Dear Frances

We were never on even ground were we? There was always some shade of fear or pain or both that kept us stumbling and falling away from each other. This morning as I lay here now in ripeness of years that were yours, your memory wraps me in a blanket of salty sweetness that I am grateful to feel.

Sitting between your knees as you oiled my scalp and braided my hair on those Ohio summer afternoons stays with me. You were the one who told me that bees made honey from clover. You told me the name of the Mourning Dove, the Sparrow and the Red Bird. 

You gave me my life long love of words, books, and learning. You taught me that there is more to life even when you don't have money for new shoes.

You showed me elegance and grace with your pearls and Shalimar worn only for the most important occasions. You taught me how to navigate a world that is not a friend to little Black girls and I am here and still standing.

I am here and the world is good and I am still your daughter. I miss you everyday since you passed. I love you Momma. Happy Mother's Day.

Begin Again

Treatment for cancer was beat down hard on all of me, and my hair did suffer. As an extension of my spirit, it showed to the outside world a glimpse of what Taxol, Adriamycin and Cytoxan were doing to me. As my hair weakened and fell out my  7-year locs began to pull on my tender scalp. The pain became unbearable and I accepted that it was time to let my locs go. Almost a year later I have not much more than an inch of hair all around.

My locs were healing and strengthening for me. I felt more me with them. It is time to begin again that journey. I went to a local hair salon and let a young brother with magnificent locs twist my hair.

This is how they look after sleeping with a cotton scarf on my head last night.



 

 

It will take time and my locs may not be like they were before. That is ok. For inspiration this morning I played India Arie's video I Am Not My Hair

 

 





 



She says,

"I am not my hair

I am not this skin

I am not your expectations

I am not my hair

I am not this skin

I am the soul that lives within"

 

 

Indeed...and I choose to let my hair reflect my soul. I am more than my hair, yet my hair can reflect how I am feeling. It is a barometer for my spirit.

 

 









Allowing

Healing is a process. Healing is continuous. Healing washes the spirit in waves much like the tide rises, sometimes unperceptively but always in motion in and out, advancing and receding only to return again.

In a few months, I will be 1 year away from my last treatments for Breast Cancer. I have closed down my HelpingHands website. I am seeing the oncologist and surgeon every three months; I see the radiation oncologist every six months. I've done away with the half dozen nausea medications I rotated through for months and weaned away from the Percocet and Vicodin. My hair is very slowly returning and feels like fragile baby hair thin and frail.

I have been treated and tracked from the realm of cancer patient to cancer survivor. I am still learning what that means. One thing I've discovered is that I have not "recovered" all that I was before cancer. Deep fatigue, muscle and bone aches, memory loss and slowness have continued to be present and relentless. I have developed scarring in my lungs and other late effects of the treatment that have a serious impact on my ability to function. I'm angry and frustrated at not being more physically well than I am. I know that I am not alone. Despite the doctors' pronouncements that I'm cured and should be feeling so much better--I'm not. I am out of synch, out of balance with my body and my spirit. The treatment took its toll and I am coming to know and accept that wellness and balance will be the work of my life from this point forward.

Western Medicine treats. It is not concerned with healing. From etymonline:

"restoration to health," Old English hæling; see heal. Figurative sense of "restoration of wholeness" is from early 13c.; meaning "touch that cures" is from 1670s.

By force and by poison cancer has been torn from my breast and my body. Blood was drawn and tested and found to be free of malignancy. Yet, I am not restored to wholeness, nor have I yet to receive the touch that cures. The year BC blocked me from my spiritual practice, isolated me from the physical ability to engaged in those pursuits that have  sustained me, kept me balanced, whole, and in harmony with my life in this body. I have resisted the truth that healing/balance is now the work of my life. I had been on a trajectory that had graduate school and work at the center of my life. Though the work I wanted to do was good work, work that would help others, it was still about what I could accomplish more than it was about who I am. Now who I am has changed and that is as it should be. As a human I do not want to change. As a spiritual being change is a part of my existence. And once more, I have no map or guide book to navigate the passage I must travel.

