Life altering changes don’t have to include a health crisis or divorce or anything as dramatic as that. Sometimes it comes in “aha moments,” or comes days or weeks later in dreams or meditations. How many times have we heard “it happened for a reason?” I want to slap someone every time I hear that. Yes, I KNOW there is a reason for everything that happens to us. Sometimes, we need time to digest it for ourselves and come to that conclusion.
That is what happened 3 years ago. We all have many life altering changes in our lifetimes. That is how we grow and learn (hopefully!)
Actually, it began on Easter Day 2007 when my mother passed away. Ours was a difficult relationship. My father had passed 2 years earlier. Regardless of the quality of the relationship, when a child loses both parents, they also lose a part of their identity.
I had just opened my store and was reeling from that change and now I was wondering who I was anymore, what was my place in this world. I was no longer daughter. I no longer identified with that turmoil. As good as it was to be free of the stress of caring for very sick parents; I had done it for so long and was uncomfortable with that empty space.
The rest of the year was spent fighting with my family over wills and finances and who gets what. Where I thought we couldn’t be any father apart from each other as a family, this drove a permanent wedge between us. So now I was no longer daughter AND sister. It was very disconcerting and lonely.
That November, I was invited to skate with local woman. Roller Derby for “older” women! I dove in feet first and found solace in the newness of it all. Sure we had great times together, but I never considered these ladies anything but recreational pals.
Later that year, I was held up in my store, tied up and robbed. I thought, “Now what! How much more crap can I deal with? When will this black cloud that is living over my head cease and desist?” My husband was out of town but he called a friend who to my surprise, ran over. I asked her why she was here. I was okay. I had the police here. I usually handled my problems by myself; never thought to involve anyone else. I was taught that you never let “outsiders” into your life or issues. But she was there. She didn’t want anything. She was there for ME.
Within hours of the robbery, I had phone calls, emails and visits by my derby gals. All wanting to know if I was okay, how can they help, etc. One gal pulled together the derby girls and arrived at my store a few nights later to “purge” the store and me of the bad dude’s vibes; a “clearing” of sorts. I hadn’t told anyone what had happened. I hadn’t asked for any help.
Suddenly, I realized that this bad guy had been a blessing in disguise, a wake up call. I DID have an identity. I was a friend. I was loved and cared for. I had friends. This was now my new family, my new life. I actually mattered. It took an abrupt and violent act to turn my head, give me an attitude adjustment, and wake me up to a new way of thinking.
So what do you do with this sudden change? How am I responsible to it? I know I cannot take it for granted. It closed the door to the past. No – it slammed the door shut to what came before and opened a new door. No – several new doors.
I am blessed with this understanding, with my friends, with my new family, with my life. I never acknowledged this prior to this moment. And I will continue to receive my blessings so that I may in turn bestow those same blessings on to those that I come in contact with; be it those I will continue to know, or just those who come into my life for a moment and then are gone. To be present to me and to those around me. I understand that now.
I no longer live in the past or try to understand it. It happened “for a reason”. There it is again – that phrase. Only now I understand that reason. And all reasons that come after…
Goddess Oya - Change and Transformation
The StoryTender welcomes Carol's story this month!
Today is a Good Day
My name is Carol and I am on a detour from “normal” life and becoming the woman I was always meant to be. – strong, balanced, unencumbered by life’s insignificant petty details, alive. Today is a good day. Cancer stepped into my life a year ago in the form of stage 4 squamous, not squaymous cell carcinoma. The #4 attached to the diagnosis means no cure. It was mid Jan 2010 - I knew something wasn’t right. I was preparing to audition for the musical Chicago; getting back in shape. I was doing energy healing - started to get rid of bad foods, coffee. But the pain in my hip told me something was wrong. This isn’t my normal for dance preparation.I thought it might be bone cancer after doing some research – just a hunch. My Gut sense? Something wasn’t right being so in tune with my body.
I was Diagnosed May 5 – my husband Bill’s birthday – there was a 5 “ mass in my hip a Biopsy said cancer. They think I’ve had the cancer for years. More scans revealed it had spread to my lungs. I do not have breast cancer. No, no, I am more special than that. I have a rare cancer and when it metastasizes, there is no research for it. They have no drugs that they know for sure will work. It is like a clinical trial I am involved in on a daily basis.They think the drugs they chose might work. They “think”.
