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Choose Health

I’ve been choosing hope since 2007.  Most every day I make a conscious choice at some point to be hopeful.  Sometimes it is first thing in the morning.  Sometimes it isn’t until late at night.  Sometimes it is a pretty constant process throughout the day.  Point is, I choose hope almost every day and my life is better for it.  I have managed to choose hope through some fairly desperate times.  I am a better person for this choice.

Now I need to choose health.

I am overweight.  I am uncomfortable.  I am ashamed.  That’s not cool.

There are few things I hate more than people who whine about their weight, their health, their lives and don’t do a damn thing to change anything.  I don’t want to be that person, so generally I keep my negative thoughts to myself.  Which is never a good idea.  Negative thoughts breed negative thoughts.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.  I want to be healthier.  I need to be healthier.  Welcoming a baby into your home is a test of both endurance and stamina, you know?  It stuck me a few weeks ago that I needed to “choose health” just as I “choose hope.”  If I can choose hope through grief and terror and sadness, then damn, why do I continue to choose cheeseburgers, cokes, sugar, and sofas over health?  If choosing hope is a conscious choice I make day after day, I need to apply that strength and ability to my health.

It’s not rocket science.

Part of me is angry at myself for being in this place again.  Way back in 1999 I gained a bunch of weight in graduate school and my first job out of school.  It was not the happiest of times.  After a couple of years of this, I decided it was not the life I wanted and did what I needed to do to both look and feel better.  At that point, it was Weight Watchers and exercise.  Life was good.  I looked and felt great.

I maintained my healthy weight through eleven years of babies, cancer, caregiving, and grief.  Something changed last year.  After my fourth miscarriage, I started gaining weight again.  Ugh.  I stopped eating healthily.  I started justifying my poor diet and sedentary life.  I deserved that pizza.  Life is hard and soda helps.  I’m too tired to move.  Elastic waist pants are more comfortable anyway.

No more.

In my latest effort to choose hope, I have decided that 2013 is my year to choose health.  More fresh food.  Less sugar.  More exercise.  Less sloth.  More cooking.  Less fast food.  More sleep.  Less procrastination.  More sweat.  Less shame.

Mary Tyler Mom has been a lifeline for me — my church, my confidant, my pillar.  This is wholly unexpected, but so appreciated.  There is rarely a day that passes that I don’t feel gratitude for this amazing community of folks who read my words and keep me company.  Almost every day.

Strangely, my weight gain started with the creation of my Facebook community.  Hmmmmm.

I need to turn this thing around.  Me thinks, as it is the most cliche time of year to do so, some of you might be wanting to do the same.  My vision is that we could keep one another company as we do this.  I see a wall of support and camaraderie and ideas and motivation and encouragement.  I don’t want to join a gym to lose weight.  I don’t want to invest in tons of special food to feel healthy.  I want to do my own thing, but in the company of others.

I have created an event, “Choose Health,” on the Mary Tyler Mom page that you should feel free to join if you, too, want to choose health.  I will be posting about my triumphs and failings as I make the necessary steps to choose health.  It might be recipes, it might be a song that gets me going, it might be a log of how I moved that day.  It will evolve and become what it wants to become, which will most likely reflect what we need as we all choose health.

Okay!  I am IN January 2 and until then, I will be consuming copious amounts of all things unhealthy.  I will be eating sugar and carbs and cheese to my heart’s discontent!  But after January 2, I will choose health!  I will eat less and move more.  Join me, why don’t you.

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Breast Cancer Awareness: A Wife, A Husband, A Camera

About a year ago a friend posted a link to a Facebook page called, “My Wife’s Fight With Breast Cancer.”  I was intrigued, clicked on the link, and then was transported into the most beautiful love affair.  Angelo Merendino was using his camera to document his wife’s breast cancer treatment.  He was doing with photos what I was doing with words — raising awareness to educate others about The Beast and how it impacts the lives of those who have moved to Cancerville.

Jen shaving

(All photos courtesy of Angelo Merendino at My Wife’s Fight With Breast Cancer)

I felt an immediate kinship.

The love between Angelo and Jen is palpable, practically leaping off the screen.  It is real and intense and beautiful.  I felt both honored and voyeuristic when looking at the images, and I couldn’t stop.  Jen is beautiful.  Even now, ten months after her death from breast cancer at age 40, it is hard to imagine that the warm light in her eyes no longer shines.  The beauty of photography is that it captures so much nuance.  Angelo’s lens has made cancer real for thousands and thousands.