Once more I find myself in this place of unknowing; I am walking with faith toward gnosis. It has been and continues to be a mostly solitary journey for me. By necessity I have withdrawn from connections to people and things that are not useful now. I keep to my partners and family and one special friend and guide who has been with me since the beginning of this journey in 2011. She gave me a new copy of Anita Moorjani's book, Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing , which I have been reading and meditating on.

My partners and I have moved from our small apartment to a lovely warm 3 bedroom house and have begun recovering the old garden and flower beds.  I finally have my girls happily living in their little green house in my backyard.

 

 

 

Each day I do something outside even if all I can do is sit in the sun. I try to practice patience with myself when I can catch myself in the act of self loathing for my perceived inadequacies both physical and emotional. As a Black Woman, I have been acculturated to a life of self denial, of self worth only in the light of what I could accomplish and achieve, because no matter what just me would never be enough.Cancer has taken all of that self from me. I am no longer able to keep house, cook, take care of everyone's needs as I did. I did an excellent job of hiding that self, that caretaker from everyone, especially myself. Having Breast Cancer has brought change and this opportunity for growth. Anita Moorjani describes her healing as a process of "allowing" rather than doing. Even though I am so filled with loss, grief, anger and frustration, I am also finding places of brief joy as I allow my own healing to unfold.

 







Searching for Holiness

 

“Consider the holiness of your hands. They are how you do your work on this earth; they are a microcosm of the hands of the Goddess, and can change the world as easily as hers can.”
― Dianne Sylvan, The Body Sacred

 

I don't know how much my hands can change the world, broken and halting as they are now. I can still make a lovely cup of tea, which I am sipping as I think through my plans to keep chickens and grow vegetables and herbs. I find myself continually re-evaulating my plans and scaling down activities because I did not reckon with the reality of my body. I had the energy to go to Home Depot to farm mats ( World of Warcraft term)  from scrap wood to build my own chicken house. I realized that getting the materials was an energy intensive work for me.

 

I never considered these things before Cancer. I just did what I wanted to do and if I was a little tired, I could cope and somehow my body would catch up to me. It doesn't work that way now. Now I have many days when I can make the bed, shower, and that is it.  The deep fatigue, aches and pains prevent me from doing much more than that. Now I am seeing that I have to gauge where I am physically each day and be content to do what I can. The day I ventured to Home Depot was precious good day when I could pick through the scrap wood for choice 1 x 3s and joke with the man who asked me, "What are you building, lady, a chicken house?" It was a day like I used to have before Cancer, a day when I felt there was limitless time and I could do whatever I needed to do for myself and for those I love. 

 

I got home and the plug was pulled from my energy pool. I grudgingly asked for help to unload the wood; I stubbornly tried to organize the garage, which looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Keep in mind we are only two weeks moved into this sweet home from our cramped and funky apartment. Instead of being grateful that I had someone to help me, I was angry that I could not do it all myself.

 

As I said, I am rethinking my plans, accepting that building a house for my chickens is not in my reach right now. Searching for affordable already constructed chicken houses,

 

I found this ad on Craigslist:

The Chicken Man

 

His coops are no nonsense, basic shelter and seem well put together. Aesthetically, they are not quite what I was hoping for but his prices are reasonable.  I've talked to the fellow who builds them and have plans to go see him in the morning. He seems to have a very big selection of chicks and hens to choose my ladies from and I'm hopeful that I'll at least find two or three little girls to bring home.

 

Then I found this ad:

Urban Chicken House

 

This is Exactly what I want, but it has no door on the pen area that will allow the girls to come out to forage during the day. I would think it will be simple to add one. I've contacted this builder and am waiting to hear back from him.

