Road tripping

Next Wednesday Paul and I leave for a sort of spur of the moment road trip.  We are driving up to my brother's family's house near Burlington Vermont.  It's about a 6.5 hour drive, so not bad at all.  We will get to celebrate my older nephew's 6th birthday with him which I am super excited about and hopefully do all kinds of fun things around the area.  We are planning to stay about a week.  We have decided since we have the time to do so, that we are going to head east after our trip to Vermont and drive back here to NYC via the coastline, stopping along the way here and there for a couple of nights.  I think it's going to be a good time - can't wait!  I wasn't planning on another trip after Miraval, but it just kind of makes sense.  I've never planned a road trip before though - I have to admit, I'm a little lost thinking about it.

The "if only" and the "what if"

I had it in my mind once when I was much younger to live a life of no regret. But I have realized that to do so is basically an impossibility. When you get to the end, if you are given the chance to think about it, there is going to be something. No matter how hard you try, no matter how well of a life you have lived, there will be something. I can pretty much guarantee you that.

I wanted to clear away the regrets of my past when I had breast cancer. It was an awakening in many ways but the amount of regret I had for being only 29 years old was astounding, devastating in some ways really. The truth is, I have not been able to clear much of any of it away. You just learn to live with it I guess. Or ignore it. It doesn't help to say if only I had and what if I hadn't. But it's hard to help it when you are reflecting on the question of whether you were happy. Or whatever the ultimate question turns out to be for you. I suppose that wasn't the only question I asked myself. There were many. But this is the question that plagues me the most even six years later. Can I at least say that I was happy? Am I happy? Coach Leigh asked me and I couldn't even say what makes me happy. Does rock climbing count? Cause that's all I can think of. We talked about passion - I don't have one. I can't even tell you what inspires me.

I have a lot of if onlys and a lot of what ifs when I think about the past 20 years of my life. Sometimes I try to tell myself that if I had known better or differently I would have done better or differently. That is probably the truth. But mostly we all just walk around doing what is probably the best we can do not even realizing that it isn't enough. The truth is, I don't even really want to be a lawyer any more. But that's another problem for another post.

I frequently ponder the question of what I will feel if I get breast cancer again. It is how I gauge what path I am on. I am constantly reminded of my own mortality as I walk through the world. As I went through the process of surviving breast cancer, the only thing I would have told you I wanted was time. Simply more of it. What if my 29 years had been it? What was I leaving behind? I wanted a "do over." I wanted to do it all over because I would have done it entirely differently. You might say I got one. A "do over" that is. I mean, I've had six years cancer free and what have I done with it? I mean really done with it? I can tell you - I have done nothing. I haven't changed as a person in all the ways I wanted to, nor have I changed the way I approach or live life. My outlook hasn't changed. Even my perspective has slipped back to my before breast cancer life - even though I do know always that life can change in a heartbeat. If I got breast cancer again, like right now, my assessment of the past six years of my life would be that I had failed completely and entirely.

Some people feel like going through what I went through is a gift. It is an opportunity. It wakes you up. It calls your attention to what matters in life. It is life changing - but is it, really? Not always. I believe I probably needed a wake up call but in some ways it has been a curse and not a blessing. It is mixed really I guess. The only thing I can hope for I suppose is that I get the gift of more time. And the gift of both desperation and willingness. I could do without another opportunity to ponder the meaning of my life.

Wyatt asked me - what if I could be remembered for something. What do I want to leave behind. What word would I want on my tombstone. I didn't really have to think about it and it doesn't have much really to do with happiness after all. I simply want it to say that I had inspired someone, so that I could know that what I had suffered had not been for nothing.

He said - what if you already have?

Over the years between Wyatt and I

There is a part of me that wants to keep the conversations that Wyatt and I have had to myself.  They are extremely important to me, deeply personal.  I come to Miraval partly to spend time with him specifically - to ask for his help and to hopefully learn something, to change something.  He has been the only therapist over the years that has really helped me, though of course my walk and talk with Coach Leigh did turn out to be quite helpful as well.  I have done one on ones with him, his workshop, his mini-workshop.  I think I have learned more from him about life, and how to live it, than I have from anyone.  I would like to keep the conversations within the confines of my ever racing mind, but how am I supposed to remember all of the things he said to me if I don't find a way to write at least part of them down?

