The rubber band

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     We all know that life's journey is fraught with peaks and valleys. Ebbs and flows. Defeats and triumphs.  I believe our character and fiber are defined on how we respond to these moments in time. I try not to spend much time in backward reflection of my life other than to not have to repeat lessons already learned. This past year, although a beautiful year of living and experiencing, has been a year fraught with challenges on a very personal level.

     I am now an elder in my family. Not quite a half a century old yet. I am now the eldest generation alive.  All of my familial elders have passed. Good friends, teammates, and classmates are now making their journey to their eternal resting grounds. This past year I lost my biggest fan, confidante, and pillar, my Mom.  Thank God for the life I have create and the love and ties around me. If not for that, I would be fully untethered.  

    Painstakingly, in the past few years I have jumped up and down on the scales of 'life balance' to see if I could regain a personal life in harmony.  I over poured my heart and soul into a professional life that was all consuming. (I still believed in it passionately) I did so extensively, moving toward an end of an empty or dwindling cistern of a being. Boundaries!!!  Balance!!! I proclaimed as a personal battle cry to the world.

     In making boundaries, I found personal happiness and fulfillment.  It was the undoing of so many personal 'friendships'. Some of which were a scrape across the pericardium of my heart. Since then readily scarred in and healed over. I was so much like my canine companions - Labrador-ish- in my unconditional essence. Very much like my artist Italian mother. Free and unconditional with no boundaries. Now, I have found balance.  Fairness of balance.  I have surrounded myself with people who would do for me, as I would do for them. Now I am more like a bordercollie. More discerning, but happy and passionate for the things that sing to my authenticity.

     Pink. If you've known me for more than a minute you will know it has been my all time least favorite color.  I've been told I look good in it. But it has never been a color that I have acknowledged or embraced.  I live in a gambling state. I do not gamble. Always believed that there are two types of gamblers, losers and liars. The odds are either one-in-eight or one-in-six depending on who you talk to, anyway I was lucky enough to land the diagnosis of breast cancer. There I said it. And pink is my new color. 

     I have gone through the rubber band pull back and forth these last few months. Physical pulling against emotional. It has been a whirling ride. I will conquer it. I am lucky. Not unscathed. However, I believe I will emerge on the other side a better human being. I was born with an existential crisis I have been fighting my entire life. This helps to put things into perspective for sure.

     I had looked forward to this year. I wanted to do something epic before I rolled into the next decade.  Run a marathon.  Maybe a half marathon, for the love of Pete, I am a sprinter by nature.  I had lost my sense of vision, basking in the 'stay in the moment' reality. There's a balance in this as well. Where I stand today I can see the end of the surgery - therapy, of traditional human medicine. This year, I have a new set of pages ahead of me. Pages that I am writing. What I have kept in my side pocket is the long history in my family of cowgirls and cowboys. I will ride this storm out with my chin up and my heals down.  Probably wearing a dash of pink.