It's Day +970.
Do you know what that means? 30 days until we hit 10 x 100 days.
Each day of the first 100 days post transplant (attempt number 2), felt like 10 years. And yet now, here we are approaching 1000 days. Dare I say, there are a few days in a row we have lost count...and just loved and lived like regular people.
Updates: Wil has killed it in school lately. He worked his tail off spring semester and is now in summer session. Little by little he's chipping away at this new dream. Physically everything is pretty much status quo. I long for the day I can report his pain has lessened. But for now, we keep on going. He seems to learn to manage it. I let go a little more each day and let him. Truth be told he might say I'm a bit of a smother yet. But I swear it's out of love.
We had a fun Memorial weekend just hanging out in Fort Worth--Coyote Drive-in, Water Gardens, home with the niece and nephew.. I had to work on the actual day, but even just a moment here or there to unwind is a welcomed change from say, 400-970 days ago!.
For me, I've now started my journey into incorporating EMDR in my clinical practice. I love expanding and learning, and like Wil who had to push that aside, so did I during cancer. Having the energy and excitement to do something new? I wasnt sure I'd get here again.
I had an intensive first weekend of training in May, with many miles (years) to go yet for certification. But this approach really resonates with my soul. Tending to the emotional brain. Cleaning the wound. Letting the mind be and noticing it. I've often said chemo, and the likes of most medical intervention, doesn't actually heal anyone. It just wipes the slate clean to let the body have the chance to heal itself. Sets the stage for nature and body systems to repair. So you can imagine my soul shouting "yes" when I was smack dab in the middle of my training weekend and found that this concept is what carries one through, with gentle curiosity, the EMDR process.
We are meant to heal. We are meant for wholeness. All we need is the right environment and people to assist in cleaning out the wound, to let the scab form. The body can do what it was designed to do.
It was a really tiring, but good weekend. And the Universe had me in mind when a fellow soul sister happened to enroll, without either of us knowing, in the same training! I'd like to think it was not just coincidence, but more so another intervention, another kindness I needed.
Tonight I'll keep it brief. I had been half asleep, setting my alarm, checking social media, when I opened up the ihadcancer.com 2016 top blogs post. And there, a few blogs in, was our little old page. As a caregiver who often has just wrote, shut the laptop, and kept running on fumes, with a blog full of edits that could be made (but won't because I've decided it is what it is and reflects that day), I was first surprised. And then, filled with warm emotions. I feel honored to have put down a few words that may have meant something to people outside our tribe.
We are meant to heal. We are meant for wholeness. All we need is the right environment and people to assist in cleaning out the wound, to let the scab form. The body can do what it was designed to do.
It was a really tiring, but good weekend. And the Universe had me in mind when a fellow soul sister happened to enroll, without either of us knowing, in the same training! I'd like to think it was not just coincidence, but more so another intervention, another kindness I needed.
Tonight I'll keep it brief. I had been half asleep, setting my alarm, checking social media, when I opened up the ihadcancer.com 2016 top blogs post. And there, a few blogs in, was our little old page. As a caregiver who often has just wrote, shut the laptop, and kept running on fumes, with a blog full of edits that could be made (but won't because I've decided it is what it is and reflects that day), I was first surprised. And then, filled with warm emotions. I feel honored to have put down a few words that may have meant something to people outside our tribe.
And, Universe, the quote they picked? Its based on experiences I've had with some treasured few along the way. The cleansers to my wounds...so my heart could begin to heal the way it was crafted.
I know I've kept saying I would someday release some unpublished blog posts. There aren't dozens. But there are a few I didn't have the space for on here emotionally.
I'm finding, lately, that these little fragments aren't so scary anymore. If anything, they memorialize a time and place I remember but no longer live in. I see them, but I'm not carrying them all the time. Below was what I scribbled when I learned Wil's first transplant didn't graft.
Before I blogged it. There were these few words.
Much love.
--------
She Thought 9/19/2014
She placed her cell phone, upside down, on the corner of her desk. It was there, in black letters and bright screen, the news of the day. She thought, if only I can hide my head away in this cube for 4 more hours. Hide the sniffles as allergies, chuckle at a coworkers joke until the tears looked like joy.
On the way down the elevator, she breathed deeply and made idle chit chat. She thought, if only I can make it out the door and slip into the darkness before I fall, tumbling apart.
She had done this many times before already, clouded, sticky contacts in her eyes, balancing the need for a speedy trip home with not getting pulled over for grief intoxicated driving. A million thoughts rehearsed in her head. No officer, I haven't been drinking. I've just found another level to this grief maze. I just need to get home. How do I get home from here?
But she had driven down "Interstate Unimaginable" many times since the diagnosis, thinking faster than the posted speed. And always made it back.
She barely made it in the door, without dropping everything. She stood alone in the hall, like she had done 143 days already this year.
And then she laid right there. In the entry, keys in the lock, dogs barking, heaving her breaths into the laminate floor.
How does one manage when every day is a new adventure land of rare complications?
She thought.
But this here? She felt this. Deep as bone.
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