Author: Pursuitofkindness

For nine months I showed up, twice a month, then every week and then every day. I showed up, every time, to willingly hand over a piece of my identity.

I could make a list of everything I consciously submitted to this process. So many tangible sacrifices. I gave up privileges. I gave up my ability to recognize myself in a mirror and gave up days at the park with my girls. Yet at the end of the process, these aren’t the sacrifices that are leaving me raw.

On the last day of my cancer treatments I was not jumping for joy, like you might think. Instead I sat, quietly, with tears rolling down my face. Raw, is the best way I know to describe the feeling.

I expected, as my strength returned, I would find myself as I was last November. Instead I find myself changed. The landscape of my heart has been altered more than that of my skin. I feel as if I have shed an old identity. One that served me well but was not to be carried into a new era.

Here at the end, I realize I spent nine months focusing on the external changes and haven’t spent enough time acknowledging the internal.

Now that the season has passed, life looks different. I look different. I feel different.  And I am not sure how to start again.

Starting a blog seems impossible.

I know I want to write.

I know I want to reflect.

Yet a commitment to something new feels like I have already failed.  I have tried something new in the past and not followed through.  But I have already declared I am not the person I was nine months ago.  I am not even the person I was yesterday.  So failure in my past does not dictate my future.

I come from a long line of people who “knew they could write” and who always were waiting for their big opportunity.  Ten years went by, then twenty, thirty.  No book, no articles, no poetry.

I have, until this moment in my life, lived without regrets.  I am confident in the decisions I made, the life I have made, the family that surrounds me.

So now I am in the process of finding something new.  A new identity.  A new purpose.  Something that feels relevant and true.  Right now, all I have is my thoughts and experiences, so I start with that.  I pray that this process of reflection will lead me to something,  I do not even have a glimmer of what that something is.  But a failure to begin, is a failure in itself.