I am going through some stuff right now that I don't want to be specific about.  And the processing part of it is over, so it seems.  It is the action part that I have failed at so completely.  To Wyatt, every moment is an opportunity.  Literally.  An opportunity for something.  To change, to learn, for joy.  And he thinks what I have in front of me is perhaps the greatest opportunity of all.  And it's not that I haven't been presented with the opportunity before, I just have not seized on it.  Perhaps I wasn't ready.  Perhaps I am still not.  And I say that I can't.  I can't is what I tell him.  It feels too hard.  It feels impossible.  I say there is a lot that I can't do.  But Wyatt says that's not the problem.  I can do anything - obviously - I have landed here in adulthood, having achieved amazing things, even if I minimize them in my own mind.  The problem is in fact simply that I won't.  I can do it - but I won't.  He says over the past four years he just sees me continue to live out the traumas of my past, and that although I feel frustrated with it and all of the "processing" I have done, and that I say I don't understand why I can't change - he says its obvious to him that I must not want to change because I have not attempted it and failed.  I simply haven't attempted it.  AA people always say nothing changes if nothing changes.  Wyatt says that a lot too.  He also reminded me of another AA thing - from "How It Works" - "half measures availed us nothing.  We stood at the turning point."  I am standing right there.  And I am either going to do what I told Wyatt I would do, and jump off.  I didn't say I would try, he made me say that I would in fact do it.  Or I am going to remain in a place of permanent stuckness, ever processing and getting no where.  Hell, I will probably find myself sitting across the table from Wyatt next year saying I don't know why I am so stuck.  And he will probably laugh at me next time.

I think perhaps the first step is always the most difficult.  And he thinks I will find that if I do it, if I do what I need to do to change my life in the way that I want it to change, I will find that it is not nearly as difficult as I made it up to be in my own mind.  And what if  - what if something amazing happened.  We went over worst case scenarios and we decided that the outcome of my simply living differently is unknown, but that each of the possible outcomes was tolerable - that I could live through whatever the outcome would be.  I am thinking of the first step as kind of like rock climbing.  Like when when you have to repel down the mountain before you can climb back up.  That moment when you turn around, sit back in the harness and step over the edge of the cliff - you know you are safe but you feel so incredibly unsafe, and then you feel free.  This - is like that I think.  How am I ever going to experience joy and love for example, if I don't step off this cliff?

Of course there is more, I spent hours with him on this trip, and others, but, well, maybe more will come out later.  Actually there is another important thing.  I live my life in a place of constant fear and anxiety.  I am rarely in the place that he calls present moment time.  Although I know what it feels like to be there and it is amazing.  I told him I was afraid and he asked me how old do you feel?  I said about 5.  He said the key to figuring out what is going on and how to solve it is pretty simple (he didn't say any of it is easy, just simple).  You have to ask yourself, when something happens and all of a sudden you are in a state of fear, the question is always whether you are experiencing fear right here, right now, in reality, in the present, or whether you are operating out of a place of trauma.  Hence the question how old do you feel?  If you are afraid, and you feel 5, you are operating out of a place of trauma, with the coping skills of your 5 year old self.  Well, given that I live in a constant state of something other than the moment - this really is the ultimate question for me.   What I feel right now, all this crap that I was telling him about during our conversation, it's coming from a place of trauma he says.  The same old place it has always come from.  And I think I might have learned a bit from him on how to take myself out of that old bad place and into the present, with the coping skills of a 35 year old and reality in front of me.  And if you can get right with whether or not you are in reality or in an old trauma, you can figure out what's next.  It's just an interesting way for me to look at my life on a moment to moment basis I suppose.

Because he is so in to being in the present moment, I did ask him how to stay there.  And he basically said you can't.  It's just a constant readjustment to the present moment, to living a conscious life rather than an unconscious one.  It's constantly asking yourself how old do I feel?  What is actually going on right in front of me?  He also has a lot to say about accountability - about showing up for yourself, not abandoning yourself - and by the way, taking responsibility for your half of every relationship you are in.  100% responsibility.  That means you no longer get to make it about anyone else but you and you no longer get to make excuses.

He also says we live our lives according to a pattern that has been ingrained in us through our culture and the crazy people who raised us.  It says - guess at what the other person is thinking.  Guess at what the other person is feeling.  And then make up a story about why they are behaving the way they are.  But make damn sure you don't talk to them about it.  So true.  I think most of us are walking around making up stories about other people - over which we have no control and no responsibility.  And then we wonder why life and relationships don't work so well.  Just try to catch yourself doing this - you might be surprised how often we are caught up in other people's stuff and we don't belong there.

Instead, he says pay attention to what YOU think, pay attention to what YOU feel, and watch how it creates your behavior.  That you don't have to guess about.  If you do something and it doesn't work, DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE.  Try something different.  If that doesn't work, ask for help.

