The Power of AND

No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up. ~Regina Brett

This has been the motto of my life for 6 decades. Get up, get in action, make shit happen, an object in motion, yata yata…

It’s so interesting to find myself in a place where that isn’t always the best thing. I am discovering the power of AND.

I am tired AND I am showing up.

I am nauseous AND look at that sunrise!

I am concerned about the upcoming scan AND damn, am I grateful to be alive today.

Two things can be true at once. We don’t have to choose.

I am tolerating these chemo meds well. Fatigue, loss of appetite and sensitivity to sunshine (boo) are the side effects. AND on most days, I feel mostly normal. Sometimes I even forget…

The bottom line is, I will be on these meds for the rest of my life. I think of it like diabetes or MS, something that I can live with. AND it still sucks.

I hope I have a long road ahead of me. AND I want a nap.

I will leave you with a lovely little poem by Mark Nepo AND a big thank you for being in my life.

AND…

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes a duet of

wonder and grief.

The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat.

The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of the next stranger.

In the very center, under it all, what we have that no one can take away and all that we’ve lost face each other.

It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured

by a holiness that exists inside everything.

I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

About Denise Druce

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