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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Oncology Therapy

I have found a wonderful mental health, talky-talky therapist here in Seattle. Her name is Janet Abrams and she is wonderful. I have seen therapists off and on since I was a little girl, and I feel so blessed to have found her. When my mom first had her stroke, I went to see my first specialized therapist for Grief and he was mind-blowingly perfect for me. I learned a lot. The main lesson, and I know this is a deviated (steroids and all the energy and mind-altering deviations they give me) but the main lesson he taught me was that when I was with my mom, it wasn't about me. It wasn't about me needing to and trying to convey, fix, or repair anything. That work could be done in therapy, but what I needed to do was just be present with her and in the present. You know what I am saying? Am I saying this correctly. My mom deserved to have her kids usher her into the otherworld, and to allow her, her sacred rites of passage, of passing. Not me crying over all the hurtful stuff, things unsaid, but just loving. Being in the Love.
So, this grief therapists is sortof like Janet in that they specialize. I like specialists is what I am discovering through all this. My Grandad told me once, get really good at one thing, Heather.
I saw Janet a few weeks ago, and I wasn't on steroids. Today I walked in there, and it was very centering, healing, and opening to be me to see ME. She validated me. She understood how traumatic of a week I just had. Not that she has gone through it, but she has made Cancer, her lifes work. One thing that is really hard going through this is that no one truly "gets" what or where I am at. Or what I have/will/had had to go through. D surely doesn't get it. Which I get. I learned from my mom's passing, that until you lose a parent, it is very hard to be in a place of understanding. But of coarse, there is just being a simple caring soul who is there for someone.
And I get that. Lots of you, lots of the girls on the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation site, friends, family, and my Keller Williams family are there for me. All asking me how I am doing. But unless you've gone through this you don't get it. So, I just cry. There is so much loneliness at a time when life is so full and feeling all that life is about. Such a contradictory journey.
Janet helped lead me to an understanding that I am different on the med's. I am pretty manic really. That was this morning a few hours after I took my med's. Now I am exhausted, barely able to keep my eyes open, on the coach, and will take them again tonight at 9.
At the base of all the "manic-ness" and all the anger, and all the crap, there sits sadness. Just blue, deep, dark, ocean blue with the foggiest, unknowns following it. Hovering over the sea with the heaviest rain falling. Just sad. There are a lot of tears to come. To heal. To come full circle again. I only have 16 radiation appointments left. And then, I can enter this place. Safely. The unknowns of life and my imminent time of departing this world can once again become part of a future time that won't be on my shoulder, cawing and scratching at my every move.

2 comments:

apriljahns said...

You did a very good job of giving a visual to the deep saddness - sometimes one word isn't enough to fully convey the depth of what you are feeling. I'm sorry you are in such a dark place and I hope that this is as dark as it gets before a new and more peaceful time in your life begins to dawn.

Anonymous said...

Thanks April! I must say, that on top of all that sadness there is great joy. Through all of this, its hard to not look at your mortality and love life more. I was and am a very happy person, and so its a new place to be in to walk with sadness. But by no means do I let it induldge. I just acknowledge it, cry my heart out, and move on. Move back up to the joy. This time of year its hard to not walk outside and feel the joy with all the spring buds...Which leads me to my next post. I love you.