Jen, too, had a blog that I read.  Her writing was spare and direct, her words were honest and powerful.  The images, though, are what fleshed Jen out for me.  Caught in intimate poses — painting toenails on a windowsill and applying mascara in the bathroom mirror and being stared at by strangers as she used a walker on the streets of Manhattan.  Jen was your sister, your friend, your aunt, your neighbor, your daughter, your wife.

Jen

Another thing I responded to was that Jen and Angelo were fearless with what they showed to the camera.  The camera was not put away when things got tough.  The photos show us that despite Jen’s beauty, cancer is not pretty.  Chemo changes how we look, just as the cancer does.  Eyes hollow, cheeks swell, limbs lose strength, and hair falls out.  It is what happens.

And Angelo has not gone away.  He continues to point his camera and make a difference.  We see his grief from the back of a limosine trailing a hearse, we see the gravestone that marks Jen’s resting place.  This, too, is cancer.  Sometimes, that sad reality gets lost in the pink of October, and rhetoric about “winning the battle” and “beating the odds,” as if those folks who have died, the Jens and the Donnas, somehow lost or were bested or gave up.

Jen Two

Angelo’s documentary of Jen’s cancer has received wide acclaim.  Next month, they will show in a gallery in Perugia, Italy.  They have been featured on CNN, USA Today, The Guardian, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer.  People respond to them because they are so strikingly honest.  And hopeful.

Angelo has created an Indiegogo campaign to fund both a traveling exhibition of the photos and an accompanying book.  He is trying to raise $71,500 to make this a reality.  He is asking for our help.

October is rampant with pink.  It is everywhere, from NFL players to kitchen mixers to garbage trucks.  We are given opportunities to buy pink socks and pink bowls and pink t-shirts and pink mugs to “support the cause.” Awareness has been raised, there is no question about that.  The more relevant question, I think, is what are we aware of now?

Both

Angelo’s camera and photographs are a greater testament to awareness than any product you can buy.  By helping to support his campaign, you are helping to make a person with cancer feel less alone, grieve more easily, express their fears and worries and joys in the midst of cancer.  These are all such valuable things.

I encourage you to take a look at his work that will take you into the inner sanctum of cancer and love and life.  If it moves you, as it has me, offer a few dollars if you have them so that others can learn and feel less alone. If you don’t have them, please share this post on your social media feeds.  Tell others that they can support breast cancer awareness without promoting consumerism.

Angelo is my neighbor in Cancerville.  Now I also call him friend.  We get to meet next month and trade war stories over drinks.  This both excites and humbles me.  I will be helping my friend and neighbor.  I hope you will, too.

Jen on beach

RIP, Jen.  Angelo will meet you there.

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Strange(r) Encounters: Listen and Learn Edition

September is hard for me, draining.  Childhood Cancer Awareness Month starts out strong, but by the end, as it nears, I am tired.  And a little bit like an overexposed nerve, raw and vulnerable.  I thought this year would be easier, as I am not writing about Donna’s cancer, just cutting and pasting for new folks to discover.  Yeah, it ain’t easier.  Still hard, still draining.

One of the things that is both fulfilling and difficult are the loads of letters and encounters I have with folks moved by Donna’s story.  I am beyond humbled to read the stories that folks are kind enough to send me.  Like last year, I am behind on responding to all of them.  There is a lot of pain out there related to cancer.  Children, siblings, spouses, parents, grandparents, friends — so many good folks lost or in treatment.  It feels oppressive, sometimes, the weight cancer still demands I carry, both for myself, and since sharing Donna’s story, for others, too. 

Forgive me if I am not my usual charming self.  I’m trying, but it ain’t really working, is it?

Last week I wrote about an email message I had received about feeding Donna McDonald’s.  To me, it was a throw away post — I thought it was a bit fluffy, honestly.  Turns out, it struck a chord.  Lots of you had lots of feelings about both ‘McDonaldgate’ and my response to it. 

I am still getting the hang of people actually reading what I write and it still takes me by surprise.  In my head, I will always and forever be the shy, not terribly interesting outsider, looking in at all the other kids having fun.  The reality that my writing is often a fun and bright destination for thousands is well, WHACK-A-DOODLE.  You know I’m a dork, right?

