I have long wanted to begin a blog. My vision for the DMGdomoregood website is that it becomes a hub for a community of people who care deeply about others and about each other. My hope is that those who wander this way can find some connection, understanding, peace and everyday wisdom through their interaction. I know that a personal connection is important in marketing and creating that sense of community, belonging, and engagement that is required to move the vision of HeARTh and DMG forward. What I didn't know was what my "way in" would be. And now I have it. I have just been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Now let me back track a bit. I have always felt different, not quite "normal." Like many people in the world, I have a brain that works differently. And before I knew what mental illness was, it took its toll on what I, for a long time, considered an otherwise safe, secure, and even idyllic childhood. Looking back from where I am now, there were hints and contributions from an early age, and the "crash" was well on it's way in my teen years. Then I was married and had five children before I was 26. The post partum depression label obscured what I have learned since then was a bipolar "constitution." There is a whole lot more to share about all of that and the intervening years and my journey in and out of mental illness and into entrepreneurship and community development.
That journey embedded in me a vision for and a drive to create a different kind of experience, if I could, for others, than the one I had. And I know the details will unfold and
hopefully be helpful, if you decide to tag along with me through this current experience. But this thing that has just happened, after overcoming so much and doing so much and coming so far in learning the art of "being me," and not being finished yet, but feeling the spectre of uncertainty about how much time I might have left to do so, has solidified some things for me and has provided the way in to that story. Today, as a wife, the mother of five, mother in law of five more, the grandmother of 14 (and counting), as a daughter, sister, auntie, cousin, friend, artist, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur, business partner, boss, collaborator and vision holder, I received a diagnosis of breast cancer and it has put a lot of things about being me into focus. Things and truths, and inspirations I have gathered thus far, that I will bump into going forward into this new experience, and that I want to, need to make sure I share.
For today, I will leave you with some things I recognize, and that you may identify with (feel free to take from this what you will, leave the rest, and to add your own realizations to this list)-
- As much as I am wise, I am still so foolish
- I can't dwell on the shoulda coulda wouldas that have come as insights and inklings over the years, to which I did or did not pay attention, and which have become so much clearer in hindsight
-All I can do is from this day on
-I am okay with whatever happens, not so much because I am amazing, but because I have to be okay with whatever happens in order to have any portion of peace in the intervening moments
-My belief system is more deeply ingrained in me than I had ever considered it to be and it is what I am leaning into
-There are so many others enduring their own trails, heartaches, regrets, mountains to climb and crosses to bear and I am not alone in my experience
-I cannot bring myself to wish I could be exempt from hard things. It is unjust in light of the suffering that is happening in this world
-It will be what it is and what will be will be, and all I can do is what I can do
-What matters now is what has always mattered, and that is to leave the way I came through a little better for those who come after
-Habits don't magically change overnight with a (potentially) life-threatening diagnosis, although your mindfulness most certainly does- (precontemplation to contemplation)
-The stages of change are in process for various things and at various stages across your life and way of being