Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? (Reverb 10 – Day 7 / Prompt Author: caligater)
I started 2010 with my thoughts on community.
I enjoy my friends individually, but I missed belonging to a circle of friends. It’s been a long time since I had local friends who were friends with each other. It’s even more complicated now that some have kids, and some don’t. Schedules don’t sync up, we go weeks without seeing each other, and I end up craving grownup conversation. I was looking for a community to join at the beginning of the year. Specifically, I was looking for a writers’ group.
Cancer made a difference.
I was having grownup conversations with my doctors that no one should have to have. But cancer also led me to a circle of women, all breast cancer survivors, who would become my friends. At least twice a month I connect with other women, many with babies and young children, who understand what I’m going through. This community is not only helping me through this difficult diagnosis, it is addressing issues that existed before I knew I had cancer.
As I look ahead to 2011
I plan to find more communities. I am going to renew my search for a good writers’ group; I need the writing practice, and I thoroughly enjoyed my previous experience belonging to a writers’ group.
But there is something else that has been weighing on my heart since my diagnosis. Cancer support groups tend to be divided up by diagnosis, and they tend to be exclusive. Every day I count myself fortunate that my cancer cells first attacked my breast. Breast cancer is a popular cause, and while there is still so much need, most support groups and services are exclusively dedicated to breast cancer survivors.
Sure, most women with cancer happen to have breast cancer, but that is no comfort for the 29-year-old single mom in a support group full of 60-year-old men because she has rectal cancer. Would you want to discuss your chemo induced menopause in that environment? She’s receiving many of the same chemo drugs, and the radiation differs just in location. That young woman has no access to the Komen funds that help pay the rent of breast cancer survivors, or the house keeping services for breast cancer survivors, or the circle of young moms battling breast cancer. Fundraisers for ‘Save the Ta-Tas,’ T.I.T.S. (Two in the Shirt), and any number of other tongue in cheek parties that combine boobs with booze fill our social calendars, but nobody wants to go to a save the rectums party. Just because the cancer cells first attacked her caboose instead of her headlights, this young woman is excluded from an amazing array of cancer coping resources. And she is not alone. Millions are in the same predicament.
So let’s bring those millions together.
Or, as far as the Seattle area is concerned, lets bring those hundreds together.
I want to create a community for young adults with cancer, especially mothers of young children, that is inclusive rather than exclusive.
And then I want to find a way to help get them the kind of amazing support, financial and otherwise, that I have received as a breast cancer survivor.
She had warm eyes and the sweetest smile, but it was her wit that took my breath away. You had to pay attention because her comments were quiet, under-the-breath, but they would make you snort-laugh and shoot your champagne out your nose.
To be honest, I didn’t know her very well, we only met a few times, yet here I sit with a hole in my heart. I wanted to know her better. I intended to get to know her, but we ran out of time, and now it will never happen.
Elizabeth belonged to my support group, the Young Survival Coalition, a circle of friends all battling breast cancer much too young. Daughters and grand daughters, sisters, friends, wives, and mothers of young children – a group of women I embrace, knowing full well that it will lead to my heart break again, and again, and again.
This is where it gets real. You might think losing my hair or the amputation of a breast would make it real, but those are such trivial things when death becomes an issue. I know that in the years to come, some of these women I hold so close to my heart will die. I know I might be one of them. There is so much love in this group, and so much understanding. These women comprehend the pain, the fatigue, the body image issues, the adjustment to life with this monster inside, and worst of all, the fear that someone else will end up raising your child. They live with it, too.
This is the first time since my diagnosis that someone I know died of breast cancer. I hope I never get used to it.
Godspeed E-beth, and love to your husband and children.
The moment Barack Obama officially became the President of the United States, the Presidential website, WhiteHouse.gov, switched over to President Obama’s website. The new website is built on a much more stable and transparent architecture, and this switch heralds another of many significant changes in the American Presidency: we now have a President that comprehends and values the Age of Information in which we are currently living.
Whether you love him or fear him, I encourage all of you to spend some time exploring the new WhiteHouse.gov website in addition to subscribing to and reading his blog. To those who are still afraid of President Obama because, as they say, “I don’t know anything about him” (or you, or the people you allow to influence you are making assumptions about him), let me recommend a couple of books penned by the President himself: The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father. You have the opportunity to get your information from the source, rather than the pundits. Please take advantage of that opportunity.
I am so excited about this new era of hope and information and transparency and integrity.
A part of me is so jealous of my friends who have flown, driven, biked, ran, crawled, whatever it took to get to Washington D.C. But then I think about how cold it is there, and I’ll be here in my jammies, eating breakfast, snuggled in a giant comforter, and able to run to my bathroom anytime I like without waiting in line. Inauguration day will be just as important whether I’m here or there.
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