I asked him how to get the negative voice out of my head.  The voice of my mother and my past - the one that says you are not lovable, you are not good enough, you are not smart enough, you are not capable - and he said start writing it down.  Every negative thing you say to yourself in a day, write it down and pretty damn quick you will stop talking to yourself that way.  What if you are capable he asked me?  What if you are lovable, what if you are in fact incredible?  What if I am?

So there you go.  There is so much more - but there's a little free (expensive) advice from Wyatt.  Read his books.  I have worked with Wyatt with many different groups of people and I always hear at least one person say the experience changed their life.  He has certainly changed mine.

Hanging with Wyatt Webb at Miraval

The end is the beginning is today

I'm having a moment here.  I went on a "walk and talk" with Coach Leigh here at Miraval, the one who gave the Reflect and Transcend lecture, and she pointed something out to me.  It's kind of like one of those "duh" moments.  I started out telling her how the visualization exercise made me feel, what it made me realize about my life and then I said I have all this stuff to process still - my childhood, breast cancer, and all that comes with it.  I have to process it.  Process.  Process.  Process.  She asked me what that even means.  What does processing look like and what does it look like when the processing is done?  Well hell - I don't know.  I never thought about what the end point would be - I just knew I hadn't arrived because I had not yet achieved what felt like "resolution" of my too many to count issues.

So we walked around the desert and talked.  She asked questions, I answered them.  She had an observation - she said you are obviously incredibly intelligent, you know exactly what happened to you, you understand your behaviors, you get why you are the way you are and why you do what you do, you even want to change those things, you are incredibly self-aware - you have processed and analyzed the shit out of yourself.  There is nothing left to "process."  I've never thought of it this way.  That there could be an "end point" without a resolution, or without a great epiphany or an amazing transformation of personality.  She said it doesn't work that way - that there is no real end point, there is no real resolution, though there may be a feeling sometimes of the ability to move beyond something.  You don't truly and fully move beyond it - you are who you are because of your experiences.  You cannot change what happened to you.  Dr. Frank, the exorcism man, said something very important to me the other day when I first showed up at his door.  He said - you realize that you are not meant to spend the second half of your life undoing what was done to you in the first half, right?  Let's just say, I have been working on the undoing for about 14 years already and I feel as fucked up as I ever have.

So Coach Leigh said this is it - you are done.  This is the "end point" you have been waiting for.  Wow, how incredibly anti-climactic.  Shit, now what?  I guess that this is where the rubber meets the road so to speak.  Now you keep living.  Hasn't that always been the question anyway really?  How do I live in the aftermath of what I have suffered, which after my many many years of and varying attempts at "processing," I have deemed to be a multitude of traumas.  How do you live with what you have lost?  Or perhaps without what you never got in the first place but should have?  How do you live with what is left in the wake of what you have suffered?  If there isn't closure, if there isn't an ending, if there is no so-called resolution, then what the fuck am I doing?

She said that life is a moment to moment to moment attempt.  It is a momentary attempt at doing better, living better, living differently, choosing differently, taking chances, letting go.  And there are momentary successes and momentary failures.  Life is happening in those moments and I hate to refer to the journey and the destination because we all hate that saying even though we know it's true, but I've been missing the point.  I have always struggled with this - missing the moment.  Present moment time.  That's another post.

So how do you move on then?  How do you change?  How do you choose differently, live differently?  She said it the other day during her lecture.  You must approach situations and live life with what she calls blind optimism, or what someone else might call faith.  

A Native American healing ceremony

Otherwise known as the exorcism.  I have never done anything like this - though I consider myself to be a spiritual person.  I guess I have always stuck to my AA higher power when it comes to things of this nature.  I guess my spiritual life has always been sort of contained to one world.  I can only say that I believe that something happened in that room yesterday, though I don't know what it was.  Call it magic if you want to.  He does.  And yes, call me crazy, but I would say that I am a believer in things that are not of this world, that defy explanation.  Whether it works simply because you want it to, or because, well, it's real - I can't really say.  I don't know how to tell you about it - or if I even want to tell you about it.  There was drumming, feathers, burning things, chanting in 5 languages, praying, acupuncture and on and on it went for two hours.  I guess I would say that to understand, you would really have to have been there.  It is sufficient to say that I left a part of me behind - that I won't miss, and that I am going to move beyond what is blocking me.

Reflecting and transcending

If I had to sum up the lecture that I went to yesterday into one sentence, I couldn't do it.  It's hard to even process what happened in there really, or in my brain I should say.  But it woke me up.  It was sort of about how to live your best life.  Sort of.  She asked us a series of questions that we had to answer - gut level reaction type answer to get at the point.  And then we did a very powerful visualization exercise.  Then we answered a few more questions.  I wish I was better at processing these experiences after they happen - but it's really hard.  I am going to try though.  This probably isn't going to make much sense.

