When You’re Stuck In The Pickle Jar…

you are enough

Sometimes I feel stuck.  I’ve picked up a brand new career track post-cancer and some days are better than others.  Sometimes I feel like I have it all figured out and sometimes I spend weeks feeling so very stuck on something.  For a couple of weeks it was the budget and strategic planning documents that I was putting together with my board.  For another couple of weeks it was the lack of validation that I was receiving about this new career path from some important people in my life.  For yet another couple of weeks, it was a cold that just wouldn’t go away and was severely compromising my marathon training that I had so very proudly just begun.

Each time I obsessed over what was causing the trouble and what might fix it.  I spent hours and hours and hours pouring over that budget and strategic planning document.  Willing them to be just right.  I worried relentlessly about the choices I’ve made along my journey and whether creating an organization was a good fit for me.  I cursed myself and that cold while refusing to actually take care of myself emotionally, in a way that might have brought about less anxiety.  Each time I held onto my fears and doubts and hang ups as if grabbing onto them properly, not letting them slip away this time, would conquer them into submission.

Instead of embracing myself for who I am and for the process I am taking, I allowed my fear of not being enough to dominate.

Have you ever heard of the Pickle Jar analogy?  You are obsessed with a something…in this analogy that something is a pickle.  You ruminate over it, contemplating exactly how and why this pickle is necessary to your life; why your life will be so much better and complete once that pickle is yours.  Whether you actually stop and think about how much you will actually gain from having the pickle, whether that pickle will love you back, is really at the crux of the matter.  So you reach your hand into the jar and grab at a pickle.  With your fist surrounding the pickle, you try and pull both your hand and the pickled cucumber out of the jar…but your fist is too round to fit through the opening.  You must let go of the pickle in order to free your hand.

Would having the perfect budget and strategic planning documents love me back?

Do I need to be employed as an aerospace engineer to be loved and to be loving?

Does a cold mean that I am not hard working and committed?

No.  No.  No.

Let go of your doubt.  Let go of your fears.  Let go of needing everyone to agree with all of your decisions and choices.

You are enough, just the way you are.

Fighting Cancer With Humor

fighting cancer with humor

What tools do you use to combat your young adult cancer?  Modern medicine perhaps?  Maybe some alternative therapies too?  (I’m thinking maybe meditation, acupuncture, diet changes, or counseling?)

Well, one young adult cancer survivor uses humor to provide himself and those around him with hope.  Alex Niles is a cancer survivor and a strong young adult cancer advocate.  He challenges us all to find humor in our everyday, despite the difficult circumstances where we may be.  Fighting cancer with humor can be a monumental task sometimes…but keeping yourself armed with positive thoughts helps keep you in control over an important piece of your journey.

You can read the whole article he wrote here (including a pretty chuckle-worthy bit about his sperm donation experience).

How do you try fighting cancer with humor?

image via

Songs For Feeling Strong

young adult cancer

I have a scan this week.  It is my first scan of my 4th year of remission.  It is also the first scan that happens a whole year after the previous one.  All of that extra time in between scans has made me nervous.  I feel nodes that I don’t remember feeling.  I’ve cried in the shower as I fathomed what it would be like to face another round of being in active treatment.  But I’ve also found this song during all of that time.  I play it when I run, I play it when I’m in the shower, I play it while I clean the house…it is basically on repeat all the time.  Fight Song makes me feel strong.

Young adult cancer is no joke and finding something that makes you feel stronger isn’t either.

Do you have a song that makes you feel strong?

A New View on Obstacles

dealing with obstacles in life

Every day this week I have been ruminating on obstacles.  (Not a new subject for me, read more thoughts on reframing here!)  This morning, I had a miscommunication with our future landlords that threatened to send our plans reeling and my emotions collapsing into worn out tears.  This week I have to manage a busy schedule that doesn’t allow for the resetting time I want (let alone all the studies I ambitiously hoped to get in).  Last week included missing out on a friend’s big event.  Everyday we get closer to moving is a goodbye, a closed door, a reminder of the new effort needed to start again.  I could see all these things as attacks from the universe, more than I can handle, and unfair.  I could see these events as nuisances in between me and my desires and goals.  I could go at these roadblocks with a bulldozer… OR consider them differently.

Most mornings I am practicing sitting with my obstacles.  I do my best to remove that label.  I am considering them ‘in the way’.  What if they are just facts.  Words spoken.  Decisions made.  The reality of location and distance in my life and relationships.  So I practice holding these events in my mind as just the facts.  Just the things as they could be described by any onlooker.  And I wait.  I let these things unfold a little.  I don’t tease them apart, but with a little patience they begin to open up (not unlike the peonies lavishly unfurling on my street).  I realize that people I’m talking to are just doing their job as they know how – and usually distracted by their own lives and full of their own emotional goings ons.  The woman on the phone isn’t intentionally blocking my way.  My husband and coworkers and my life aren’t all colluding together to make my days chaotic and confusing.  My friend isn’t happy that I’m not around, even though I can make that up in my head.

