New York Rain

Pollyanna is struggling. I'm in New York, as in City, and the rain has not let up. A glance at the back page of the USA Today that sits at my hotel door every morning offers no hope for change before I get on the plane to come home. Lots of gray, taxi-prone puddles, inverted umbrellas, and crabby people. Last weekend, before my arrival, 80 degree sunshine planted hopes of spring in New Yorkers that were quickly dashed.

Where's a girl to turn for the silver lining?

Hmm...I'm writing a new entry in this blog. Does that count? Yes.
Hmm...I'm resting my feet that were seriously unhappy after lots of touring in Chicago. Does that count? Yes.
Hmm...I'll be especially happy to get home. Does that count? Yes.
Hmm...I'm spending far less money. Does that count. Yes.

So there.

Pollyanna lives, even as she dodges the raindrops.

Nothing's wasted

Take your blinders off. Don’t get too stuck looking in one direction. This economy is an opportunity. I know this because everything is...that’s the way God works. Nothing is wasted. The opportunity might be a financial/business one or maybe not. God’s not particularly interested in money for money sake.

What’s your lesson? What’s pushing your buttons? What is crying out to be healed?

Declaration

How does one write about matters of spirituality without sounding like an airhead? That's what I want.

No. That's not right. "Airhead" is a negative judgment. Let's try again...

How do I write about spirituality and be in service to a broader audience?

That's better.

Nuclear referral

I received the referral from Pacific Medical Group today. I’m now free to call Stanford Diagnostic Radiology & Nuclear and schedule an MRI - BOTH BREASTS, as they wrote under the innocuous header, “Description” -- as if that really describes anything.

I keep thinking I’m strong and ready, unafraid and sufficiently girded but I keep being wrong. I opened the familiar thin plain envelope with a nonchalant air, assuming it to be the harbinger of health they used to be. Ha! You know you’re in trouble when the word “NUCLEAR” is in bold and all caps.

My stomach dropped. One more gate in Ishtar’s descent to the underworld.

I'm going to take a bath. Let the hot water wash away my fear and leave me alone with my faith.

Tears spring eternal

Last night, J mentioned having a massage and I started crying. I received a kind email from a friend and started crying. I walked into work and started crying. The tears are the clear and clean kind that flow easily and without obvious provocation. They aren’t accompanied by sobs or sounds or preceded by any particular thought. They just come. As much as they worry me, they are also a relief, a release. They remind me of the tears I shed after my father died. Righteous, innocent and somehow appropriate.

But, these feel like more than grief. As a die hard advocate of being conscious and self-aware, I am uncomfortable not understanding either the exact source or the lessons behind my current bleakness. I am usually good at rising above the fray and gleaning insights but not this time. Joy seems far off. My mouth feels oddly comfortable in a downward cast. The oh-so-scary word ‘depression’ is fitting. Luckily, I take comfort in my knowledge, gleaned from graduate school and the DSM-V, that this is the situational variety, not the chronic.

I am also not a fool. I know my surgery, and the perpetual discomfort and malformation, is the headwaters of my current state of mind. The tears and waves of loss flow from that source but why and where are the streams headed? Intellectually, I understand that my surgery was significant. Kind hearted people, with their brows sympathetically furrowed, reassure me, “Of course you are having feeling, your body has just been assaulted.” I understand that but there is more to this. Mine are not tears of relief or grief or pain. They are messages of something more important that I can’t yet grasp. Or, maybe I’m full of shit and I’m searching for a deeper significance because that would make all this worth it.

This blog entry will not end with any great epiphany or wisdom. This morning I feel fresh out. This morning I just feel tired and confused. I want this all to be for something bigger than myself. I want it to lead to something worthwhile. I believe all things are for good and I look forward to the day that that good is revealed. I welcome the day I can look back on this and feel the gratitude. This morning I say that I am grateful but the words are more a request than a claiming. The words are more faith than felt. This morning, I’m not grateful but I know one day I will be. I hope that day comes soon.

Portal to darkness

Usually, I see the good in the bad. That’s Pollyanna’s job. But this week, the tables turned and I saw bad come from good. A fews days ago I grabbed a Post-it note and scribbled the following phrase:

Dripping from the source of life and nourishment come visions of pain and degradation beyond imaging.

And so has been my experience of late. My surgery has provided me a window into an ugly world I have never seen in such relief. Through this process—before the surgery and now as I assimilate my experience and tend to my wound—I was granted a glimpse into a world of unspeakable pain and suffering—and I’m not talking about my own.

Like a parted curtain, my incision revealed a chasm of darkness I was previously not ready to see. As I stood naked and shivering on my bathroom floor a week ago, horrid images of torture, enslavement, rape, genital mutilation, degradation, poverty, shame, disempowerment and so much more took form in my mind’s eye. The feelings came in heaving waves, ugly and dark and indistinct but, like my wound, unmistakably real. For just a moment my wound became a metaphoric portal to the realities of our world and I felt the anguish endured by millions of women around the world, past and present.

It changed me. The Pollyanna scales have tipped. I feel older. Wiser. More grounded in reality. I am, and always will be, a tree rooted in goodness. My trunk and limbs are nourished by optimism, strong and growing in the belief that life is good. But this week, I grew so my tallest branches reached high enough to catch sight of an imperfect, flawed world.

Luckily, the ground in which my trunk is rooted is solid and provides me everything I need to stand tall and not waver from what I know to be true.

Sports bra from hell

Ten days have passed since my surgery, most spent horizontal. Two tumors were removed, both benign. A sign of relief was heard ‘round the world but I am still measuring the days in 4 hour increments as directed by the pain medication. The hazy days of the opiate Lortab have been replaced by my new pal Advil. My head is clear but my Mind is still mending.

The sports bra from hell I was sheathed in by the surgical nurse has become my constant companion. Under other circumstances the zipper, hooks, Velcro and rubberized synthetic construction might be considered a torture device or, better still, a prop for the evil nurse/patient S and M porn flick. But for now, it has become my security blanket. Gravity and breasts are not friends under the best of circumstances, as any woman over 40 will tell you. For me, with cut muscles and ligaments, it keeps me safe from the inevitable jostling but, more importantly, from my own roaming eyes. I’m not yet ready to look. Not ready to survey the damage. I know there are many who have faced far worse, but I am here now with myself, not ready to look. Not yet.