Biopsy, Birthday, Surgery, and Edits

Hello From Here

Hello ♡,

Brené Brown has a personal rule that she doesn’t write about something until she has processed it privately. I learned this from her, and I have always followed this rule too. But today, I am adapting it to honor a process I am in, because I will be here for a minute.

I had a biopsy on a suspicious place in my breast recently. The doctor performing the biopsy told me four times (I counted) that she was sure it was benign. She also loved my shoes and was wearing the same pair. Sweet. She was great, but her willing it with all her optimism to be benign didn’t work.

The song Unstoppable, by Sia, was playing during the biopsy. The same song my sweet and powerful Emma would be singing at this year’s talent show days later. (Remember the fierceness of her singing last year?) It felt like interesting timing, but I didn’t want to be Unstoppable, I wanted to be benign.

Photo by Hamid Roshaan on Unsplash

My husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday this week, worried he hadn’t planned something with all we have been juggling. I told him all I wanted was surgery to get this out. I already had taken the day off after all! My biopsy did not come back benign—it came back atypical, and is in their words “one step before cancer.” What this also means is that in addition to my risk for getting breast cancer in the future now much higher, there is a chance there is cancer in there right now too.

We met with the surgeon last week. He was kind, skillful, and masterful at slipping in the odds he finds cancer in a breezy, sing-song voice. I am watching you, I thought, I saw that. I talk to people for a living, I knew exactly what he was doing. His tone made it sound about as worrisome as a cavity. I liked the sound of that tune. But the reality of cancer risk sank in when I left.

I won’t get surgery for my birthday because there is a long line of other women ahead of me. I have about a month to wait. I think about all these women, nameless to me, but so very important to a lots of other people. I think about the women facing much bigger surgeries and life-threatening diagnoses. Each one, scrambling to schedule, to make it work, to find a way for saving their own lives to fit into their busy schedules.

In the middle of this I am in final edits (yes, final edits!!) for my book. They are not too bad, but they have asked more vulnerability of me. More?? I thought. This isn’t a memoir, but it does have an important story of mine–a formative one, one that helped fashion my passion for this work and this field. I understand what the reader needs, I hear the feedback. But, how much more vulnerable do I need to be? I wonder. I survey my bruised biopsy chest and upcoming surgery on the calendar.

Oh, this much.

I have a book on my nightstand called Uncertain. I often want to knock it off the table. It has sat there for weeks after I heard the author on a favorite podcast with Kate C. Bowler (love her). I haven’t read it yet, I have avoided it in fact. Because it promises to tell me the power of living in uncertainty. I knew I needed to know this, because we all do. I guess my lesson is coming another way.

And here is what I have decided in this uncertainty. Like a driver learning to drive on ice, I am learning to turn into the skid. You can’t slam the brakes on ice, you have to turn in the direction your back wheels are sliding. I can’t slam the brakes on my life right now or I would go spinning out of control. I am moving in the direction my life is taking me, with all its uncertainty. How I see it? Any choice to do otherwise was really just a privileged illusion before.

Put another way, I am allowing the river to take me. Now, that doesn’t mean I am not rowing like hell at moments, and asking all my people to be in the boat. It just means I refuse to let the false anchor of certainty be my only grounding in this unpredictable world.

“Certainty” just isn’t a strong enough anchor, is it? And we all know this in our bones.

And the grasping for all this certainty has one unintended effect. We miss every good, and sacred, and hilarious, and maddening, and beautiful thing right here, right now. Right in front of us. It is all right here. I felt jealous of the me before the biopsy, worrying about something silly. Then I realized I have the opportunity to live differently right now, right here. It is all right here. In the quest for shoring everything up in certainty we can miss this moment.

I don’t have to know you to know that you feel uncertainty too. Whether it is watching in horror the lives lost far away, or political turmoil and instability that is barreling on. Maybe it is a scary diagnosis, a chronic illness, or an unexpected job loss. Maybe it is just being a parent in the world of a little one, or an adult child, and just wanting more than anything to protect them from all harm. We are all human, and our uncertainty and things changing are some of the few things we are all guaranteed.

I am not entitled to good health. I do hope to be reporting back in weeks to come that I am just facing elevated risk, not active cancer. I am praying for just that. But even if I don’t, and until and after that, I am turning into the uncertainty–I’m feeling the actual gift that the joy and terror of being a vulnerable human is.

And as I give up on the false anchor of certainty, I am left with another choice. I am going to let this shape me. In all the ways I don’t expect, all the ways I don’t want it to, and all the ways I am already so grateful it has: More present. Grateful. Soft. Prayerful. Reliant on God. Vulnerable. Open. Letting it be and still being ok.

With you, turning into the uncertainty in your life,

Monica

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I hope you will join me next week when I tell you about one of my favorite nights of the year: my daughter’s school talent show. Read about last year’s here.

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New!! Episode 125 - Guided Meditation: Creating a Moment of Space