I promised that the next day I would write a follow-up post about another exchange with a stranger.  Well, full disclosure time, I went on retreat after that post.  There are some big things happening in my personal life, it’s allergy season again (Hello, Sudafed!), and to be honest, I was simply flummoxed by both public and private responses to that post.  A week later, here I am again, six days late and lots of dollars short.  I truly appreciate both your patience and interest.  Here goes:

The day started great and I was happy to be taking my aunt, a Catholic sister, to the movies.  There was a documentary playing about Catholic sisters and their work in social justice.  Hard to believe, but we got there and it was sold out.  BOOM.  I had promised my 83 year old aunt a night out on the town, and instead, we were shut down.  I had originally hoped I could finagle a couple extra tickets given that I was with a NUN, but no go.  After a quick chat with my aunt, it was decided I would buy tickets for another night.  Just after I had finished that, a stranger approached me saying she had an extra ticket for my aunt for that night’s show. 

Well, my aunt jumped on it.  She came for a movie and she was gonna see a movie!  What I didn’t immediately realize is that the stranger had given my aunt her ticket, leaving no ticket for herself.  Wow.  The kindness of strangers strikes again.  How utterly generous.  Even more, she demanded to buy me booze and popcorn while my aunt watched the film, and we would chat and get to know one another.  Hmmmm.  Okay.  This felt like one of those odd, potentially awesome exchanges, so I was game.  I offered to get the concessions and was shut down.  Stranger would have none of it.

We sat down in the suddenly empty and quiet lobby.  The art school students were cashing out the box office.  We chatted.  Stranger was interesting, had done some amazing things in her 60+ years of life.  She had the tendency to ask a question of me but then answer it herself.  Honestly, it made sense to me.  Maybe she was lonely and her night out at the movies had turned into a night out chatting with a stranger.  I was happy listening.  And her life story was fascinating.  Truly.  There are so many different types of pain in the world, so many ways a child is denied what they need.  She shared openly about her own childhood and how tough experiences had shaped her adulthood.

After a long while, she said, “But enough about me, I want to know about you.”  I shared a bit.  I was a mother, a wife, a social worker, a writer.  I also mentioned being a prospective adoptive parent, as that was loosely related to her own story.  Stranger jumped on that.  She strongly advised that we only choose a healthy child and then offered some suggestions about how we could find a local child to adopt.  Blogging teaches you that everyone has an opinion and a story, so hearing another avenue to explore was not unexpected. 

Stranger then asked why we were choosing to adopt.  I told her about Donna.  Briefly, as Stranger had a lot to say, too.  The fact that we had lost a child to cancer confirmed her suggestion that we only parent a healthy child.  I countered that things aren’t always as they seem — that Donna was born perfectly healthy and that we simply don’t know what lies ahead for us.  Well, Stranger had a lot to say about that, too.  I got an earful about pediatric cancer research and its uselessless.  That the numbers of kids affected simply were not sufficient to merit all the money spent on them. 

I played devil’s advocate and talked about how 60 years ago leukemia was a death sentence, but that today 90% of children with leukemia will survive.  Stranger had a counter argument for everything.  Survivors of pediatric cancer would be doomed soon enough, she said, with secondary cancers that would take their lives.  I told her about the treatment Donna had and that she lived for 31 months after an initial prognosis of 3 months.  I got a lecture about cost and suffering. 

I was dumbstruck.  I’ve had blog commenters say the exact same thing to me, but never had someone said that to my face. 

What she really, really wanted to impart to me, though, as she clarified later, was that whatever energy and $ we dedicated to Donna’s Good Things, the charity created to honor Donna’s life, it would be wasted.  W.A.S.T.E.D.  “Do-gooder charities” only harm the people they are attempting to help.  She shared more of her story.  You can’t argue with another’s story — it is theirs, not yours — and she did, indeed, seem damaged by what life had not given her, what charities could not overcome in her sad upbringing. 

What she advised was that Mary Tyler Dad and I adopt not one, but two or more children if we could do it.  Love those children thoroughly.  Love those children completely.  Her point was that loving and shaping contributing members of society — whole people who knew and trusted love — would be a more powerful tribute to Donna than any charity ever could be. 

And then she left, quick as a flash.

It is easy to discount the words of a stranger, as I easily did with the McDonald’s mom.  It is less easy to discount the words of a hurt and empty person sitting across from you who just bought you popcorn.  “I want to be a real person someday,” was what Stranger said to me earlier in the conversation, then chuckled as she guessed she hadn’t quite made it there yet.  I can’t condemn her.  I can’t argue with her.  I just feel for her, hurt for her, oddly, understand her. 

Sometimes, you gots to tell people to STFU.  And other times, you have to be quiet and listen and learn and understand. 

And then finish your popcorn.