Well, life is nearly as full as it ever was. I have been working to try to not fill it up quite as much as it had been before my diagnosis. One of my methods for achieving this is to put appointments in my calendar for things like meditation, cooking, blogging, and ceramics. So my calendar looks very full, but it’s full of a lot of things that are really quite flexible as to when (and whether) I do them.[...]

Lately there have been a lot of signs of life returning to “normal.” Two days ago I got my first real haircut since last March. On Sunday we hosted the regular Snowflower Sangha meeting at our home – the kind of thing we used to do a lot of, but haven’t done since my diagnosis (so if 15 people meditating in your living room is “normal,” then this definitely qualifies). Last week I had my 6-month follow-up with the cardiologist who saw me when my troponin levels were elevated (a sign of a possible heart attack) in July; my troponin levels and my repeat echocardiogram were normal. I also drove with a colleague to Milwaukee, where we joined two other colleagues in delivering a 3-hour workshop introducing the Art of Transformational Consulting  to attendees at the Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee. Last week my stepson Sam and I resumed our weekly lunch date.[...]

Today I decided it was past time to tackle the blockade of ugly ice and snow at the end of our walkway to the street. After having to drop Sam off at the corner to get him into our house for dinner and a movie last night, and with temperatures predicted to plunge well below zero again later today, it seemed like a good way to start the day (well, after some pilates and breakfast). As I chipped away at the frozen foot-and-a-half-high, foot-deep mass of ice left by the plow, I mused about how this is like other projects in life. I’m going to insert my reflections on relationships to other projects in brackets here. [Like this].[...]

As I practice fully inhabiting my new shape – my new “naked heart,” I am finding a few things helpful.

• Pilates—I am having regular individualized sessions with a very experienced practitioner, Collette, working on learning to use underused muscles, and relax overused ones. Some of this involves working on flexibility in the ribcage. All of this is helping me loosen up places that are still stiff (and still numb) from the surgery, and generally re-inhabit my body. An interesting side note: The other day I told Collette something I’ve thought a lot before about this kind of thing: “I wish they had taught me this in kindergarten.” “Oh,” she said casually but definitively, “You wouldn’t have been able to learn this in kindergarten!” “Really?!” I asked. “Or even your teens or twenties, most likely,” she continued. She said there isn’t scientific evidence yet, but in her (considerable) experience, people just don’t have the inner neurological sensitivity to isolate specific core muscles and the like until they’re in their 30s!! Teens can do Pilates and have fun with it, she said, but it’s a different thing entirely.
• Ceramics – I did a few sculptures before my surgery on the subject of breasts, and here is my first post-mastectomy one. Now, of course, my hair is nowhere near this long yet and I’m not sure I want to grow it long at all (though I did once have this kind of braid!) but for those of you who have been wondering what my chest looks like, here’s a semi-self-portrait.
• Stories and pictures of other women who decided to “go flat.” I just found this blog, “thebreastlessyears,”  sort of a fashion advice blog!

Here are a couple of requests for ways people can help me further with this project of re-inhabiting – and hopefully learning to love – my new shape:[...]

I had my first “every-three-months-for-a-while” checkup with my oncologist 2 days ago, and it was largely the no-news-is-good-news kind of appointment. I did have various small complaints to discuss with her, but nothing she was concerned about. For those of you who may be following the medical details of this blog, for your own sake or someone else’s, here is a run-down of some of the more mundane aspects of my recovery, 3 ¾ months after surgery, and 4 ¾ months after my last chemo treatment.[...]

Here's another picture from my trip to Israel, courtesy of fellow tourist Betsy (foreground), her husband Steve (on the camel with me), and our camel-ride-guide, a West Bank Jewish settler originally from Grand Rapids Michigan (picture-taker). Despite my big grin in this picture, I was actually quite uncomfortable on the camel (it's a very wide body!), and also quite uncomfortable to be doing a silly touristy thing in the occupied territories, which I hadn't realized would be the case until that morning.[...]

Many folks have asked me, what ever happened to that clinical trial you were considering?

The short answer is, I decided not to do it.[...]

“I will not die an unlived life.”

This line is from a poem by Dawna Markova, which Adrienne Maree Brown read to us as a focus for our meditation this past week at the generative somatics training I organized in Elkhorn, WI for local activists and social change leaders. The poem struck a deep chord in me, so much so that I will quote it in its entirety here:[...]

This morning was the first morning I’ve done any significant amount of meditation in around 3 weeks. Oh, I did conscious, deliberate sitting meditation for maybe one 5-minute period while in Israel… and of course I was practicing being as present as possible to all the new experiences the rest of the time. But this morning I woke up too early (still jet-lagged, and still getting over my cold, and my mind busy with details of the upcoming generative somatics training that I’m hosting in Wisconsin next week!)[...]

I arrived at O'Hare on Monday evening after an uneventful set of flights on Turkish Airlines. Don met me and drove me home, thankfully, as I could barely keep my eyes open! I am a bit jet-lagged and have come down with (what I think is just) a bad head-cold. I've unpacked and have a lot of sorting to do -- pictures, stories, gifts I brought home, to-do items, thoughts and feelings about Israel/Palestine. I am reading The Lemon Tree which is filling in a lot of gaps in my understanding of the history of the conflict, and I'm working on a longer blog post about that. I also want to share about some of the amazing sights and experiences. Slowly, slowly.[...]