I started treatment May 10. I still felt ok at the start of treatment. Gotta do what I gotta do. I’ve had challenges before so I had to do this. Doctors said this will be running a marathon like you’ve never run before. Of course, I had never run a marathon so what did I know? I had done dance rehearsals though. I was riding with it and trusting in it. I had to trust at this point. I’m trying not to think too much about what stage 4 means. The recovery/mortality rate for my cancer is 70-80%. When it metastasize, it goes down to 15% survival rate. I can’t think about that. I would do the chemo – 6 rounds, and radiation. I was just plugging along. First I told myself I will be well by Sept 6. We are doing this to get this gone, right? Doctors would say, oh, yes. Then Getter gone I say! Chemo and radiation together is like someone came up and kicked you in the stomach and hit you in the head and then said, Oh get up, lady, stand up straight! I wasn’t taking care of myself and the last few days of treatment I was begging to be put in the hospital. And they said, no, lady, you’re not sick enough! What???? Not sick enough??? What do you call this??? Last September , a CAT scan showed the tumors had begun to grown again. The chemo was no longer working – the cancer had become resistant. I was thinking this is a new reality. November 2010 – I have a new doctor. He said, this is not curable. We want to get this small and manageable. I had always kept the thought in my head that no one knows the outcome of this. If I have to choose something to hang onto, then I choose to think this: “Well you don’t know and I don’t know so I could be one of those folks that don’t make it and I can also be one of those miracle kids that you read about in the books. Where you go in and you’ve done your dietary changes and you’ve done your holistic work and you go back in to the doctor and they say, “Hey, where did it go?” Its not a given but that thought helps me plug along. I am a dancer. The thought of doing theatre is gone now. How can I go thru rehearsals and then tech week? I didn’t know who I was anymore. Ok, if this is my life now then who am I? If this is who I’m going to be, what is that? I didn’t like what I thought I was going to have to be. I’m a doer so I’m constantly bombarding myself with, “do a little gardening but not too much”, and friends and family were saying “keep boundaries” and “make sure you don’t do this or that.” Everything had a break on it. I heeded everyone’s warnings and the depression hit in February 2011, almost a year later. Oh my God, this may be what my life is going to be like. No cure, maintain the cancer at a manageable level which means regular chemo treatments. I can’t go back to my regular job – have to do part time and negotiate that and hope to god they keep me. The possibility of finality was real. Last year I never thought I would die. Not me. I’m not supposed to die. I’m not old. I’m definitely not physically done here but I didn’t feel well enough to do the mental work. Trying to figure out what to do to make my life feel more fulfilling. What new thing could I do? How could I get my head around any new thing? I didn’t have the mental capacity to do more than just stay alive. But in head, in my soul, I feel that I will out here gardening when I’m 85. I have this thing in my head about 85 for some reason. That I will be functioning at that age, that I will go out strong like that. I never thought I would actually die. But I couldn’t pull myself out of this depression. I needed help. I didn’t want to die but I had no control over anything. I couldn’t’ heal without healing other areas of my life I had not made any real changes yet. The fear hit me. It became a job to be healthy and that added to the depression. Okay, I can have this be my life – I work 4 hours a day at a job I like and the rest of the time I work on keeping my body from dying. I remember looking at my husband and saying, I don’t want this life and I might as well let it be and be gone. To me, this is not living. I had to make my body as strong as I can so I can fight this. I have kicked it now into high gear. The transformation came at a friend’s house one afternoon in the form of a women’s get together to share stories for research on an upcoming project. I felt even that morning, “that if this is my life, I have to make a choice here if I want to continue fighting this thing or not. This isn’t life for me. I’m not one of those people who can fight it from a wheelchair, that isn’t me. I was crying and talking to a friend about it telling her I don’t know who I am; I can’t do any of my old things. I was feeling very alone and isolated. I have an issue of being a burden to people. I had to be careful of germs during certain parts of treatment but wearing a mask says cancer to me. I didn’t like owning that. This whole thing was not okay with me. My friend had said to me a few times and it clicked that morning, “you know, Carol, you’re never going to get better until you go and do some of these things.” I hung up the phone and decided to go. I showered, put on something other than my dumpy tee shirt and