Day 30 reflections on this "one wild and precious life"

Day 30 This one wild and precious life?

The final day of the month long challenge and I feel a confession coming on...yes you know already, I missed a few. But in my head that's progress because I'm not seeing that as failure but  just allowing myself to make self preservation choices.

When I embarked on the challenge I did it to stimulate me to write a little more on some fresh topics and some of them worked well for that. But not all of the topics resonated with me, some were a bit too complicated for a life on the move ( Pinterest case in point!) and some days I just had no time. Now the old Audrey ( stop it!) would have made herself do it all or submit to some self flagellation for not doing it. But I am just accepting that some days it was a challenge too many.

Yesterday's penultimate challenge was to say three things you like about yourself. I had planned to do it . But I ran out of time ....and steam so here are two of them today. The first thing I like is that I like connecting with  people and my favourite thing to do is to build relationships with people who share my interests -on or off line. And this week alone I have met people I first knew on twitter or in the blogosphere ...how fantastic is that? The power of social media to connect not just in a shallow way but in a way that builds meaningful links. We are in transformational times and  I'm sure we can use this ability to connect differently in powerful ways in the future.

The second thing is that I like that I am open to new challenges, not just of the blogging variety, but in life in general. Having a new career is of course my major new challenge and its really important that as I work with others to look deeper in themselves to grow and develop, that I too am open for that. It's not easy to move out of your comfort zone in to new terrain and each time I do it I have moments when I wonder why.....why on earth I am putting myself through it but also why on earth I didn't do it earlier! We are all complex beings and maybe a positive legacy of a life threatening disease for me...is not to miss the challenges I can learn from and that can bring me fresh connection, new joy.

My reflections on the blogging challenge is that it did inspire me to write a little more. Some of the topics provoked unexpected insights. The image of the black panther was one in particular, evoking so many reactions. The question on 
whether adversity makes us bloom another trigger, this time of anger. Yes we can learn new things from the cancer but frankly most of them could perhaps be learned in much less traumatic ways.

My anniversary post helped me acknowledge not just my history but also my loss. Much though I may have wanted to have boxed it all away , tied up with a nice pink ribbon it just wasn't that easy. And I have had to face I have lost my wellbeing, my confidence in my health and in some respects,my job ( my choice but not for reasons of my choosing).

So the blogging challenge helped me express some things I hope have helped others, have some cathartic release and enabled some honest self appraisal. Mmmmm I wonder what the next challenge could be for this "one wild and precious life."

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver 

Never doubt...every day courage Day 22

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” - Margaret Mead

When I did counselling training some  years ago now, a phrase I heard stayed with me. It was "challenge people on their strengths". In other words open people's minds to the possible, rather than focus on what they aren't doing or can't do. It always resonated with me and so it came to mind again with this task today.

What fuels my activism is when I see others living their dreams for a better world, facing their challenges head on, being the change they want to see in the world. They inspire me to expect more, overcome the barriers, let go of the learned helplessness or even hopelessness and hold fast to my fundamental beliefs that things can be better.

Those people who stand firm- in the fire of dissent, of ridicule, of belittling, of hierarchy,  of power- and say  "this is not inevitable, this can be better". It's that everyday courage that proclaims their right to stand  alone and be true to their beliefs. It's the courage to stand with the discomfort, against the tide and know that your conviction is guiding you in the right direction.

Whatever the cause, this courage always inspires me and gives me the strength to hold fast to my own belief in a heartful health system, not only for breast cancer but for all requiring health and social care.

One that listens, cares, respects and enables people to be  active and engaged partners in their care, not merely passive recipients. A system that recognises the power of the shared individual experience to enable an improved experience for all. A system that recognises that all involved in providing the service need to feel equally valued and confident to live out the values themselves.

I do believe it can happen if we are all willing to let go of what gets in the way and respect and trust that change can happen....and if we hold fast to our courage to follow it through.

If we had no winter? Day 21

“The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.” – Mulan

Perhaps we have all witnessed this? The person who grows with their challenge, whose inner beauty emerges more fully as they meet their  challenge head on. Their grace uplifting to witness and wonder at. I have friends whose wisdom and inner peace has deepened as they have approached their terminal illnesses. I have learned so much from them and had conversations that I could never have hoped to have with others in different circumstance. A rare gift in many respects and their beauty has indeed shone.

But when I think of what makes me bloom, it's not adversity. Adversity has many impacts I have found. It clarifies the priorities in life, the sharp contrasts brought into focus. It makes you find your courage in the deeper places . It makes you witness those you love having to struggle alongside you, your adversity inevitably theirs. It brings pain in all it's forms. It challenges you to find solutions in unexplored places. It helps you learn you can survive those challenging times. It reminds you that life can have many phases, unplanned and unprepared for so don't waste it. It makes you value the spring. 

But it doesn't make me bloom.

What makes me bloom is quite , quite different. It's feeling fully engaged with life. It's feeling that I am making a difference in my work and valued for what I do. It's seeing those I love, my family and friends,  happy and living with meaning in their lives. It's finding joy in the simple things in life, in a walk on a beach, a bird in flight and the flower appearing in spring. It's in loving and being loved in return.

I take it back...Day 18

Today's challenge took me back to my first diagnosis with cancer. I had just returned to my role as a nurse after sick leave and bereavement leave.I was working in a medical practice in my own town. I specialised in seeing people with long term conditions and for counselling. I loved my work.

It was all about the relationships we built, we got to be part of their lives, we knew their families, we heard stories no others were told, they trusted us. We shared their ups and downs .....but it wasn't the deal that they shared ours. So although I had just returned after a particularly awful time in my life, my patients in the main did not know.  But they had felt my absence at some level.

