going "public," the downsides of admiration, and keeping the channel(s) open

First an update on my physical state -- The last few days have been pretty good. I've been having some fatigue, and increasing my heart rate by any exercise more vigorous than a walk seems to cause a brief throbbing headache; but no stomach distress, and some real appetite, without major use of anti-nausea meds (this also means fewer side-effects from those meds, i.e. less constipation & hemorrhoids). Yay! Some pain and itching from the port site and I'm a little achey, probably from the combination of blood-cell regeneration, lying around a lot, and lack of swimming while the port incision heals. Thankfully Tylenol increases my comfort sufficiently. We made an extra trip to the almost-deserted UW Hospitals & Clinics on Saturday, to get help removing the bandages over the port site, because by the time the appointed day arrived my skin had started reacting to the bandages (a burn-like effect). It was humorous watching the skeleton crew of doctors and technicians trying to figure out how to do basic tasks without the nurses and assistants there (e.g. not calling out my name in the waiting room or asking my date of birth; bringing me into an operating room for the task; and having to go find a key to unlock the cabinets to get the supplies). Fortunately the actual hands-on care was still excellent!

Yesterday I decided to make this blog more "public." This means that anyone can now read it without creating a login, and now if you want to share one of my posts on Facebook or another social network it should be seamless to do so. 

I've been thinking about this for a while, and finally felt ready to do it. I think the factors that contributed to my readiness included:

1) a conversation with a woman who recently had a mastectomy and is still undergoing reconstruction who has not considered herself part of the breast cancer "sisterhood" because she didn't have to have chemo or radiation. This made me feel a little sad and made me think about all of the women out there who are undergoing one of the myriad forms of experience caused by this collection of conditions we lump together (no pun intended) under the label "breast cancer," and how many of them are doing so in much greater isolation than I am. Many people reading this blog have told me how helpful it has been to them, and I would like any such help to be available more broadly, to those women and anyone suffering from any of life's "10,000 sorrows", as the Buddhists say. (Don't worry there are also 10,000 joys, and 64,000 dharma doors or paths towards truth). 

2) the same friend sent me a link to a cool blog by a woman in australia about women and body image, and recently another friend sent me a cool link about a Doctor with breast cancer who got the whole crew in the operating room dancing before her double mastectomy! I found both these links inspirational, and thought, if these women can share their journeys so publicly, I can too. 

3) I looked at the list of 330 of you currently subscribing to these updates-that-became-a-blog, and realized that there are many of you on it that I don't know very well at all, and probably at least 20 or so whom I've never even met. So how different could it be writing for an even more general audience? I guess we're going to find out. 

While I am deeply motivated by the desire to help others, I also genuinely enjoy the writing, and find it a useful reflective process. I want to continue to have it be about what's really true for me, and not get too caught up in wondering what my audience will think (though I very much value hearing what you're thinking -- then it becomes a reflective conversation). I also want to not get too caught up in ego and desire for fame. I need to acknowledge those things are there -- that I enjoy the "performance" aspect of this, being good at something, getting positive feedback about it, etc. I will practice "hosting" those feelings, letting them be there, having spaciousness around them, and not letting them be in the drivers' seat too much. 

I also want to acknowledge another downside of "doing this well" (writing, handling cancer) and being admired for it, which is that some of you have shared with me that you compare yourself to me, and feel some version of "I could never be like that if I got cancer," with a negative self-judgment attached. I, myself, feel this kind of thing a lot and have worked on it for a long time. In fact I felt a version of it the other day when I saw the web info on the woman who danced in her operating room with her doctors and nurses. I thought, "geez, that's so cool, and she did it before I even got my diagnosis, much less came up with the metaphor of "dancing with cancer" for my journey. And she's actually dancing, whereas I'm just using it as a metaphor, and haven't even made it to my drop-in dance class more than once since my diagnosis." The inner voice continued with rationalizations to make me feel better: "Well, she's a doctor, so of course it's easier for her to make something like that happen in her operating room. And, she lives in San Francisco." 

Here's how I've worked with those kinds of feelings when they haunt me (don't they haunt all of us in this society that honors competition as sacred?). In 2006 or 7 I learned from Robert Gass the following quote:

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep the channel open."  -- Martha Graham

Ever since, I have practiced noticing when I am getting caught up in comparing myself to others, and called this quote to mind. I've even made shortened versions to use as a mantra: "Keep the channel open." It helps. 

At least since the time in elementary school when two of my best friends admitted to me that they felt jealous of me because of how easily I got good grades, I have felt badly about "making" others feel badly about themselves in comparison to me. While I know I am not directly responsible for others'  feelings (thus the quotes around "making" in the previous sentence), I especially don't like it when this happens because my main motivation is to help people (and non-human beings, and the planet).  

So I invite you who are sharing this journey with me, who of course are not like me, to practice keeping your own channels open. I believe that the world needs all of us, in our unique expressions, in order to heal.