is worth celebrating. I remember how I hooted and hollered when my beloved friend finished her rounds. For her, she was done. She was moving into a future away from that room.

For me, part of me doesn’t want to declare completion when I still don’t know what comes next. I don’t want to claim something I still cannot know—the state of my body. Instead, I want to ring a bell only I can hear: the one that sounds when I recognize my true inheritance. I always have the opportunity to choose the domain of peace within my mind.

I believe I came to recognize that place during the rounds of treatment that required my energy, time, and commitment, and to value my own invulnerability. So I celebrate today in my quiet way, with a smiling heart and so much gratitude for the lovely doctors and nurses who helped me along the way. That is enough.

The accomplishment for me is to remain anchored in the safety of my true home, where I reside with God, even while the world tries to convince me otherwise. I keep having to remind myself that I am not separate from God. Perhaps this is the biggest lesson of all: I am not outside of Love, but part of it, and there I am always safe.

Whether I’m back in the chemo lounge, searching for my purpose, facing a crisis at home, or stuck in my familiar, fear-induced messy mind space, what I want to celebrate is my determination to find my way back to joy, regardless of what appears to be happening to me—even if only for an instant.

I’m also claiming that I am much more open to what is happening and what may happen at the level of my body. The next PET scan will tell me where I’m at, but the less I invest in my experience as being solely of my body, the less afraid I am.

The body is not where the mind resides. The mind has the potential to express our Spirit, an extension of Creation itself, or to experience itself as separate from it when we have forgotten who we are. Remembering this allows me to remain open to possibilities I may otherwise close myself off to. I know that the place to focus is on the healing of my mind. From there, time and time again, I am finding my way.

The life I led before prepared me, in a sense, for this. It fueled my search for purpose and deeper meaning, the things that lit up my spirit. Life with Lump led me into the darkest caverns in my mind, where fear mimicked the power of cancer cells—to seed, multiply, and take over.

I’m learning that the mind, like the ocean, can be both ominous at the surface and utterly still in its depths. If I keep trying to tread water at the surface, I will eventually tire out. If I remember that what I really am is the stillness that cannot be affected deep below, my life becomes less about my concerns of being flung around by every wave.

For me, my healing journey became my spiritual journey, and I am eternally grateful that I’m finding my way back to God through applying the teachings of the Course. It could be cancer. It could be a breakup, a natural disaster, loss, war… In our finite world, we are all running from the same seed of fear that fuels our personal hell. I’m not suggesting that we bypass our humanness, but I believe there is a choice to decide when we are ready to pass through it.

Perhaps our spirit is always calling us to inhabit our rightful state, and each and every one of us, at some level, is hearing that call and responding, consciously or unconsciously. Maybe our life circumstances are the catalysts that answer it. I believe there are many paths that all lead to the same changeless place, meeting us exactly where we are.

My personal curriculum is learning the real meaning of life—that it goes on even when the body eventually turns to dust. In the inner sanctum of what we really are, we are already whole, perfect, and healed for always. The more I inhabit that knowing, the more supported I feel navigating the surface stuff. There is a way out of the hell we interpret our lives to be. Heaven is a state of mind, and it can only be entered through there.

I needed to go all the way to the top to understand my original design. In doing so, I restored my relationship with my Maker and discovered that the power of this Divine relationship is ignited when I choose to be in relationship with it. I’m awakening an ancient memory of what is unalterable, with no conditions or compromises. It is available to us all. It reminds me that we are of the same, that suffering is where the waves are crashing on the surface, but we are also safe in the nature of what we really are. That is the paradox of being here. We can hold both. We hold the key to recognize that the door has always been open, and we don’t have to die to walk through it.

As a result, the relationships I care about most have healed, and the relationships I thought didn’t matter now matter to me.

I don’t have regrets. I look for cues for what is holding me back. When I’m afraid, I ask for help. I’m becoming more aware of how easily judgment can slip into even my attempts to be kind or loving, and how the same thought system that produces a subtle jab or gossip can, left unchecked, become something far more destructive. This horrified me at first, but now I counter it with correction as soon as I notice my error, which takes a great deal of forgiveness. I’m a work in progress, and perhaps my greatest lesson is to be patient and kind as I learn to undo the tendencies that need to be healed.

