Impossibly Imposterous

I leave Tuesday for LA and then on to Hawai'i for a writer's workshop with Cheryl Strayed. I'm late on everything in my life right now, the mounting tension of work and an upcoming event and a move coupled with the emotional baggage of cleaning out my old home has kept me from really thinking about where I am off to and why.

In truth, I am petrified. I'm scared because I remember last summer at my workshop with Lynda Barry that I couldn't write, that my brain felt flat and beige, that I was intimidated by the women in the crowd who were professional writers who, in short bursts of time, could write pieces that left me feeling pale.

I also step back in these spaces, not wanting to be a fan girl, not knowing how to be in this world of workshoppiness. I am not a writer, nor do I consider myself to be. I'm a person that uses this tool to share things that I would normally share if I were sitting across from you. There's a heavy load of acceptance that rides along with it, and ego for sure, but it's never been anything more than what it is: a way to record my experiences, mostly for my kids someday, in a format that I hope helps other people process their own shit.

So why does it matter?

It feels like it's a lot about context, which is a space I've been exploring a lot lately in terms of life in general. What it feels like to get positive feedback from people who love you and wonder if it translates more broadly to a wider audience who doesn't know your story or love you or hasn't traveled so many roads with you. It's life outside of your own personal cheering section. It's this question of being confident in what you bring or wondering if you are believing your own bullshit. It's the journey understanding your own magic in the context in which you live. In short, what if you believe what people tell you about your writing, your spirit, your being...and it's not true. Enter these short bursts of nagging Imposter syndrome that make you wonder how it all works.

This may not make much sense, but they are things that are rolling around in my brain today as a friend and I talk about vulnerability, honesty, confidence and being solid in who you are.

This quote used to hang in my office. I need it tattooed on my forearm.

Navigating Who I Am (in this space)

Little hands crept around the door frame. "Mama?" her voice called tentatively. "Can I ask you something?" I was in the shower and panicked for a moment. Ever since my first surgery, we'd made an agreement with the kids that time in the shower and getting dressed time were "personal time". "Dad doesn't watch Grandma Pat get dressed. There is a time when you get old enough that privacy becomes important," was my reasoning to them, but it was 100% that I didn't want the children to see what had become of my scarred and destroyed body. I thought it would scare them. Because, in all honesty, it still scares me.

But here she was, my little girl, needing something.  "Come in, sweet girl," I called. She came in, fully in the middle of her thoughts, and stopped. She looked. She looked puzzled. Then, taking in what she saw in this new landscape of her mother's body, she started in with her question. I smiled, she smiled. It was ok.

Dealing with the reality of what happens to your body during breast cancer treatment is one of the most difficult aspects of living through this journey. You feel sick from the treatments, you fear death, you fear the unknown, you have to work through all sort of emotional issues with friends and loved ones about your illness but one of the hardest things, every day, is to deal with the body that you inhabit. For me, that is feeling stripped down, genderless, alien myself. I remember seeing a picture of Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort in the last few Harry Potter movies and being horrified because I identified so strongly with his bald, pale, almost genderless presence. That's the shit side of what body image in this space does to you. I've mourned that in previous posts, but it's something that is always with me.

Yesterday, a friend sent me an article that spoke so clearly about what its like to feel the tug and pull of these body changes. Even if you are right with it (which, obviously, I am SO not), there are others whose opinion, feelings and thoughts you have to navigate. Children, partners, friends...it's overwhelming. My means of dealing with it have been to turn inward and just try to put my head down and get through it, figuring that at some point the new normal will kick in (post-chemo, new surgeries, weight loss) and I will be able to deal, or at least deal with what is permanent. But its hard and lonely working that way, even though daily I hear from friends that I look beautiful. It's a mind mess I that I am still working to resolve.

So this article and the Scar Project in general has done a lot for me. These are *beautiful* women, lovingly photographed by a fashion photographer. Some look amazingly beautiful, some are just who they are. I remember seeing the photo of the pregnant woman on a poster in Cincinnati and being shocked and horrified before I myself was a double mastectomy survivor.

Now, I want others to see so that we can make this all more normal. It's there and it's the truth. And there is no shame. And there can be beauty. But shit, it's hard.

Article here:  http://www.brainchildmag.com/essays/fall2011_lynch.asp

The Scar Project website here: http://www.thescarproject.org/