 

I have been working through this tangle of what used to be me and what is me now. Here is what I have come to know in this moment:
 

My life is still a blessed gift even now in all my body's imperfection, weakness, and awkwardness. I say Modupe Iyalode, I say Wado Creator. I am still here and I have so much to be grateful for. Help me to let go of useless anger. Help me to let go of stubbornness. Help me to let go of what no longer serves my work in this life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only a Bucket

“Some people try to change the world one life at a time. Others try to change the world one death at a time. And I try to change the world one bucket full of dirt at a time.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale

There are days when it's all I can do to find the dirt to put into the bucket. Each day I push through the downward pull to rise from bed and say, "Wado, Creator. I am grateful to be here." Did my ancestors beat back the muck of sadness? Did my grandmothers sift through medicinal plants and as I have sifted through pills? I can't imagine it. I see them tethered to the concerns of their communties, or the immediacy of preserving life--their own or someone else's. I don't know where this melancholy comes from and how it fits into the whole of who I am. I only know that I need to keep it in balance so that it is not the all of who I am.

Simple, small tasks, each day. Today it is another tutorial for SketchUp, a session on Luminosity, and a daily reading from A Cherokee Feast of Days. A warm cup of tea, a pair of soft slouchy socks. It is more than enough.

Chickens, Linkin Park, and Old Memories

Back in the 50's when I was growing up, I watched a lot of movies. They were always in black and white and the stars were actors who are long dead now. One that I was thinking of as I begin plans to build a chicken house in my backyard, is a comedy called The Egg and I. It was the story of a married couple who bought a chicken farm. My childhood neighbors next door were white folks--a single woman and her mother, who had a big section of their back yard dedicated to a chicken coup complete with a rooster who woke me every morning without fail until he sealed his doom by spurring Gertie's mother. The hens stopped laying for a couple of weeks after the blood bath.

I'm small time compared to the movie and my neighbor Gertie. I had a few banty hens, and a fat brown hen named Gladys back when I was married the first time.Gladys was more pet than egg layer, hanging out and poking around the vegetable garden until a Great Horned owl carried off one evening. The other hens became food for the kits of the Mama Fox. I don't begrudge those fellow creatures. They gotta try to live just like I do.

As I write this I'm listening to Linkin Park, Numb , yes old women like Linkin Park, including the encore with Jay-Z. This anthem about crumbling under expectations and the rage felt to break free to be who we're meant to be is touching me today. This has been me and my expectations of me put on my life by me, my culture, lovers, partners, society, friends, children, strangers, but most of all me. I've been smothering myself trying to get back what is gone, what is no longer useful, what is no longer me. Inside is that voice screaming--I am numb!  I am done! Let go! Let go! I'm trying, Goddess knows I am.

Why chickens? Because it's something I know how to do that doesn't have to please anyone else. It's something that puts me in the now. I need the now because the future is not here yet, and the past is sucking my life away. I am sick of being mother, lover, friend, colleague, poet, drummer, dancer, spiritual elder, pick a label and insert. All I want, even if just for a little while is to simply be here now and know what that feels like once more.

So chickens... gotta start at the bottom--I know the bottom. This is my back yard now, bare and waiting... here is where I'm putting the chicken house that will be home to 2 hens. I've downloaded SketchUp and begun modifying a chicken house plan so that it fits my needs. I'll be posting progress as I go.

No grand plans, no grand accomplishments. Not living up to anyone's expectations for a while, not even my own. I don't even care whether this makes sense. I'm just going to walk forward in faith.

Learning the Dance

It's life long isn't it? I sit wondering why I don't know the answers to pain and challenge. I rage against change because it feels like all I do is fall from one change to the next with no room to just be.

The hardest part of having cancer has been letting go of the me that cancer took. I have mourned that loss in many ways and was mostly unaware that I was in a state of grief. As I break the surface of loss into the day once more I look down and see where I have been and the knowledge that I have been grieving sits in me like a child bathed and wrapped in clean fresh towels.

So much has happened in the past few months, to lay it out here would only make my head begin to spin with the enormity of all the changes. I won't be moving back to Florida, not anytime soon. My family and I have moved from our apartment to a house in Tacoma. This is where I am.

It would be nice if I could steer my life the way I steer a car through Tacoma's streets. Instead I follow this road that is my life to its next jumping off place. I pray for grace along the way, and I pray for the clarity to recognize it when it comes.

I keep remembering this quote, though I can't remember who said it:

"People who say they have all their shit together are usually standing in the middle of it at the time."

Today I look at my small backyard and I dream of chickens, sunflowers, and green beans climbing the trellis. It is enough to keep me here for now.