Finding my place in the world

I don’t know what this ground cover is. Each spring, it returns to carpet the wooded area behind my little neighborhood.

Early this week I delivered myself into the hands of the interventional radiology team who threaded a guide needle to a spot on the top, right dome of my liver, just underneath my diaphragm, and sampled tissue for analysis. There was doubt about whether they could reach the spot. The radiologist came in; and with the technician who operated the ultrasound machine, a plan for the procedure was formulated. I listened to their conversation while they homed in on the spot with the ultrasound, discerning calcifications from the lesion discovered on the CT scan last week. “It’s very thin, like a film on the surface” the radiologist told me. He left the room to get the rest of the supplies needed to do the procedure and brief the resident who would be sent in to describe what would be done and obtain my consent.

During the interval, I wept. They had found the spot, which meant it was indeed there, a reality. The nurse comforted me, and let me know it was important to feel all of my feelings. Since the results of the scan, I’ve experienced a gutting surge of grief and fear. It is excruciating to feel these feelings. In their grip, I am taken over and lose my self, my humanity, my place in the world. I become my fear, sadness, loss, and my life is reduced to horrifying imaginings about the future.

Remarkably, the results of the biopsy posted to my online medical chart the afternoon following the biopsy. Negative. No evidence of abnormal cells. When I read the good news, I contacted all my loved ones who had been sending me messages or talking with me during the previous week. I took a walk, and told my good news to a neighbor who I barely know and her partner whom I’ve never met. I wanted to tell more people, even total strangers. Instead I returned home and took a hot shower and went to bed.

When I was little and overwhelmed with fear, I would turn to nature for refuge and to celebrate my humanity, although I couldn’t have known that is what I was doing. I have always found my place in the world through nature–the starlit sky, the rocks, the water, the smell of sun-warmed prairie grasses and ferns growing in the woods. I feel their essence in me and recognize my essence in them. Free of language, each moment spent communing with nature is fundamentally tranquil. I offer my frustrations and failures, hopes and dreams to the dirt where I kneel to pull weeds or plant seeds. I sweat and shiver depending on the weather and rest in the unquestioned acceptance of my own frame of mind. I open my awareness to everything I can see, hear, and smell around me and witness the abundance of deer tracks, sandhill cranes, wild turkeys, muskrats, hawks, red-bellied woodpeckers, eagles, voles, frogs, foxes, and on and on.

My relationship with myself has often been fraught with judgment, fear, and profound insecurity. I’ve carried this vulnerability, and my aversion to it, into my relationships with others–not always, but enough to notice and enough to matter. I’ve often chosen solitude over connection with another person, even when that person has extended help and friendship to me out of love. The habit of refusing connection was born out of necessity long ago. It helped me protect myself. It helped me survive. Learning a different habit, one of choosing connection, accepting love, disclosing fear and vulnerability, has been the boon of navigating this cancer diagnosis and treatment. I have no choice but to come clean about the terror, grief, and sadness that have overwhelmed my life at times over the last seven months.

I’m discovering my place in the world of gentle, loving people. Accepting kindness, love, or support involves faith and vulnerability. Genuine human kindness is miraculous. There is no room for flirtation or performance. The offering and receiving of kindness only require the courage to stay vulnerable to the softness of making a gift that could be rejected and taking a gift that recognizes a need.

During the days between the scan and the biopsy procedure, I was filled with dread about going through the procedure and learning the results. I felt myself becoming disengaged from life, unable to describe the feelings, only express them with tears and convulsing sobs. The clear lake water washing over moss-covered rocks, scilla blooming all over the backyard, the adoring gaze of Bert, the most excellent beagle, all seemed far away. In the thrall of sadness and terror, I couldn’t feel the safety and joy of nature. I confessed to multiple friends. “I’m losing connection. I’m so sad and scared.” They offered love in return. I let myself believe in them and believe in their love. And I felt it. I realized that apart from close friends and family, I had been showered with loving kindness from neighbors, work colleagues, people I didn’t even know very well. And that is how I found my place in the world.