Wonder Woman

Hey y'all....it's me....

Since my last post, I have simply been living day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment.  I am working my way through round 2 and encouraged to say the side effects have been more manageable.  I am maintaining a routine for wellness, finding success in walking, country heat line dancing, restorative yoga, and planning on adding some light weight work this week.  We have been battling some financial beasts, frustrating at best, down right mind fucking at worst.  However, we are doing what we can, working through things as they come our way.  Sometimes you have to walk into the labyrinthine and duel with the demon and then causally stroll out again.  

I also want to say that for me, finding a voice, clearing my head in a blog or a quick Facebook post helps me swipe away the debris which is holding me down.  It may seem like ranting, venting, or whining but it is really healing.  I am so grateful for my layers and layers of branches on my tree of life.  There are some of you who are family, some who are as close as family, school friends, teachers, sports friends, work friends, life friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends and so on and so on.  Y'all are uniquely special to me and I know y'all are here for me in the power and capacity you are able to be in that moment and I am thankful and grateful for that.  I also know that even though I may not be singing my prayers on the rooftop, I know God can hear me every night when I pray and I am grateful and thankful for that.  Despite everything, I have much in life to be thankful and grateful for every day.

I feel as if I am in a state of constantly waiting....waiting for test results, waiting for doctor appointments, waiting to see if this treatment is working, waiting to feel better, waiting for a blue mood to pass, waiting for the storm to swirl away, waiting, waiting, waiting!  At one of my yoga classes, the instructor read a passage from a book about a woman who is always waiting for something to change or happen in her life and while she is waiting, the essence of being happy with the present is getting lost.  The concept resonated with me as I too, am always waiting but for me, there is this fear that if I wait too long, it will be too late. 

I have lived a very quiet life.  I married young, had my babies young, watched them grow, built a business with my husband young, ebbed and flowed through life from a young age through present.  I have never had big dreams and always felt that "my time" would come when all my babies are "off my dime" and then I could seek the things I have wanted to explore.  I wouldn't change one single moment of the life I have led.  I'm also going to show some vulnerability and say that I have never been the casual adventurer or true independent woman.  For many reasons, one being my vision impairment, I have always required what I lovingly refer to as "my seeing eye person"...someone who helps me when I am out exploring, helps me see the stairs ahead, helps me drive down the busy road, or just helps to make sure I don't fall flat on my face.  I envy women who freely can hop from one adventure to another all on their own.  I marvel at my daughters confidence, tacking new experiences, traveling, seeking amazing jobs, simply being strong, confident, independent women.  Look at me, next I am going to sing, "I am woman, hear me roar"...but honestly it would be a lie.  For me, it is more like I am woman, hear me new quietly.

With this in mind, I decided offhandedly, to make a "NOT BUCKET LIST, BUCKET LIST".  Why is the NOT in front of it, because the thought of creating a list of things to do before my time ends is frankly, depressing.  Then a friend reminded me we all should have a bucket list and I threw some superstition and caution to the wind and wrote down a few, dozen, or couple dozen things into a list.  Now for those of you who know me, a list is a sacred thing.  I love my lists, I keep them clean, and tidy, get a thrill at marking something off, am always adding to them, re writing, editing, etc.  This, John feels, I have in my favor because the way he thinks, I will be around for 20 years or more as I will never let my list become complete.  I kind of like his thinking.   

There are a few problems with this list.  First off, you know that song "I wish I had a Million Dollars"....well that says it all.  Which is why winning the lottery is on my NOT BUCKET LIST.  The second problem with this list is that mention of not being quite so independent....this reminds me of all the things I cannot do alone, of all the things I have not done in my life.  Honestly, I am probably one of the few people left in the world who doesn't have a passport, I have hardly traveled in the US let alone outside of it.  Today, I sought some independence however, my first solo attempt of knocking something off my NOT BUCKET LIST failed miserably as I never found the place I was looking for, ending up walking too many miles on my own, and being so mad, frustrated, and feeling sorry for myself that I didn't even revel in the success of the beauty of what I was doing.  Again, that concept of waiting, waiting, waiting.  

After my complete failure this morning, we then went to see Wonder Woman - hence the title of this blog.  It's taking a bit of a journey around the pond but I will eventually get to the heart of what is in my head.  I started to cry at one point during the movie, not because the movie is sad.  It is a pretty damn good movie and I am a HUGE closet wonder woman fan.  I think as a young girl I wanted to  either be Wonder Woman or a Pink Lady (from Grease).  Well, jokes on me because I sort of am a Pink Lady now.  Anyway, I digress.  During the movie, I was watching this amazing, beautiful, exotic woman battle gun fights, soldiers, and bombs.  She used arrows of fire, amazing strength and fighting skills, she could leap, fly, and take down anything in her path and at one point I thought "what if all those bullets were cancer cells, what if I was like Wonder Woman and could just fight and bulldoze the cancer fuckers out of my body and be immortal, an Amazonian Princess and just win this cancer battle for all of human kind"  I thought "what if my life could be like a movie and have a happy ending".  But as my mood then rapidly deflated and I am having a short lived blue mood I realized that is not going to happen.  No worries, I will kick my own ass tomorrow and snap the hell out of it -
imagine the bitch slap from Cher in Moonstruck.  

But my reality is sometimes heavy to hold as I am not Wonder Woman.  I cannot eradicate cancer from this earth.  I am waiting to see and experience this earthly world before....  I am not even a statistic.  There are estimated 155,000 woman with Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) in the US.  However those stats only count woman with MBC de Novo (that is MBC from onset), it does not include those of us who have MBC as a recurrence.  So tonight....I am a bit lost in cancer Purgatory.  I will stroll my way out again as I always do.  I will seek the humble warrior I felt inside me before and I will try again to go back to living day to day, hour to hour, moment to moment with the intention of experiencing something on my NOT BUCKET LIST soon.

Peace ✌
Jo

PS....I woke up today, line danced for 30 minutes and did 2 sets of biceps and triceps.  That should be the trick for today 💪💥👊