Two days ago was my dear friend Dee’s birthday – a woman who lives thousands of miles away, yet somehow still finds a way to be here for me at those moments when it’s most important.
Yesterday was Candice‘s birthday, the first birthday she didn’t live to see, and I’m still angry that she’s gone.
In twelve days my little girl turns five.
On April Fools Day, it will be the first anniversary of Michele‘s death; that still feels like the cruelest of cosmic jokes.
In two months, if I manage to get my act together and pass these classes, I will finally graduate with my bachelor’s degree. It took 25 years from the start of the degree, and I stuck with it through several levels of hell, and no small measure of high water. But I’m right here at the end of that road, dammit, and I’m going to finish it.
And today?
Today is my fourth cancerversary. It is the fourth anniversary of the day my world was turned upside-down. It is the anniversary of the first time I really had to grapple with my mortality, with the knowledge that I can’t control how much time I have left. I had to accept the fact that despite my infinite love for my daughter, I could not promise her that I would always be here for her. I had to imagine the possibility of her growing up without a mother.
It took a while for me to let go of the idea of getting back to normal – that doesn’t happen after cancer. Instead, I’m learning to dream new dreams, and take what happened to me and try to make the best of it. I could sit here and mope through the day, feeling sorry for myself, but I haven’t spent any of my cancerversaries that way yet. In fact, last year something magical happened.
Tonight, I will be meeting with other leaders of the local Young Survival Coalition to plan out ways we can help other young women with breast cancer through the year ahead.
Life keeps coming at me from a thousand different directions. It’s a maelstrom of joy and fear, comfort and pain, fun and hard work. It’s exhausting and overwhelming, and often moves me to tears. Maybe that’s how I know I’m really living.
I think sometimes fierce gets a glamorous image. It’s easy to think of finish lines, mountain tops, and triumphs when we think of the word fierce – but fierce isn’t the finish, it’s how you got there. Fierce is the long, lonely runs in the rain, months, even years before the starting line.
Fierce is giving it your all, knowing there is no finish line. Do or die. For real.
Fierce is defiantly holding your baby after the mastectomy, against doctors orders.
Fierce is getting up in the middle of the night to change your infant’s diaper as your body reels from the chemo induced nausea and fatigue.
Fierce is getting up the next morning to go back for another excruciating treatment. Day after day after day.
Fierce is not passive; fierce doesn’t have time for pity parties.
Fierce fights back.
Fierce isn’t pretty, but it’s beautiful.
Fierce is making difficult choices.
Fierce is finding the courage to have a difficult conversation.
Fierce is embracing your integrity, even when it makes you feel unloved.
Fierce is knowing who you are, and being that person the best you can.
Fierce keeps learning.
Fierce understands that sometimes learning means un-learning what is no longer true, or even more painful, what you finally understand was never true.
Fierce is understanding that cancer is not a shortcut to courage, or wisdom, or strength. You still have to do the work to gain and keep those qualities.
You don’t have to have cancer to be fierce.
You don’t have to have cancer to practice courage, or wisdom, or strength.
You have a choice.
You can be fierce.
How are you fierce?
…
This piece was written as part of the Clever Girls’ Collective Traveling Blue Wig Project. This project supports the Fierce Fund which will donate $20,000 this year to organizations that help girls and women. Check out their site and help select the Fierce Fund grant winner.
Judy Schwartz Haley is a mother, wife, student, writer, photographer, and breast cancer survivor. If you really want to see her get fierce, try to take her chocolate.
I learned the hard way that the financial implications of cancer extend well beyond just the cost of medical care. It’s a far too frequent story where jobs are lost, or the hours worked drop below the minimum to maintain health insurance – or pay the rent.
The cost of babysitters alone could bankrupt a family, and then there’s all those extra meals eaten out, and meal delivery services on speed dial, because mama just didn’t have the strength to prepare dinner. Again.
And don’t even ask about the condition of the house. At a time when cleanliness is more important than ever, the strength to tackle that job is tied up in continuing the cycle of breath entering and exiting the body in a timely manner. It’s really hard to scrub toilets while you’re going through chemo.
Paying it forward
Debbie Cantwell was blessed with a strong support system while she was going through her own breast cancer battle, so she decided to pay it forward. From her kitchen table, and armed with determination and inspiration, Debbie started a non-profit organization, the Pink Daisy Project, to help other young women with breast cancer who were struggling and didn’t have the same kind of strong support system to call on.
This is a very small scale non-profit, and the grants to these young women with breast cancer are quite small as well, a few hundred dollars in gift cards or services. Just enough to turn the tide a bit, to get the momentum going again, a lift, a kindness, hope.