shorts. I even put on makeup. While I was driving over, I was stopped at a light and saw the license plate of car in front of me and it said, Choose Life. I thought that was kind of interesting. And I looked at it again when he pulled away. Choose Life. Okay, that was a message. That was my second little kick of the day after the call earlier. I arrived at the get together with that, oh, I’m not feeling well look and a good friend’s look on her face was saying, “Oh, knock it off, Carol, you’ll get thru it.” I was like, fuck you! And then I started to get messages from the women there. They were not necessarily directed to anything I was going through. I remember one woman saying sometimes the universe throws you a challenge now and then. That challenge is making us focus on whatever it is right now. And that’s okay. That’s the place you’re supposed to be at this juncture in life. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing right now. I guess I needed that permission to admit that this is crap, I don’t like being here, but that is okay too. I heard temporary in that message. You’re only given this moment, this day. You don’t know what tomorrow will bring. You need to be present now. This is all I have right now, this challenge, and for the most part, everything is positive in my life. I got home and felt more at peace. I wasn’t in the deep hole I was in. From that moment forward, you’re seeing that change. I don’t have as much yucky as before. I joined a health club for cancer folks. This is the new me. I’m hopeful. I can accept the down days. I don’t feel sexy yet... I was never a babe so being bald doesn’t bother me. Some of my wigs are cute, so I can still be cute. I'm figuring out what my new sexy is. I feel I can now look to the future. I finally saw the radiation treatment area that had been mapped out for me. It is the state of Wisconsin. I would have liked Italy, buta no, that isa nota gonna happen! I gave up trying to control the cancer. I can affect and impact it, but I can’t control it. I’m not doing this to save my life anymore. I am doing this because right now it makes me feel alive and healthy and good and when I can feel that way, I like me. I don’t know if I have tomorrow. I can get in my car and at the end of the block someone could cream into me and kill me. And I kind of laugh because, see, you have no control honey. I don’t know when my death is going to be. But my whole life is the happiest most beautiful most peaceful place it can be. I live on the earth and I understand it’s not always going to be this way. That won’t be every moment. So until I’m at a point, if I’m ever at a point with this illness that we do know what the outcomes gonna be, that is has taken over so much, that will be another place where adjustment happens. One step at a time. One day at a time. One moment and then the next. Cancer has made me have to choose to matter, Letting people take care of you is a difficult thing for a doer, a pathological independent person. My not mattering enough allowed me to never truly own my accomplishments. If I hadn’t gotten sick, I would have gone to my death bed without mattering to me. When you live a life that you are really participating IN, you can be at the pearly gates and reflect on the fullness in you, a filling up in you. I don’t want to die now. I feel a future. I still have a voice out there and want to experience a few more momentous things. I can say at the end of each day, wow , I lived that day. And it was glorious. I’m just starting to live my life. I wanna fly now. If you haven’t traveled with me and learned this by now, then you better catch up! But right now, the flowers need watering and the veggies need picking. Today is a good day.
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Sometimes the pain is remembered deep within in your heart and a wave of longing, loss, and abandonment ripples through your body with such power that it stops you in your tracks.
It is at that moment when I wonder if it’s not just me powering those thoughts. Can two people simultaneously think of the other and create this intensity for just a brief moment?
How does that moment pop into your ordinary day without some flicker of heat from another source? A source that was deep and wide as a gorge, a raging river of intensity carrying the two of you along for as long as it did.
Where does that energy go once the light has been extinguished and it no longer flows between the two of you? It is fact that energy is created and never destroyed. So where does it go?
Is it possible for those two magnetic sources to find each other now and then in this wide universe, and create that spark again for just a moment….as they bump off one another? As we meet again out there, it sends waves of you to the forefront of my mind, flooding it with memories and intense desire that confuses and wells up in my throat and eyes.
The memories mingle a bit, dance for a short moment, remembering the anticipation of earlier years. And I whisper ….if only…..
And then a tear falls, I wipe my nose, and go back to making dinner for my son’s birthday party.
-- Eden Novak, 3/12/11