"The Exquisite Beauty of Now"
Today I am grateful for breakfast, conversation, and a walk with my friend Jenny. I am also grateful that my sister Mary Jo only had to spend one night in the hospital.
With busy schedules and families, Jenny and I aren't able to get together as often as we would like, so I really appreciated when it worked out yesterday. Ten years ago this month, the two of us were in the thick of all things cancer, after I was diagnosed in late May and she in late June. We had our first surgeries and a few weeks to get used to being a cancer patient and all that comes with it.
We each had supportive husbands, families, and friends, but it was such a silver lining to have one another. Uncharted territory is a little less scary when a fellow traveler is with you living a similar reality of appointments, decisions, research, devastating days, hopeful days.
By the next summer, we were honoring our writing souls, shared experience, and friendship by writing a book together. Though still in manuscript form, the book and the process of writing it helped us both in so many ways. It was a pivotal time in my writing life, and I took off from there. Without that book, I don't think this blog would have ever been born.
Here are some previous writings weaving together these last ten years:
This post from April, 2016 connects Jenny and I through the Neil Diamond song "Holly, Holy."
"17 Points of Clarity" from January, 2013 includes one of the essays I wrote for our book.
Two Writing Souls and a Shared Diagnosis is from my second blog "Late Bloomer and Slow Learner" from August of 2016. It captures the significance of our collaborative writing efforts.
Jenny and I are the same age and find ourselves facing midlife challenges that come along. Older, yes. Wiser, for certain. Our children growing into adulthood, careers in education, dreams realized and unrealized. Cancer has continued to wreak havoc on both of our families, helping us each honor our own health so deeply.
And I close with this wisdom; words of Jenny's from our book. "The exquisite beauty of now." What a way of describing the treasure that is this moment.
Thanks Jenny! Good to see you!
With busy schedules and families, Jenny and I aren't able to get together as often as we would like, so I really appreciated when it worked out yesterday. Ten years ago this month, the two of us were in the thick of all things cancer, after I was diagnosed in late May and she in late June. We had our first surgeries and a few weeks to get used to being a cancer patient and all that comes with it.
We each had supportive husbands, families, and friends, but it was such a silver lining to have one another. Uncharted territory is a little less scary when a fellow traveler is with you living a similar reality of appointments, decisions, research, devastating days, hopeful days.
By the next summer, we were honoring our writing souls, shared experience, and friendship by writing a book together. Though still in manuscript form, the book and the process of writing it helped us both in so many ways. It was a pivotal time in my writing life, and I took off from there. Without that book, I don't think this blog would have ever been born.
Here are some previous writings weaving together these last ten years:
This post from April, 2016 connects Jenny and I through the Neil Diamond song "Holly, Holy."
"17 Points of Clarity" from January, 2013 includes one of the essays I wrote for our book.
Two Writing Souls and a Shared Diagnosis is from my second blog "Late Bloomer and Slow Learner" from August of 2016. It captures the significance of our collaborative writing efforts.
Jenny and I are the same age and find ourselves facing midlife challenges that come along. Older, yes. Wiser, for certain. Our children growing into adulthood, careers in education, dreams realized and unrealized. Cancer has continued to wreak havoc on both of our families, helping us each honor our own health so deeply.
And I close with this wisdom; words of Jenny's from our book. "The exquisite beauty of now." What a way of describing the treasure that is this moment.
Thanks Jenny! Good to see you!
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