Below is like a synopsis of the exercise we did - along with my own personal answers to the questions we had to ask ourselves.  You might consider the following questions and think about your own life.  Have you found your purpose and are you living it?  If not, why not?  And are you willing to do what it takes to make the changes to improve your life?

1. Up to this point in my life, what is the thing that I am most proud of?  Surviving breast cancer and getting sober.  Why?  Because these are the two hardest things I have ever done.

2. If I could be granted one wish when I leave Miraval, what would it be?  To achieve living in present moment time.

3. If I could climb to the top of a mountain and scream any one thing at the top of my lungs to all of the people who exist in my world, what would I scream?  I am good enough. 

4. If you could trade places with me and stand up here and give this lecture, what would you speak about? Surviving breast cancer and the positive ways in which it can change your life.  Hmm, either that or getting sober - or maybe both.

Then we paused for a visualization exercise.  Close your eyes and imagine you are on your death bed.  Imagine what that would feel like and try to really feel the emotions.  Think about the people you would invite one by one to visit you.  Think about what you would say to each person.  What you would want them to know and remember and what you would want them to say about you after you are gone.  Powerful stuff - for me anyway.  Because I lived this.  No, I wasn't on my death bed when I had breast cancer, but I did go through a very similar process to this visualization exercise - just naturally as a consequence of facing my own mortality.  Anyway, we did this exercise and it just sparked something inside of me.  I am not living my best life post breast cancer.  I am not living the life I wanted to live.  I am not the person I wanted to evolve to be.  There is deep sorrow inside of me associated with this failing on my part.

Moving on.  Okay, I am going to cut a few things out because the lecture was long and I know I am not explaining myself nearly adequately enough.

The next series of questions she asked us, I really couldn't answer in the few seconds we were given.  What inspires you?  What makes you happy?  What is the feeling of happiness and what produces it?  If you were asked to write a gratitude letter, who would you write it to and what would you thank them for?  What is the biggest obstacle keeping me from my own personal greatness?  Duh, myself.  She said the answer to this question, no matter what you wrote down, almost always boils down to fear.  Oh right fear.  Where have I heard that before?  AA, my inventory - my 4th step.  Everything comes back to fear.

So to change your life, or, well, even move in the direction of changing your life, to evolve so to speak, she said you need the following: to embrace discomfort in your life in the areas in which you are most vulnerable; that it is essential to live with blind optimism - it is the key to thriving; that you must live with purpose; that you must be internally driven because external rewards only go so far; you must learn to regulate your emotions to achieve better life problem solving skills because all too often our emotions get in the way; you should think of life ritualistically - are there rituals you could add to your life with positive consequences and are there rituals you could remove that have negative effects; and lastly, and most importantly, you need confidence to generate results/change.  What is confidence - it is getting to the point where you do not fear outcomes.  FEAR PEOPLE.  All signs point back to fear apparently.

Anyway, just something to think about.  Are you who you want to be?  Are you living your best life?  I booked a private "walk and talk" with her because I wanted to explore a few things deeper that came out of that visualization.  That's tomorrow.  For now I am off to the exorcism - will report back on that.

Trusting the process

Hi from Miraval.  Nothing today went as planned.  We were all set to go with Wyatt for like the better part of the day and he was sick.  We are rescheduled with Wyatt for later in the trip, but it was disappointing anyway.  Since everything was thrown out of whack I decided to go to two other lectures.  Maybe things work the way they work for reasons that I can't understand, because I got not one wake up call, but two.  A slap in the face that I might otherwise have missed completely.

I know that some people come here and have emotional breakdowns, life changing transformations etc.  I have a very intense four days ahead of me, emotionally, and I have decided to just give myself up to the process.  Here goes nothing.

Don't mistake the silence

Just because I haven't been posting, doesn't mean that anything is wrong.  Things are fine.  I am feeling conflicted about how to talk about it, so for now, let's just leave it as things are fine - and maybe this isn't the right avenue to explore certain feelings.  We will see I guess.  Right now I think I am just feeling like I can't talk about things here.  That bothers me of course.  And I need to come to some kind of resolution about how to continue to use this blog.

On the upside, we are at Miraval and having a great time.  I'll admit that I am having a hard time relaxing and getting into the groove of the place.  Sometimes it takes a day or two to really chill out, though I hoped it would happen immediately for me this time.  With all the stress and change that I have going on in my life right now, I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I can't get relaxed.  I have my first spa service tonight so that should help.

