Healing & the Way Ahead
Celebrating 5 years cancer free. And by celebrating, I mean claiming a brighter future for every complicated human who wants it.
Slow and steady wins the race, they say. I’m not sure who “they” are - but it has been said. And as a wounded healer in the midst of her own healing… a race of sorts against social norms and culture… it does feel quite true.
Slow and steady.
Slow and steady.
It’s the morning after a long day and a longer one is ahead of me. My body clings to the edge of what-is as I walk into the waiting room for my oncology appointment. The receptionist lets me know I will be seeing the PA today; my eyes well up. I’m going to see a PA for my five year check up. I slip nearer to the edge; I want to slip underneath the counter. Avoid this conversation and perhaps this next milestone too.
But there I am, in a room full of people. Twenty, perhaps? I breathe. Milestones can be miracles, I tell myself. I ask about the original doctor I made the appointment with... express my concerns to the woman behind the desk; question this assistant. I didn’t choose her. I don’t know her training. I flash back to the dozens of conversations I have had with Dr. R - who no longer sees patients as a surgeon. I flash even further back to the doctor I am supposed to see today. The one who diagnosed me with malignant melanoma in October 2017.
The conversation with the receptionist is brief. I smile for both of us. For her, so that she knows I am love and I bring peace. For me, so I remember I am love and I bring peace.
Within the hour, I have shared my story with Kim-the-PA and I am deemed cancer free for the fifth straight year. Countless appointments have occurred over the course of these five years. For stage 1A melanoma. For a body that found the melanoma before I did. For the same melanoma that took Deserae’s life. I make sure her story is known, so that Kim will be changed like I have.
And then I find out Kim has already been changed.
She has met the big M beast. She has lost someone, too.
As I write this, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s closer to a million thoughts that have run wild through my mind these last few years…
I continue to live precariously on the fine line between able and disabled. Survivor and thriver. Emotionally well and sometimes, undone. Nothing has changed since malignant melanoma. And, everything has changed. Post-cancer I find that my heart has been opened up to what I laid down somewhere along the way. Something that I needed to pick back up. Something I will continue to need to pick back up every single time I set it down…
And that something is peace.
I know I’m not alone here, either. Most days blessed be the peacemakers isn’t etched on the truck nor the screen in front of me, but instead some trivial slam of another human. A brother, sister, friend. If the world won’t gift us peace, my friend… we must, must, must gift it to ourselves.
This is how we forge the way ahead.
This is how we bring Heaven to earth.
Amen?
My Teacher Malignant Melanoma
My teacher MM taught me two things (and more) beloved…
The body keeps the score; and
often, we keep score against the body
My life was a constellation of chaos before melanoma. And at times it has been since melanoma, too. My biggest and best decision here has been to befriend my body and my mind. A body that holds all my truths. A mind that weaves together stories that might save another’s life; and sometimes, even my own.
Nonviolence begins in the body, mind, soul.
Peace doesn’t just change the world.
It changes us.
Blessed Be the Peacemakers
There, I’ve said it. We who make peace are blessed.
(Take that ridiculous bumper-sticker and meme folks.)
Also, peace isn’t about doing better. It’s not about winning. Slow and steady wins the race. Remember? And so, we let peacemaking become simply showing up better. It is allowing yourself to be gently pulled away from the lies of patriarchy, capitalism, past abuse, trauma and self-imposed expectation. For me, finding peace and making it means allowing melanoma (and a plethora of other dis-ease processes in my precious body) the space to evolve me; to transform my soul. Rewire how I do life. Perhaps, even refresh my relationship with the Peacemaker himself.
Jesus had this peacemaking thing down, folks.
I’ll end here… because your time is valuable and our days are short.
Now is a really good time to choose peace.
If peace eludes you, consider joining me for Season for Nonviolence. It’s a free 64-day journey into peacemaking highlighting the works and ways of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. (If you practice Lent, you can certainly incorporate this too.)
But no matter what, be certain - so very certain - that your approach is lifegiving. Slow and steady. For the way ahead is to give life, to share the light within, to become what we want to see in the world…
To show up whole.
With you always,
J. 🌻 @thebarefootpreacher
Feel free to share this Healing and the Way Ahead message with a friend. And through both of us, may these words meet the masses.
New here? Reclamation is a newsletter and conversation-starter. We are a safe space for caregivers of all kinds - from parents to pastors - to question complicated lives and also, claim & claim again supernatural peace here on earth.
P.S. If you are local, I’m teaching my favorite workshop in Mesa, AZ next week! Prepared Postpartum is all about the sacred expansion and growth that comes post-birth. We gather, learn and forge a way ahead of greater peace and ease together on Febuary 8th. If you’re not local, I also offer a 1:1 option for preparation. Because you’re worth it. We all are.