How the Pink Daisy Project helped me
The help I received from the Pink Daisy Project while I was going through treatment did all those things for me. I could buy diapers for my baby, and put gas in the car, but it did something more than that, too. By lifting one of my burdens, the gift lifted my spirits. I felt less weighed down. It put a little bit of bounce in my step, my energy level actually improved. Kindness has huge implications in the world.
Every once in a while, I take advantage of the fact that my blog has an audience to tell people about the good work that the Pink Daisy Project is doing. I want to shout it from the rooftops.
But, at a moment like this, more importantly, I want people to consider giving. Financially, times are tough for most of us right now, and that translates into fewer and smaller donations than usual. Of course, the need remains, and applications for assistance keep coming in.
I think its important to note that the money is not just sent out to just anyone. There is an application process, and the stories are vetted. These are amazing, resilient women, who found the strength to ask for help when it became necessary. These are women who take care of others, but at this moment, need some care taking from others. Here is another family that the Pink Daisy Project helped.
This is Shelly and her son:
My name is Shelly and I’m a young breast cancer survivor.
During treatments and surgeries my marriage fell apart, I was unable to work and had another surgery in a week when me and my son had to leave an abusive life. I was terrified!
School was getting ready to start and I couldn’t even get pencils for my son.
Pink Daisy stepped into my life at that point, I received gift cards for Kroger , with those I was able to get all the supplies my son needed! I was also given food cards that helped us to have what little money I had go towards getting utilities turned on and food in our stomachs.
I cried with relief to be able to do these things, my son had already been thru so much, watching me go thru everything with treatments, and lost his world when we had to leave. And PDP helped me help my son thru the most difficult time we ever faced.
Me and my son have plans to help pay this gift forward so other families in same positions can get the help and lifeline Pink Daisy gives! We thank Pink Daisy and all the supporters of this wonderful group with all our hearts!
Please consider giving, or at least sharing this story.
I spent the night in the ER last week. I wasn’t a big deal, just a recurring issue that’s a side-effect of a side-effect of my cancer treatment. It’s starting to feel a little routine.
This time it was a little different, though.
For one thing, the hospital was over-full. This hospital that I usually rave about, got less than high marks from me this time. When I was finally admitted, they put me in the over-flow of the patient over-flow area: pre-op. That was all fine and dandy from 2am when I finally got the room, till 5am when the surgical patients started showing up. Then the constant noise, the fact that the kitchen could never seem to find me to deliver my meals, the lack of a phone (and my cell phone died), the lack of a tv, and the persistent sound of various people vomiting started to get to me. A little. Maybe a lot. But, I was checked out by that evening, so I didn’t have to deal with it for more than a day. And I’m just fine now.
But, I diverted my attention by focusing on something else. It was four years to the day from the night my daughter was born. I went in to the ER just about the same time I arrived at this same hospital four years earlier. With no tv, and plenty of chaos to try to block out of my awareness, I passed the time remembering my daughter’s birth. What an amazing experience. And, I was released from the hospital in time to give my newly-minted 4-year-old a big hug on her birthday.
I’ve spent the rest of the week reminiscing about the past four years with my little girl, and I came across this picture of her baby shark costume from her first Halloween.
Hmmm… maybe this sheds a little light on her current shark obsession. 🙂
You can learn more about my cancer story here:
We spent the sunny Saturday afternoon traipsing around town, when my daughter was inspired into her own impromptu dance recital in front of this mural.
She had no idea that it was the third anniversary of the day my life was turned upside down – the cancer diagnosis. She just grabbed the moment and savored it, so I did as well.
I find it interesting how this anniversary hits me differently each year. Last year, I forgot entirely. But then, I was in a good place.
This year I’ve had a tougher time, and the cancer is on my mind much more regularly. My recent reconstruction surgery plays into that, of course, and my Granny died, and another dear friend just went into hospice.
Cancer does funny things to our heads. A friend, also a survivor, just noted the milestone of experiencing a symptom and not automatically thinking cancer first. We can be fine one day, and the next, unable to ignore the way cancer messed with every single aspect of our lives, from finances and credit ratings and careers, to simple daily frustrations like the day you don’t have the strength to get up and parent a child with patience and presence, and have to yell from the couch across the room. I never wanted to be that mom.
But I’m getting stronger again, and when my strength improves, my attitude does as well.
A little extra daylight may just help a bit, too.
It helps to spend my days with a bouncy, talkative, 40-pound attitude adjuster.
And who could stay in a bad mood around spontaneous dancing like this?
CoffeeJitters is an affiliate to a number of sites and services. I do not endorse products I don't love. I may receive compensation if you purchase items from links on this website.
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