I guess I am also feeling a bit of, hmm, what's the word, nervous - because I think I am really in for some emotional work while I am here that I may not be prepared for and that I hadn't expected to happen.  I have heard that this is common and happens to many people - that they get here, to this totally safe place where everything is taken care of for you, and then they have an emotional breakdown.  That hasn't happened to me in my past 4 trips.  I think this time might be the kicker.  I have a good amount of time booked with Wyatt which I think is really important and I am also doing the world famous spa service called "Spirit Flight" which my roommate, who did it last year, can only describe as an exorcism.  Do I need one of those?  Shit - I kind of feel like I do.

Anyway, tomorrow we start doing challenges and we see Wyatt.  It's about to get interesting.  I'll keep you posted.

Is this how I am supposed to feel?

I have no problem admitting that I don't know how I am supposed to feel right now.  I wish I had someone who could tell me - yes, this is exactly right.  It's perfectly acceptable to freak the fuck out right before your person, who just moved, you know, across the world to be with you, arrives.  But I don't have anyone to tell me that so I am just guessing at what normal is right now I suppose.  And maybe when I meet him at the airport and see him, all of the nerves will go away, it will all just, you know, make sense again?  Anyway, he knows I have a blog but I have decided to keep it private.  He doesn't care and for me, well, I think I need to keep this place for myself.  So, I'll be posting very soon, and uh, wish me luck!

T minus 5

I guess I went MIA for like a month almost.  Whoops.  I didn't mean to.  I went to Florida at the end of March and then straight to Vermont when I got back at the beginning of April - and I guess I just haven't felt like writing.  I'll post a few more pictures from my trip to Vermont when I have a chance to get them off of my phone or my Facebook page.  Anyway, there is much going on.

For starters, it's May 1st.  Yikes.  May is really an emotional month for me.  My birthday is on the 17th and I've always hated my birthday.  And as you know, it is also my breast cancer anniversary.  I will officially be a 6 year breast cancer survivor on the 15th.  At this time, six years ago - I was almost 5 months sober, I had been living in Chicago for two and a half weeks, I had been at a new job for a week, I was right smack in the middle of trying to figure out if this enormous lump I had was a cyst or not...and the rest is, pretty much contained in this blog because per my brother's suggestion, I started this blog when I had breast cancer, to write about it I guess, process it etc. and I've been posting ever since.  And here we are, almost 6 years later.  There is the me before and the life I had and the me after and the life I have and I am not the same person.  I know that I have something that I need to say about everything I went through, but you will have to wait for that because I'm not ready to write it yet.

In other news, I have a really important interview next Tuesday.  It's a good job with a good company.  It would be interesting.  The timing is just right.  Fingers crossed for me!

The biggest news is that this coming Sunday, in T minus 5 days, Paul arrives, for well, forever?  We don't know actually for sure yet if he is going back to Canada to work for a few months or not.  Our plans have changed several times re immigration issues and it depends in part on my job situation.  But he will be here at least for May and June.  We are taking an amazing vacation to Miraval in Arizona from the 20th to the 29th and wouldn't it be great if I had a job to start when I got back?  If so, if I do, we will be moving in July to a new apartment in a different neighborhood in Manhattan.

And what is going through my mind right now?  Well, I would be lying if I said the only thing I am feeling is excitement, because the truth is, it's a little scary.  I mean no matter how sure I am, or we are, about what we are doing, in just a few days, my life is about to change, drastically, in ways that I am probably not even able to anticipate.  I mean, I haven't dated anyone since I had breast cancer and my relationship at the time came undone.  And I was pretty committed to just being alone, getting a sperm donor, living with my best friend in NYC.  And now Paul is getting off of a plane on Sunday with an engagement ring in his pocket (I hope he doesn't give it to me in the airport!), and my cat is going to lose his spot on the bed and and I had to make space in the closet (which trust me was not easy)... and my roommate, is, you know, losing her roommate.  In a lot of ways this is hard.  My life has kind of been in upheaval since I moved to NYC - and here we go, new job, new apartment, new...life...again....  Don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning my judgment or my decisions, I'm just being honest.  This is hard.  I'm not expecting this to be easy or perfect.  But isn't it kind of exciting?

I got to say hello to his parents the other day when he got back to Canada, for the first time since I was 18.  His mom started crying because she is so happy that we are happy.  And she wanted to tell me how excited she is to welcome me back into the family and to let me know that she and his dad will be supportive in any way they can.  She said she is excited to be a part of this journey, and boy, has it been a journey.