When I feel I need to defend my identity, my opinions, my body, my reputation, or my future, I have already accepted the belief that I am alone, separate from the Love that binds us, mortal, and vulnerable. The undoing of my defenses against the dangers of the world brings me home to Oneness and invulnerability.

I am no longer driven to find my grandiose purpose because I recognize that it happens every time I choose love over fear—through life circumstances and in relationships that contribute to the healing of the world.

Sometimes love asks me to stand up against injustice in worldly matters. This is where I know I need a lot of help—learning to decipher how to respond without reacting from defensiveness, anger, or retaliation. Not to attack back or fight, but to ask for the miracle to stand strong and serve everyone, even those causing the injustice. In the world of cause and effect, justice may still be served, but perhaps it can be done from a place of recognizing that even heinous acts arise from defending a false identity born of fear—the very same thought system that would have me believe I am a sick, vulnerable body.

I have become watchful, with a willingness to stop and question my motives for why I may be driven to do something. Even when I think I am being kind and loving, I’ve come to discover that my motivation can come from serving my ego—to feel special, to be appreciated, or to receive love in return.

I’m practicing that what I give is what I receive. If I have the awareness to take a sacred pause and follow the motive to its root, I can then ask how else I should respond. Often, I get the message to just wait. To not jump into rescue mode and let the “get things done and fix things” mode settle down.

I’ve been amazed at how solutions have come from a much deeper, more loving place than the surface fix I initially had in mind. Because as long as I see the problems of the world at face value, the solutions I come up with will only touch what shifts and changes like ocean waves.

LESSON: LIFE IS RETURNING HOME OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL WE STAY.

UNFORESEEN VISITOR

by Maasaisis

Lately, I’ve had several graphic dreams of giving birth. I wake up wondering what they’re trying to tell me. Maybe it’s about birthing something new—a sign of the life that’s been extended to me—or perhaps it’s my body speaking, mourning the loss of the monthly cycles that abruptly stopped over a year ago when I began hormone therapy. A rhythm that often synced with the full moon and had accompanied me since I was twelve.

I didn’t have the capacity at the time to make sacred the closing of my fertility. I skipped the slow transition and dropped straight into the volatile swings of menopause within a month of starting treatment. Not that I was planning on having another child at this stage of life, but it still felt too soon, too sudden, and too permanent. With my life on the line, it was a sacrifice I didn’t give much credit to—just something I let go of without a proper goodbye.

Life in survival mode barely registered the radical shift from mother to crone. I felt myself aging from the inside—losing weight rapidly, aching joints, thinning hair, a fading sex drive, and dry skin. I couldn’t tell whether it was my body under siege by cancer or the absence of the hormones that had kept me feeling bouncy and womanly. All of it took a back seat to the tremendous effort it took just to keep my mind from cracking under the relentless pain of my lump unraveling over those months.

With my monthly cycle dormant, the familiar waxing and waning of my internal rhythm has shifted into a new tide—one of unpredictable waves, where heat rises without warning and chills follow like a shadow.

My husband and I decided months ago that whatever sleep we could get in separate beds was far more valuable than insisting on sleeping together. At first, it was hard—after twenty-four years of sharing our bed and sleeping within arm’s reach. But now he can snore away without worrying about keeping me awake, and I can thrash around, kicking the blankets on and off, fiddling with the wireless fan all night long. It works for both of us—and yes, date nights still happen, even if I have to talk myself into it. I wasn’t about to let that spark die, even as my body smouldered quietly in the background—my sense of identity rebelling against the slow withdrawal of my sexual desire.

I stopped hormone therapy when my cancer shifted from HER2-negative and hormonally driven to HER2-positive and protein-driven—a mutation I believe was triggered by starving the cancer of its hormonal fuel. At forty-eight, it was unlikely I’d regain fertility, even seven months after stopping the hormone blockers. For someone who once relished deep, uninterrupted sleep and napped regularly, the hormonal upheaval and circadian disruption stole what had been my superpower: sleeping through just about anything. I even became an early riser—for the first time in my life.

Recently, I’ve turned a corner—sleeping better, feeling less discomfort, and no longer riding the thermal rollercoaster. I convinced myself that the initial storm of menopause had run its course, that I’d paid my dues and finally got the hang of being a crone. I even packed on some weight that, just a few months ago, felt impossible no matter how much I ate. I took it as evidence of my body returning to homeostasis—a healthier new normal.

