Fast facts (if you don’t have time to read the full post): Happy International Women’s Day! I had five very significant cry sessions today and two very intense but invigorating Zoom sessions for work. One was our quarterly DEI training and the other was for the Tri-Cities Latino Community Network. We hosted a panel of inspiring women in our community to share their stories and wisdom with us all. My soul both feels both tired and nourished. I also saw that my genetic results are back and being reviewed by my genetic counselor. I should know ~very soon~ my BRCA fate.
TO THE LONG VERSION!
I love celebrating International Women’s Day. It is a statement of fact that I am surrounded by so many empowering women who nourish my soul, who inspire me to be more, who are changing the world simply by existing and #BreakingTheBias. What power they have. I wish I had the energy to text every single woman today in my life to tell them how much they mean to me and how much they have changed and shaped me. If there is a woman (or women!!!) in your life you admire deeply, please text them right now. Don’t wait until after this blog post because you might forget. Stop. Grab your phone. Send the texts. Tell them how much you love them.
Welcome back!
Did you know about 1 in 8 U.S. women (about 13%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime? Yup! I guess I am now that one friend you know in that statistic. According to Breastcancer.org, “Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women. In 2021, it’s estimated that about 30% of newly diagnosed cancers in women will be breast cancers.” A little fun fact for you. That site has tons of facts! Some make me really sad and some are inspiring me to write a whole ass blog post about the disparities and racial inequities in our healthcare system. That is going to be something I need more time to research and digest and will save that for later but just wanted to warn you all. It is coming. If you have not taken the time to consider how people of color experience healthcare differently than white folks, I urge you to maybe start a Google search on your own and then you can deep dive with me when I share that future post. There are inequities in the healthcare system as it relates to women in general don’t get me wrong, but how a woman of color or even how a trans woman experiences healthcare is something that everyone needs to be aware of. If this paragraph makes you uncomfortable, please sit with that for a second and try to ask yourself why. I want to call you into this conversation, not call you out. All learning levels are welcome here. Click here for a great jumping off point to learn more about a future post I have yet to write!
Speaking of women and things that make me uncomfortable, I had a really touching comment this morning from a wonderful friend who read yesterday’s “The Helper” blog post and I wanted to share a portion of it with you all because I figured if it helped me reframe how I think about accepting help, then it might help one of you, too! I know I have lots of helper type friends (aka the enneagram 2!) so here are some words of wisdom from a very wise woman (shared with permission):
“The hardest thing for helpers to do is to receive help. I hope you can realize that you are helping all of us by giving us stuff to do for you. You help us feel useful. You help us feel like we are needed and wanted. You help us know that we matter and make some sort of difference in this whole fucking mess of things! (See, the Mormon girl is cussing!) So help us by telling us how to help you. Help us by letting us show up for you in ANY way that you need or want.”
That was my first cry of the day. It was not a bad cry but a cry of release. I wrote that post yesterday from a very selfish perspective. It is selfish in a way to deny friends and family the opportunity to support me on this journey because ultimately I am the one that has to take this beating of a treatment. I am the one that will be injected with poison and roasted by the lasers. Everyone will watch and stand by and wish that pain could be taken away from me. The only gift I can give others during this time is the opportunity to maybe do something for me that in effort is small but large in impact. And I love giving gifts! So here is my moment to reframe and adjust my approach and realize that giving you the ability to give to me is a two way street and we all what we need and give what we want.
The other four cries of the day were a bit more intense. Right now I am measuring the success of my day in my tears. Let me clarify and say that there is NOTHING WRONG with crying. Crying is my new metric for evaluating how emotional my day was and today I had a hard day. I am on this emotional roller coaster in my body. I am also off birth control for the first time in 14 years so my body is probably like WTF!? I miss the regularity that birth control pills gifted me. I was really lucky in that regard.
My other cries are of things out of my control at this time. I am scared of receiving treatment. I am scared that my genetic results could come back as BRCA1 and 2 positive, making me feel extra fucked. (Note: I am okay with being BRCA1 or BRCA2 positive because this would explain my cancer diagnosis and inform treatment, but I am NOT okay with being both lol.) I am paranoid that every ache and pain that is located beyond my port or my right breast means the cancer has spread. My anxiety is off the charts. Cue deep breaths. I had my coworker examine my collar bone and my port today to make sure things felt and looked okay. I mean, she is no doctor but she knows some shit. This is a torturous week for me as I wait to take my CT scan and bone scan on Friday. Those scans will either clear me of cancer elsewhere in my body or it will show my deepest darkest fears of cancer fucking shit up. To find out what is happening internally, I get injected with some stuff to make me light up like a Christmas tree. I am going to be lit af, just not off rum which is how I prefer to be lit. Side note, I Googled “What do you get injected with for a CT scan?” and I found a very scientific answer and then someone had also asked if you could see poop in a CT scan. There’s no such thing as a stupid question. Google is so great.
Today’s song lyric of the day is brought to you by Emmy Meli in honor of International Women’s Day. ❤
“I am woman, I am fearless
I am sexy, I’m divine
I’m unbeatable, I’m creative
Honey, you can get in line”
madisonhatescancer 