Good late morning.
I’ve seen the sun and rain 3 times today. It’s still morning. Looks like I’ll have to time my walk to catch the dry sky sometime in the next several hours.
I had a much needed, quiet weekend. However, I did get out a couple times to see friends. They were events I had specifically planned several weeks ago to give me something to look forward to regardless of what any known outcomes I would have with the cancer. So weird to type that word in reference to me. I’m not that old or sick!!!
Friday we met friends for dinner to catch up since we hadn’t had much chance to connect the last year.
Yes, I do have friends, but many of you know by experience you just forget about me or assume I’m doing fine. Either works for me.
My husband looks at me after we exchanged hellos and he asks “Do you want to go first?” Both of our friends look at us with this priceless expression, “What??” I thought it was the perfect introduction for what I then shared has happened to me the last 20 days. The first question we got was how I managed to be at dinner with them after surgery on Tuesday.
‘HA, I’m super powerful and I needed something to look forward to after everything.’ I would have liked to show them my cape, but there was limited space in the restaurant and I’m pretty sure I would have broken something. How survivor powerful I felt while feeling imposter-like. Should I have brought my pathology report to say I actually have/had cancer? Maybe I cleaned up too good?
I also went to a brunch of many wonderful friends yesterday. Some knew of my cancer, others did not. I even found a couple people read my Facebook posts to their partner. I had many of the same questions about how I could show up after surgery several days earlier.
All I could say was the thought of seeing so many smiling faces and getting lots of hugs was so powerful, there was NO WAY I was going to miss it. Having the results back made it even nicer, but even if I had bad news, I knew how important it would be to have so many supporters in the same place and how fortifying it would be to me.
Just the act of smiling by yourself, to yourself will change how you look at things. It is a powerful tool I stumbled upon years ago and it still has the same effect today.