Another vivid dream of blood between my legs—and today I finally understood: these dreams were heralds of a reckoning with what was lost. At first, I was baffled. Then I burst out laughing, holding the evidence on toilet paper, and announced to my family, ‘No way—I got my period!’ Suddenly it all made sense: the weight gain, the return of vitality, the longer nights of deep sleep, my tender breasts. My womb has resurrected to it’s normal function—and it’s shedding what’s left of my eggs! I’m giddy, even as the familiar cramping and bloating return—sensations I haven’t felt in so long. My body is staging its own comeback, offering me a gentler, more natural transition into cronehood—a redo of what was taken too soon.

I’m amazed by the intelligence of the body—how it can pick up where it left off, even after everything in between. I carry a map of scars, proof of my undoing and remaking. To reclaim what was lost feels like a quiet miracle. This return reaches far beyond a biological comeback—It’s a homecoming to myself, and a reminder that what was once lost can be found again.

LESSON: WHAT WAS LOST MAY RETURN IN ITS OWN MYSTERIOUS TIMING.






METAMORPHOSIS

by Maasaisis

My morning ritual involves cupping my right breast in hopes that one of these mornings Lump may have magically vacated the premises while I slept. Since my cherry-sized tumour had mutated into what felt like a chewed-up baseball, wasn’t it natural to assume that the reversal might be just as swift? Deciding to let the tumour finish its “program” came at the cost of setting off more programs within my chest wall, sternum, and liver. In my fragile state, I’m questioning everything and know nothing. Pain is a great motivator to accept any kind of help, even at the cost of ditching my values.

After a month and a half of treatment, the ball feels tighter, and perhaps even slightly smaller, though my optimism could be playing tricks on me. Doc says that we can anticipate changes happening on the inside that we can’t see, even if what we can see is doing nothing on the outside. I suppose if I have my rose-coloured glasses on, I can count myself lucky to have a visible barometer literally poking out of my boob. It’s the tip of the iceberg that’s ironically still on fire. Healing is slow going, like watching my hair grow.

I am stunned at the power of these little tablets. In just a few weeks, they ceased my rhythm of monthly bleeds and transformed me into a grovelling mess. My stoic strength has been replaced by mood swings that are unprecedented. I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m depressed, I’m okay… then I’m sad all over again, minute by minute, with no warning between one and the next. I’d never felt so emotionally volatile and unpredictable in all my life. I’ve been crying for no good reason, tears welling up over just about anything. Maybe the dam that’s been held up for so long has finally broken.

It’s only in looking back from where I am now that I can accept that denial can look a lot like optimism. During the months when my tumour supersized, I gave myself every reason not to worry. To stay on course, to let it finish what it was doing so it wouldn’t come back. I was convinced I was in the “healing phase,” as GNM would put it, and that it would break down once it stopped. I went all in, even seeing the alarming rate of growth as evidence to just stay the course, until I actually thought I might not survive the healing crisis. I knew that healing involved pain, but never did I think it might peak to a level where it became a real threat to my life.

I’m suspended in space—between who I was and who I am becoming. There is some kind of slow metamorphosis underway, yet it’s impossible to know what’s taking shape. Is it necessary to change who I am in order to heal from this disease? Vulnerability has given me the gift of a much humbler approach. I get the sense that this is my learning now—that somehow I’m growing even while my values and strengths are being stripped away.

Creativity is my compass. Through art and words, I’m making some kind of meaningful artifact of this time of morphing. It’s a place to direct my energy other than focusing on what my body is doing or not doing. This refuge can be elusive at times, yet it often reveals itself in surprising ways, giving me clues to where I am. I suppose this is how I’m getting to know myself in different ways than before.

My energy comes and goes. When I feel it coming, I have the urge to take off. I suppose that is why they call it fight or flight. Since the fight is gone, I want to flee. Maybe what I really needed to do was go on a pilgrimage. Beyond the anchor of my physical limitations that keep me from leaping into this fantasy, there is a wise voice telling me to stay. It reminds me that the pilgrimage has already been well underway, that the destination remains unknown, and that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

LESSON: SOMETIMES THE PILGRIMAGE IS TO STAY.