Today, it is me. But we are all connected.

I deal with love in my work everyday, it’s my legal and illegal tender, my blood-currency and reason for cellular being. I know about its multi-fractured complications. Fuck, it’s hard sometimes, especially when you feel you’re going under… again and again and again.

When there’s no silence, there is just noise.

Yesterday, I stood on the footbridge and watched two kingfishers pierce the heart of this noisy city. Yet I can’t find the peace, even in my wildest places or memories or rainforests. They are ON FIRE.

A volley of curve balls and healing (YES) leads to… cancer and surgery and radiotherapy and brachytherapy and chemotherapy…and lasting side effects, and no energy, no work, no doctorate, no book. But left me understanding I have a second chance in life, and I AM SO GRATEFUL. So I return bursting with intent to bring that life-love to the big human world before it really takes me. To never give up. And people forget my work. Or ignore it. Or sideline it. Or replace it with others.

I want to help life through love. All life. Because it is SUFFERING and it’s going under… again and again and again. And I know what that feels like.

But here are the rebellions. And also the bitterness and the criticism. And I want to throw the love over it all like water over a wild fire. 

But the shadows keep stretching from those flickering flames. And I keep learning from them ~ I do. And then new things happen, again and again and again. And I’m fearful of a recurrence ~ therapy grants me acceptance of the fear – though

just

does

not

dispel

it. 

And beneath all the smiles, I don’t recognise my post-cancer self in the mirror. My mirror has rusted up. And the love of my life, this man who gave me most hope  ~ my mirror (his word) ~ and our Earth song, has withdrawn to work towards something I genuinely no longer understand. His fears and the distance is killing me. And the loss. And I feel utterly alone.

I am fixed in the HUNT for the light I KNOW is already here. And I’m hollowed out. Bring ME that cavignus light, that I once gave away so freely, to dance in my own void.

And I am insignificant. And privileged. And RIGHT NOW the life systems, the processes pick up the slack in the best way they can, with all their mighty love, even with hell unleashed upon them by all of us. And the traumas of my own life merge with the trauma of life itself in our one beautiful, fragile, burning biosphere. It IS bewildering, and the breaths become shallow. 

And I reach out for that hand. And no-one is there. So I hug my daughter, tight (she needs me). Withdraw from my sense of self, post cancer, post-mirror, in volunteering to help others. The love and the meaning, remember. Put the pain in a ball under your arm, and keep going. So I do. And I am not finished.

There is no real success (I don’t even know what that means anymore). Just the journey. And my beautiful, fragile, light-borne daughter. 

~~~~~