To Learn and to Light

Life is so fucking fragile. The future is not promised to any of us. People always say that in a prophetic, existential kind of way, but it’s different when that knowledge crashes into you like a Mack truck. When you feel it in your bones. When something comes along and shatters all the plans you had and the invincibility you once felt.

Three weeks ago I felt like I knew what my future would look like, at least in some sense. In one phone call it was all swept away.

Now on a daily basis I find myself wondering if any cancer cells will remain in my body after I complete treatment, hunkered down in another of my organs waiting for a rainy day to grow again. I find myself bartering with God for some intangible, illusively “acceptable” number of eggs during the egg retrieval procedures I never expected to need so that I might someday still have a chance at the children I’ve always so badly wanted. I find myself grieving the loss of normalcy my life once had, friendships I can feel slipping away, and vitality teetering on the next procedure, or the one after that. I find myself fearful of the devastation that chemotherapy will level on my life and my body. I find myself equally fearful and crushed by the impending surgery that will change my body forever. I find myself grieving over the impending loss of my youth and vitality when they shut down my hormones to starve my cancer for the next five years of my life.

I never went to school to learn the divine math to solve the equation for how many eggs I would need to make a healthy baby after a battle with cancer. I never knew I would need to know that kind of algebra. I guess I’m going to school for that now. Do 4 eggs plus 1 cancer-free body equal at least 1 healthy baby? Who’s to say. Do 4 mature eggs equal at least 1 viable embryo? Who’s to say. What about the husband variable? We haven’t even accounted for that part of the equation yet. Can 1 woman plus 1 case of breast cancer plus 1 indeterminate variable of fertility really equal 1 willing male participant for the role of husband and father? Who’s to say. All I know for sure is that no aspect of this equation equals complete certainty anymore.

The rub I quite recently realized is that I was never actually meant to find certainty in any of these external variables. Which absolutely pisses me off to no end. My perceived certainty about any or all of these variables before I found out about the cancer was the fallacy all along. The only true certainty that ever existed in the first place is the idea that the only way to actually unburden myself from the fears around the future and all its uncertainty was to find out how to be enough on my own. To know that if everything and everyone else in my life fell away, I would be okay. That the sum of just myself was, is, and would always be enough all along.

When every external variable in your life becomes uncertain, what ground is solid enough to stand on? When uncertainty is the only actual certainty you have left, what keeps you safe? When things like your recovery, remission, fertility, and future are all on the line, how do you stay hopeful? And when all you can see is the darkness around you that feels like it will swallow you whole, how do you find the light?

I sat and thought about what my own definition of love is. What I came up with is that I believe love is both the act of sending light out into the darkness and the ability to receive light into all of one’s own dark places.

Brené Brown has a quote that says:

“No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to you because they believe in your capacity to know your darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.”

It feels pessimistic to say, but I guess it feels like that’s the only thing I really have going for me right now.

I guess I am realizing that it’s only until I sit in my own darkness and learn how to find my source of light:

That I can sit with you in yours and call it love.

That you will trust that I fully understand that process. That you will trust me not to rob or rush you out of your own process of sitting in your dark places until you learn how to turn on the light. But rather that I will instead just be present and be your witness that sits beside you while you do.

That I will learn how to cultivate an unconditional supply of light that I can send out into the darkness when others need it the most, and truly be able to call it love.

I think my cancer is one more notch in my bedpost of darkness. My increasing familiarity with my own darkness is inevitably going to allow me to fulfill my own definition of love. I truly understand what it feels like to have to sit in my own dark places in order to learn how to shine light into them. Nobody is going to do that job for me.

There is a phenomenon that happens when devastation hits your doorstep. Especially with heinous or particularly tragic events. You find yourself wondering what the meaning of it all is and why it’s happening, either to you or at all. Cancer is most certainly here to change my idea of who I am. Cancer is here to challenge me to rethink what my purpose is in the world. I have to believe it’s happening to me for a specific reason because I just can’t fathom a god that would ever punish anyone with something like this. So it must serve some purpose. I believe our main objectives for being divine souls coming to earth for human experiences are to love and to learn. I honestly think it’s as simple as those two things. I think this cancer is simply another conduit of my learning, and I believe the most spiritual thing I could do as a soul coming to earth for a human experience is to be in this body and fully commit to this experience. I could say I never asked for this, because who would ever ask for cancer anyway? But what I actually believe is that on some level my soul asked for expansion, and I think expansion comes at a hefty price sometimes. If we had known that before we came here I’m certain we may have thought twice about asking for the experiences to foster the expansion we were so convinced we wanted.

Given my earlier definition of love, I now believe that our objectives as souls on earth are to learn in order to light. I hope that my lessons along the way will be able to create a beacon of light from which I can follow to lead myself out of the darkness and hopefully, eventually, to teach others how to lead themselves out of their own darkness too. I think it’s my purpose for having this life. I have to believe that right now, otherwise the idea that I got dealt the card for cancer is too much to bear.

I commit to learn in order to light.

Big Love (and Bright Light) Y’all,

E.