Your hair will grow back. What doesn’t grow back readily, are the brain cells that were killed by dense-dose chemo and the feeling of belonging in a cancer-community ravaged by constant death. What doesn’t grow back right away, is self-assurance in a world governed by the appearance of our physical assets. But what I have learned is that those things, although intrinsic to our nature, need watering to propagate.
Cancerous weeds that poisoned our bodies were ripped out and we’re left as shells, vacant in the stale soil remains that cultivate little growth apart from fear and apprehension. Slowly as sun and rain returns in waves, we toil in our new dusty surroundings and plant seeds of love and evolution. We stare longingly at the vast green meadows in the distance, sometimes neglecting our own efforts to rebuild the broken land we stand on.
Our recovery comes in seasons, just like the Earth. Sometimes I’m Spring; energized by the sound of birds and the flowers blooming around me. Sometimes I’m Winter; exhausted from the banal platitudes of adult life, so I let my flowers rot back into the Earth under the heaviness of cold wet snow. Cyclical like the seasons.
But each Spring plants more drops of hope into the soil that eventually grow into trees that withstand the winters and tower over the snow. Time and careful upkeep, brings unflinching boldness and beauty to a once-broken ground.
So be gentle with us, we’re relearning to live after we’ve been told we may die.
I often neglect my springtime because I am too busy looking across the pasture, coveting an oasis in the distance. It disorients me and I can’t see that I’ve ignored my own pasture in the peripheral. So I struggle to keep up. Staying focused is one of the most difficult things I’ve struggled with after cancer.
I’ve written things like:
“We are taught to drive a car by looking ahead of us in our own lane. If you are constantly staring to your right and left at the nicer cars going faster than you, you’ll inevitably crash.”
And I can’t follow my own advice. I crash, all the time. I set goals for myself, I’m not very good at keeping them. Distractions are my worst enemy, and I often consider it failure. But this morning—as if struck by a lightning bolt from God—I realized that I’m not failing. I can’t keep punishing myself. It’s a cycle of growth; embryonic at times, but still progress. Failure comes in all forms; forward movement, however slow it may be, is not failure. I may be wading in the water, but my head is still above it.
I have an overly sensitive spirit, and I live in an overstimulated world. How do I focus when there’s so much distraction? Often times, I have days where I can’t do anything. I wake up, drink coffee, and I am sucked into a vacuum of social media and internet nonsense. My optimism is shrouded in the daily humdrum of just being alive. I don’t possess a fear of failure, or a fear of death. Perhaps my fear is of life. Of living a life so extraordinary and then having it taken away in death. Sometimes I think we’re all waiting to die, wherein lies an underlying lack of motivation for great success.
In the past, two things that I’ve used to help keep me moving (slowly) forward are self-love, and unwavering optimism. I’ve always been an overly optimistic person, oftentimes and recently using it as a crutch that “everything will be ok” regardless if I do anything about it. But I bore myself, because my past few blogs have been written on precisely the same struggle that I have now. I’ve let my optimism bankrupt me, like I’m buying too many lottery tickets because I just KNOW that someday I’ll win.
I need to shift my blind enthusiasm and self-love towards coveting a fear of failure and having self-motivation. Enthusiasm is only a means to achieve real life success, it’s not successful in itself.
I’ve measured my success in my survival for so long, but it’s time to go beyond surviving and start living. Living, is being responsible. It’s being productive and actively working to change your life and achieve goals. It’s having fun, when it’s felt rewarded. It’s waking up early and setting goals in the magical, energetic light of morning. It’s not being blissfully happy and waiting around for someone to contact me with a million dollars advance to write a book.
Money doesn’t motivate me, helping people motivates me. So I’m going to use that, YOU, as my motivation going forward. If I let my friends, clients, and readers down, then I’ve let myself down. I’m not going to be a stay-at-home girlfriend, I’m going to be the bread-winner. I am done struggling, I am done being lazy. This is my time to create the oasis I’ve always been admiring from afar. I will be consistent. I will get organized. I will surround myself with people who hold the same goals and positivity as myself. I can fucking do this, I beat cancer.
And when I’m inevitably fading into the winter, I’ll remind myself to come back and read this and remember where my motivation lies. I won’t punish myself and wither beneath the weight of a setback, I’ll remind myself that I am allowed to experience the cold sometimes because it reminds me of how much more I enjoy warm weather.
“Although you feel small and helpless now, she is evidence that miracles are being planted in the ashes that surround you, and they will grow into oak trees with roots so deep they do not fear the changing seasons.”
I wrote that…about one year ago. Making me realize that nobody else can truly motivate me like myself. <3
