This is what cancer does. It walks you into moving traffic, then quickly pulls you back from your collar at the last minute, but leaves you close to the near fatality long enough that you\u2019re never quite the same once back on the curb, safe in your driveway framed by the rose hedges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is what cancer does. It shakes you free of the ridiculous corset of perfectionism or concern about your career or whether we should paint the exterior house greige to maximize re-sale value or peacock green like the hippies who took over the Victorians in the 70s did instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is what cancer does. It reminds you that even tho you made your own baby food for your kids and were the only mom who didn\u2019t stock cookies or Doritos in the house, even tho you marched for reproductive rights and attended beach clean-ups on the weekend, you are not immune to disease or the upwind whiff of RoundUp. But it also reminds you that all those years in yoga, the breathwork, the Rumi poems recited at the end of class, the travels through India and Nepal with other night travelers, smoking Bedees and eating Betelnuts, have prepared you for getting the rug pulled out from under you, Bc Radical Acceptance knocked on the door that day you got your diagnosis and sat right down on the living room sofa, unannounced. And you obliged\u2013put up a steam kettle and offered it a mug of tea with your best raw honey bc that is what cancers ask of you\u2013it\u2019s the houseguest in Rumi poetry that trashes the furniture, raids your cupboards and dances on the dining room table, pulls up the roots in your budding vegetable garden. All the petty worries, and the big legit ones too, snake out the door and into the drain in the garden, and all you are left with is your new best friend, Cancer, who reaches out, arm stretched out, with a sheepish grin, asking you if you care to dance. And you nod, meet its hand on your shoulder, and begin to waltz with this strange new partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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