WHAT MAC GETTING CANCER HAS TAUGHT ME

I sometimes find myself touching his joints, hold my grip over the three legs he has left to see if he gives me any reaction or evidence of pain (a clear sign his cancer has spread). I occasionally am sitting with him like I am now and wonder if his chest x-ray will be clear next time (another sign it’s spread).

When my mind starts to go there, my eyes start to swell and I can feel the energy rising up through my body and into my throat. That’s where I feel my worry first, my throat and then my stomach. When I feel the energy start to rise, I shake it off and remind myself to be in the moment with him.

To be in the moment. 

Enjoy the moments.

I always explain it like you’re stacking up boulders, boulders against a wall that was never meant to hold the weight of so many… and eventually after you keep stacking the moments, the days, the ignorances, they get too much to bear and the wall comes crashing down. 

That’s what happened the day after I found out about Mac’s diagnosis. It knocked me down and my body said enough is enough. 

It’s done this before, I just never listened all the way. 

I started working on listening to my body a couple of years ago. Working with a coach who specializes in this, in establishing the mind body connection or like in my case, healing it. So through that work I had started to listen in ways I never had but when that week happened and I was knocked down so hard I realized that the level I had been “listening” was a joke. I might as well have just laughed in my body’s face.

That day changed everything. And every day since I’ve started living differently. 

I wasn’t really aware of the correlation until this morning as I’m sitting here reading my book, doing my morning routine with Mac curled up on my lap. He always starts on the other side of the couch and within 5 minutes he inched his way over until his head is under my lap pillow and he’s cozy and can feel me. 

This is something him and I have done together for years. Something I used to take for granted but now am reminded of the beauty of being in the moment with him. 

I’m so grateful. 

I’m grateful he is healthy and adjusting to 3-legged life well as well as thriving during his cancer treatments. I’m grateful for the way this journey with him the past few months caused me to strip down everything that didn’t matter. I’m grateful that for the first time I chose to sit in my symptoms, like DEEP in them and allowed them to show. I talked about them. I shared them with people I’ve known my whole life that had no idea what I delt with every day for so long. And I stopped making excuses that weren’t truths. I stopped pretending I was okay. I stopped pushing through. I stopped forcing myself to move when my body was screaming at me not to. I stopped.

I stood still, well more like laid still. and I stopped worrying about the things that were going undone or were left out. I stripped down everything from tasks, to habits, to everything. I threw away everything and sat here looking around for quiet a while before I picked everything up.

Don’t get me wrong, there were a few conversations with a friend pleading with the universe to get me to the other side of this and now. I’ve had moments where I’ve pushed without realizing I was doing it and was promptly able to realize it.

The rawness I’ve experienced these past few months is unlike anything, any kind of rawness I thought I had before in other moments of growth. 

In this whole process, I’ve slowed down.

For years the message has been to slow down and BE more, not DO more. And I thought that’s what I was doing…now I know that those were just stepping stones, just beginning stages that were leading up to this. Preparing me for the real game changer, for life to never be the same. 

So around here, our lives revolve around the moments with the dogs. Which allows me moments with myself. They eat, I eat. They rest, I rest. They need exercise, I need exercise. Mac has appointments, that means mom gets to journal or read while he’s getting treatments. That also means we get to go bye-bye which is one of his favorite things. 

What Mac getting a potentially life ending diagnosis has taught me is that none of the stupid little shit we stress about really matters at all when it comes down to it.

And that this moment means more than anything. This exact moment here, there will never be another one of. Use it wisely.