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Friday, May 1, 2009

Da island life

I’ve started my house sitting job out on Vashon Island. The house is right above one of my favorite sunset beaches, Lisabuela! There is a Golden Retriever~ Foster, who has officially gotten my heart, and a Gray Congolese Parrot that has a 300 word vocabulary and noises to boot. It freaks me out!
My friend Angela is here and Its been great having someone that wants to walk down the street and hold on to me, or sit next to me on the coach closely and hold my hand. It warms my heart. I have been thinking a lot about how in life we learn lessons and then implement them and then forget them, and then have to re-learn them. This seems to be what happens to me at least. So, with that being said, there is a “Cancer” Heather and a “normal” Heather. Lessons learned throughout cancer that I need to integrate into “normal” Heather so that I do not loose the lessons learned. I’ve worked to hard with some of these life changing newly formed habits.
And one of them that keeps showing me that I need to do this quickly, is not stressing over anything. Everything, will be fine until tomorrow, nothing is going to change the present moment with stressing about anything so I might as well not stress and just be in the present moment stressfree.
Choosing to stress over anything, and I mean anything is 100% worthless way to expel my energy. I learned this lesson as most of you witnessed with whether or not I was going to worry about my cancer. I have no control over it, so I have learned, I will repeat that, I have learned to not go there. In the beginning I had to force myself, and focus on being a little Buddha. But then it got easier, and easier for me.
So, now that I am all done with treatment, and I still have my port in, I just have to not allow myself to question or worry about the fact that my Onc. wants me to keep my port in for a few more months. Yes, it does symbolize the very real fact that my cancer could come back. But do I need to “go” there. No. So, I stop myself from going there. And you know what happens? I am spending less and less time thinking about “cancer” and more time thinking about me.
Which brings me to , “ Hey, I am super stressed out now, and I don’t want to be.” What is there to stress about? Well, I get really overwhelmed easily now about everything. I need to start practicing letting things go. For instance, this week, I brought out a new townhouse listing. In the past, the old Heather would have worked until 11 pm making all the blogs, all the websites, uploading all the photos, creating the words, the marketing, the flyers, ect. And getting it all done in one day.
Impossible! Instead, last night, and this evening, I forced myself to stop working at the descent time of 5:30. I didn’t let myself get down on myself that I wasn’t finishing everything right then and there. Well..for a minute I did. And then I stopped myself, didn’t let myself stress myself out and said to myself, “Its okay if I leave this until tomorrow. You deserve, and you need to take care of yourself.”
Integration. That is what this time alone on Vashon is going to be for me. Last night Ang and I tried going for my first big walk since my last hospital stint. My heart started hearting when we were walking up the gigantic hill. The old Heather would have gotten hard on myself, but the new Heather just had to say, That sucks. I really want to walk up that hill, but I can’t. I need to take care of myself. Basic. Right? Its going to get easier!

2 comments:

tamara said...

I love this no stress heather! I would love to come visit you and see that parrot! and hold your hand if you like too. xot

apriljahns said...

Embrace your new perspective - you've earned it!