If I just begin to let the petals of the facts open up… well, first the emotions get to let go.  I don’t feel as charged with anger, fear, or hurt.  I just see life happening.  There is space there.  And then I can consider other ways that this situation is adding to my life, consider what I can learn about myself.  My conversation with the landlords gives me space to acknowledge that I easily feel like people are out to get me.  I feel like I want to be in control and my control is fragile.  Here, I get (HAVE) to let go of ‘my way’ and learn TRUST (oh, how awful this is to learn…) that the universe, that life, that my intentions for good are moving things along.  AND, that I can handle whatever comes my way if I keep hold of love.  In my overdone week, I get to see how my decisions are motivated by pleasing others and learn that when saying ‘yes’ feels like a ‘should’ and comes from an attempt to bolster appreciation and value that I come to regret it.  With enough observations of this, I’m sure to learn to say those ‘yes-es’ less often!  When I feel sad that I’m far away from those I love I can see all the love I have, consider other ways to show it, and appreciate that other humans are around my friends to share the love and support I have.

Lots of times I still choose the bulldozer first.  So, I’m practicing.  When the plane is late.  When the price isn’t what I thought it was.  When my dog wants to go another way on my walk.  When all my emails are to-dos that suddenly spring up.  When all my emotions and life circumstances seem to be “in the way”… I’m learning to see them instead as just events.  Just facts.  Just space to consider something else.  To consider who I am in my reactions, who I want to be, and how I can love in bigger ways that I imagined at first.   What a beautiful invitation to being human.

As my teacher, Christina Sell says,

“My personal belief is that we must know- in a very clear and precise way- the patterns of our thinking and how they will attempt to sabotage us and our self-worth and our joy. And when we know this, we gain some mastery over the patterns rather than they simply being the master of us… I personally do not ever expect the patterns’ voices to go away. I really don’t. Although sometimes they do. Nor do I find it that helpful to fight them as they are wily, smart and long-enduring. I think of them like a muscle. When the pattern is strong it is like a muscle in spasm. It has all of our attention. But when it is not activated, not fed, put in its place, so to speak, it is just a muscle like any other muscle. I mean really, do you think much about your triceps muscle when it is not sore?”

May we learn to keep those spasms down in the face of daily life.

As I sit with my daily obstacles, I chant the mantra, “Ohm Shri Ganeshaya Namaha”.  This has been helpful to get my mind to relax around the issue.  What do you do to help you see into your obstacles?  Dealing with obstacles in life isn’t an easy thing…how do you focus on yourself in the midst of chaos?  How do you work to see these obstacles as the way to different paths, as opposed to a blocking point in the path that you desired?  

Songs For Movin’ and Groovin’

songs for movin and shakin

You know when you just need that little bit of pick me up to get you going?  That little boost to get your body moving and your mind engaged?  Yea…me too!  I just love songs for movin and shakin!  Whether you’re a young adult cancer survivor or caregiver, or a young adult chronic illness sufferer, finding ways to get yourself moving and motivated is so important.

Lately I’ve been using a Taylor Swift song, Shake It Off, for just that purpose.  I put it on while I’m in the shower and getting dressed, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, you name it!

Do you have a song that helps get you movin’ and grovin’ in the world?  Let us know!

Tough As Nails

young adult cancer

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with being human.  Our existence can seem so fragile and I find myself obsessing about what I could lose next.  Having young adult cancer and losing a parent to cancer as a young adult can do that to a person…one day the world changes so drastically that one can forget how life ever seemed so simple before.

How do you put yourself back on your feet when you’ve become out of sorts with the world?  I tend to look to music, tv/movies, or books to help.  I’m currently reading the Divergent series.  The dystopian world of loss, confusion, and courage was so easy for me to connect with that I felt myself drawing more and more into the books as I continued reading.  The ideals of being brave and learning to live with life’s fears were powerful to me recently as I paced through my house checking, rechecking, and checking another time whether I had considered everything that could catch on fire while I was gone.

“Do I look like I’ve been crying”…

“No…You look tough as nails.”

– Divergent, Veronica Roth

Remembering the ways in which I am courageous and tough as nails is sometimes helpful…and yet really the next lesson to learn is how to embrace the hurt and the pain until it passes.  Instead of being annoyed and exasperated with feeling the grief and the fright, I wish to be able to sit with it, being understanding and compassionate with myself…being able to trust that I am tough as nails regardless of the anxieties that enter and leave my existence.  These moments of grief and hardship will come and go, into survivorship.  I’ve seen that be true for myself as well as other survivors I have come across.

Do you have a hard time remembering that as a young adult cancer survivor you are tough as nails?  What helps you to remember?

Songs For Hard Times

songs for hard times

You know, when you’re sad, or scared, or lonely…you find that one song and it become this anthem of your struggle?  My most recent song to get me through a tough time is by Phillip Phillips, Gone Gone Gone.

What songs do you use when you’re feeling down?  Maybe you need some good pysch up music for a doctor’s appointment or treatment session…maybe you need some relaxing music when you’re having a down moment…or something supportive for when you’re needing a shoulder to lean on.  Let us know!  Share in the comments or by emailing info(at)lacunaloft(dot)com and we’ll make a play list to suggest to other young adult cancer survivors!

P.S.  This one gets played on repeat too

Happiness or Wholeness?

wholeness

When taking a break from work, there are a couple of blogs that I frequent.  One of them is Cup of Jo.  Earlier last year she talked about a quote on happiness that focused on switching our idea of life being about the pursuit of happiness to life being about the search for wholeness.

Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say, “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness.” Ask yourself, “Is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is. – Hugh MacKay

Seriously, what an awesome idea.  In the world of young adult cancer survivors, caregivers, and young adult illness sufferers, not every moment is happy.  Often we can even feel put down by friends and family when we spend somewhat long stretches of time awkwardly dealing with the difficulties we face.  If we seek wholeness, togetherness, and companionship, happiness will happen along the way.

So, what do you think…happiness or wholeness?