And so it was one day-when I was so exhausted- the mojo having long since left town, a certain older woman came into the consulting room. We knew each other and she harrumphed into the chair, looked me straight in the eye and demanded-"so where have you been, on a course or something?" For me it was the step too far. The straw that broke the back of the carer who was feeling the burden of guilt ( however unfounded that was) for letting so many others down. I was struggling with the energy to care for my children, I felt I had been unable to really help my dying father and my grieving mother as I would have wanted to in other circumstance. Her challenge touched raw nerves and the part of me that was still licking my own wounds.

"No , not a course I said, I have been having treatment for breast cancer". Of course she was stunned and also so upset for me. I was young, and it was the last thing she expected. I spent the next ten minutes reassuring her and kicking myself. I have almost forgiven myself for cracking and not just shaking it off as I had so many other things and said nothing.But I'm human and sometimes we need to just be that.

Shouting out on Day 13

Today's challenge is a shout out to fellow activists who have helped you. I am inspired by many people I see as activists making a difference for others but there are only two breast cancer blogs I regularly follow. That is no disservice to the others, it's just that it overwhelms me to read too much about breast cancer so by necessity I ration my intake. The two blogs I read are by Marie of @jbbc Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer and Yvonne of Time to Consider the Lillies. I love their quiet wisdom, lyrical prose and deep honesty about the impact breast cancer has had on their lives.

I feel that often they are talking my truths , eloquently describing my own pain. And even with all that when their blogs pop up in my email I look forward to reading them. We cover three countries and two continents and  although we share a celtic heritage, what is our true community is the landscape left by breast cancer. I'm so glad to have found them in that community...I just wish for their sakes.....and for so many others that it was in different circumstance. So this is my way of giving a big shout out to them.

The blogs in particular I would like to draw your attention to during this months challenge are therefore from Marie and Yvonne.
Marie's letter to her 16 year old self was especially beautiful. But when she wrote that she didn't want to say too much about the future to her as she didn't want to scare her it said so,so much. I lived her grief with her in that monent. Thanks so much Marie for your wisdom and for how you create a community in breast cancer for so many.
http://journeyingbeyondbreastcancer.com/2013/04/06/health-activist-writers-month-challenge-day-6-hawmc-2/

And from Yvonne I want to share with you her blog entitled the Cancer Ice breaker. I love that she ignored the brief and broke the rules that day to write something she wanted to.http://timetoconsiderthelilies.com/2013/04/09/breast-cancer-ice-breaker/
Keep writing and breaking the rules all! 

Take time to be kind....to yourself. Day 12

Day 12 is what would you advice yourself on day of diagnosis. I am not at my desk so this is by necessity simple and fast. But really so is my message. It's:

Take time to be kind to yourself, don't worry about work, prioritise yourself, and focus on getting through treatment and getting well again.

I tried to keep everything going and I couldn't really do that and do what I needed to recover. Would I do it differently now. Yes indeed. 

First do no harm?

First do no harm?

When I first started work in charities I found people would tell me their stories, first of diabetes, more recently with breast cancer. Taxi journeys became sources of information, a litmus test of services and experiences of living with these conditions. It's amazing once the flood gates are opened how revealing the conversations become.

And more recently as my work focuses on the lived experience of care, these are now my landscape. Discussions may start differently but in time I hear a story of care......or let's be honest often it's just the opposite. By Friday afternoon I wanted to put my head on the desk and weep at the poor care and insensitivity I had heard about in that one day alone.  It grieves me sorely to say it but its true.

A book I read as a student nurse came back to me " Limits to medicine" by Ivan Illich . It's not a lazy read for a Sunday morning under the covers. It demands your full engagement and for those like me, time to stop and recover from its challenging messages. It was written in the 1970s but as I have dipped back into the text I am reeling from its contemporary resonance.

Illich describes three levels of iatrogenesis. Clinical iatrogenesis is the injury done to patients by ineffective care and potentially at times toxic treatments.

Social iatrogenesis results from the medicalisation of life. More and more problems are seen as amenable to medical intervention. Pharmaceutical companies arguably then developing expensive treatments for previously unknown diseases. Society finding solutions to its ill-health in medicine alone.

Worse than all of this for Illich is cultural iatrogenesis, the destruction of traditional ways of dealing with and making sense of death, pain, and sickness. “A society's image of death,” argues Illich, “reveals the level of independence of its people, their personal relatedness, self reliance, and aliveness.” 

Do we recognise these levels in the crisis we hear about daily in healthcare?Are we dealing with those very issues in our care systems now? Our communities in the developed world have seen signs of losing their potential to care for and support their own. Individuals have lost the same capacity to self care, persuaded by modern medicine that a pill instead will offer salvation? And our welcome recent focus on patient safety a much needed response to the potential of care and treatment to cause harm.

But it can be different once we recognise the need for change. Look at the success of the patient safety programmes. The self management fund in Scotland a hugely valuable approach to enabling people and communities too unlock their own capacity, to find non medical solutions to improving their well-being. The new public health not only talking about asset based approaches ( traditional healthcare tends to focus on deficits) but on all the dimensions of the Fifth wave......including dare I say...love being our force for change. A heartful driven approach.

I'm an optimist at heart...I need to see the potential to change. Consequently I like the point made by  Phil Hanlon and Sandra Carlisle in After Now. "The lesson of history is that we should be hopeful ........we have already observed how traumatising it was for the crofters to be pulled off the land and into factories...Yet each of these transitions represented an important chapter in human history. Each transition brought in new ways of living which brought many benefits. That, we hope , is whats next for a healthy Scotland."

Reasons to be heartful
What Illich drew to our awareness thirty years ago now in many ways is received wisdom. At some levels we are now responding to it. That gives me hope for the future but also begs the question.......who aren't we listening to now? Who could really help us avoid learning the hard way?