Reframing Those Challenging Days

 Here’s the beauty of SoulCollage® - Often, you don’t really see what you have made until afterwards, and sometimes much later on. 

Yesterday, I was having a challenging day, as so many of us are experiencing in these times of pandemic and political chaos.  The uncertainties are stunning and can easily knock you for a loop. How will we ever get out of this?  Even if we get a vaccine, will it be safe and effective?  Who is walking around infected but without symptoms and may be infecting others?  Why do some people get mild cases and others die?  Am I safe?  Are my loved ones?  Will Trump win another term and doom us all?  You are quite familiar with this sort of thinking, I’m sure.

 

On top of all this mess, I have a life-threatening illness.  I recently had a presumably successful surgery, but sarcoma, my variety of cancer, tends to recur, and my tumor was pretty aggressive.  With this uncertainty piled on top of the rest, it isn’t strange that I’d have some unsettled days.

 

However, right now I’m recovering well, and for the first time in months, without a lot of pain or under the influence of narcotics, I am experiencing the cooped-up boredom others have complained of.  So, I sat myself down and made a new SoulCollage® card.  Here’s what it looks like (my usual bad phone shot):

 

 

 

When I allowed it to speak to me (a process we employ when making cards), it seemed to be telling me that I was just looking for a way out of my predicament.  Notice the word “just.”  I told a friend I wasn’t sure I liked this card.

 

This morning, while working on my morning pages, I sat with the card again.  It dawned on me then that although there was indeed a figure doubled over with grief, depression or pain, there were three others who were looking for a way.  Perhaps a way to relate rather than a way out.  Maybe they were giving me advice on handling my situation, rather than merely trying to escape it.  One is painting or writing.  One is meditating.  the third is looking far off.  Right!  Three ways to apply myself – art, meditation, and far-seeing (which to me means having a greater perspective, a spiritual view).

 

I love the card now.  It's not the most beautiful, but that has no bearing on its relevance. And, of course, the whole SoulCollage® process is a treasure.  It doesn’t matter that I already have several hundred cards; it’s always fresh and new.  

Grateful.

A New Poem

 My morning pages have been yielding some new poems.  I can't tell you how happy this makes me!  For several months, I couldn't write at all, my meager energies being devoted to coping with illness and treatment.  It is a gift to be able to go down to my studio and my beautiful altars and write.

So, here's a new one:

Undying Companion

 

 

Once upon a time,

            the word cancer

evoked such terror

            that merely reading

or saying it superstitiously

            tempted a raging

death curse into

            the body.

 

How things have changed,

            now that the interloper

invisibly insinuated its rapidly

            growing presence inside.

I can say the word now,

            without flinching.

Even after surgical removal,

            this disease has asserted

its place as my undying companion,

            and always will.

 

I will walk with cancer.

            I will dance with cancer,

I will sit with cancer, and

            I will sleep with cancer,

until I sleep

            for good.

 

It is not that the terror

            has dispersed.

It is only that uncertainty,

            which is true for all,

has traveled from a

            complacent distance

to take hold

            of my hand.