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!

Percolating to home

Do you remember those aluminum coffee makers that had the clear plastic bubble on top and you can look at it spurting and brewing? That is how I feel this morning. Heather is percolating. I can feel my spirit coming back, and brewing deep inside me. My happy level, or my spirit, or my soul, or my joy is starting to warm up, and I just get hit with tears of joy..not bawling. Just a few drops here. But mainly it just feels like home. Home in my own skin. And this, I guess is where the grief is, because now that I am typing this, I am crying again. But a little more than just tears. I have just really really really truely missed ME. Me, had to go some place, and I can't wait (my tears are dripping down to my chest) till this is all gone, to go and get her.
Its something only I can do, on my own. When I feel safe to do it.
I mean, I have an Advance Life Directive on my table here in the hospital. It is the mature thing to do, to have a will so that my Sis and D wouldn't have to decide to what to do with me. But, my naive 33 year old, 7 1/2 months ago self, wouldn't have it on my table at home. I would have put it off. It reminds me of the day I got diagnosed, and the first surgeon I met with asked me if I had one, and if I didn't I should get one done.
She is right. And this is needing to be done out of that not safe place. I have a few big hitters for goals for myself when I come out of this. One is that I do not allow myself to live in the future, one of the life changing lessons of cancer, and not think about, "my stats for the next three years." I do need to spew about it every in a while, because it is scary. All the other breast cancers have medications to treat what their cancer feeds on to keep it at bay. But mine doesn't. And that is why I did so much chemo and rads, being just a stage one. A stage one, that had a deep BC that went 1 cm into my pec mmls. That is scary to me. That it just wasn't in my boob. That it had traveled into the muscle. But that is where I have to stop my mind, myself.
So, I haven't cracked that damn book, but will. Maybe over a cup of warm tea. When I am all done with my treatment in a few months. For those of you that don't know this, I am a tea whore. I covet tea. I sniff and drink tea, like the hipsters do these days wine. I have stopped drinking tea since chemo, because I love it so much that I didn't want to risk hating it when I am done. But I will make my will and my what if scenarios, just in case, the chance happens.