It’s obvious that when the apocalypse comes, I will be one of the weak people. I will have no spin kicks with which to defend myself. I will have only the magic of my words and my understanding to protect me. I will be meat for the beast. (Unless I can engage him in conversation.) And I am fine with that. If my death at monstrous hands becomes imminent, I hope I can meet it in a lounge chair, sipping on a gin martini.
If you’re a breast cancer survivor and marijuana is legal where you are, I highly recommend it. And not just for the issues mentioned here. Weed has helped me keep the ongoing tragedy with which we are surrounded in perspective while amplifying the many sources of continuing joy in my life. If you’ve had cancer, you know joy is your best protection, perhaps your only protection, from the fear. The world is crazy. Life is scary. Sometimes it really helps to be high.
I am still here. I never left. I never called you the names you called me. I never laughed at your fear as you did mine. I know you were fooled by waving flags and sacred symbols. Those things can be manipulated to make you think your friends are your enemies. By people who don’t care about you.
She sent the black tree frog to sit in front of me. Like a miniature black hole, he absorbed anything negative that the light expelled. At the height of the storm, he glowed the deep electric purple of a blacklight. I could feel him eating all my fear. Then he hopped away.
It took a variety of personal tools for me to survive the idea of cancer. A cancer diagnosis is difficult to live with because it holds the possibility of your own death up to your face every day, without fail. After the initial shock and the sheer force of emotional will required to process it, you are faced with the slow torture of doubt, fear, and the relentless shadow of recurrence, even if you are currently cancer-free. But there is hope!
It’s a commitment I have to make. Mindfulness is a decision about what is important, a specificity of focus that is entirely under my control. One of the few things that responds directly to my will.
Zen Greenway 