Today I read about 70 pages for the Marriage and Family Therapy course I am taking this semester – and I remember most of what I read!
A year ago, this would not have been worth mentioning. Of course I read and of course I remembered! But once I got my cancer diagnosis and started chemo, everything changed: I read three pages (granted, it was a textbook on statistics) and when I looked back, I saw that I had read it – after all I had underlined key phrases here and there – but I could not remember a thing I had read. I tried and struggled through that semester (still have the majority of assignments to write). I was discouraged, annoyed at my “stupidity”, my inability to do what I usually do. My daughter made me smile when at one point she tried to encourage me: “Mom, before you were brilliant, now you are like most other people – no one notices that your brain is foggy unless you tell them.” Well, at least my professor noticed, I noticed, and during the days after each chemo treatment, just about everyone else noticed!
And then I thought about the many people for whom this is a daily struggle, even without cancer. How many classmates have been jealous of me for being able to perform at such a high level with seemingly no effort at all when each and every assignment requested a huge effort on their part – and still their grades were much lower than mine? How often have I scoffed and thought, “well, if you’d just apply yourself a bit more…it’s not that hard”?
Or take my health: I’ve always taken a certain pride in being healthy (even though I have been overweight for the past eighteen years) – I hardly ever got sick, I was strong and able to do whatever I set my mind to. And then 2014 happened and things changed drastically. First my ruptured appendix (which in retrospect was my trial run at being weak; I learned to accept some of my limitations, learned to ask for help, learned to allow myself to depend on others – all with the prospect of “getting better soon” and then “not needing that anymore.”) – Was I ever wrong!
Just now, I read an article about infertility and felt humbled to realize how good my life has been in that regard: I got pregnant easily, had uneventful pregnancies, easy births, mostly no complications (with the exception of a miscarriage that ended my third pregnancy way too early, but even then I conceived again within a few months). Now I have four wonderful children and though their toddler years drove me close to insanity at times (and I get a few “reminders” of those times now that they are all in their teens), raising them has been mostly easy, far from some of the difficulties I hear others talk about. I have often taken all these things for granted and sometimes got upset with others, if they complained about their issues, after all, my experience was easy, so why couldn’t they stop complaining??
If nothing else, I believe cancer (and maybe my counselling training) has made me more gracious, more forgiving, more understanding. I have learned to “look behind the scenes”, to ask more questions, to listen more, and to be more empathetic towards others’ experiences. I have even learned to be more compassionate towards myself (still a work in progress, some days are better than others)! I have learned that weakness has its beauty; asking others for help is often as beneficial to them as it is to me – people want to give, to help, to support, if only I let them. I have learned to appreciate my (and others’) efforts – even if the outcome is not “as good as it could be”. And I have learned to be more appreciative of what I have right now: my children, my friends, my church, the weather (whether there is sunshine or the eery beauty of fog), the good days when cancer seems only like a bad dream, time to do art work and so many other things I enjoy.
I guess, I am still learning (and I can be very impatient with that process), but overall there are fewer “it”s that I’m taking for granted.
colorfullyaliveart 