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This totally hit home for me

Deep gratitude to Rachel Macy Stafford of The Hands Free Revolution; this really speaks to me right now.

📍 When I was sick for 17 days in July…
I was reminded that I like to take baths and washing my hair by laying down in the tub offers instant serenity.
I’m not gonna wait ‘til I am sick to wash my hair in the tub again.

📍 When I was sick for 17 days in July…
I was reminded that I like apple juice. My older daughter remembered this fact from a surgery I had 7 summers ago. For a moment, old, damaging beliefs about juice being “bad” tried to interfere. But in the end, love won because juice has no moral value, and I trust my body knows what it needs.
I’m not gonna wait ‘til I am sick to drink apple juice again.

📍 When I was sick for 17 days in July…
I was reminded that I like shows that allow me to ‘pretend-buy’ a new house. I got REALLY invested in the show, Beachfront Bargain Hunt. I found myself tearing up during the “3 months later…” update as if it were MY family happily settled into their new home.
I’m not gonna wait ‘til I am sick to watch Beachfront Bargain Hunt to enjoy pretend-picking MY dream bungalow.

📍 When I was sick for 17 days in July…
I was reminded that I like my cat’s daily schedule. Noticing I was unusually inactive, Banjo coached me on the joys of not getting dressed, “exercising” by bird watching, and napping whenever the mood struck.
I’m not gonna wait ‘til I am sick to have a leisurely Cat Day again.

📍 When I was sick for 17 days in July…
I was reminded that I like being cared for, which means accepting help, receiving flowers for my bedside, and getting check ins from friends that say, “No need to respond. Just wanted you to feel my love.”
I’m not gonna wait ‘til I am sick to allow myself to be cared for again.

📍 When I was sick for 17 days in July…
I was reminded that I like not feeling guilty for honoring my need for rest and quiet. While focused on healing during that time, I found something valuable within.
I am not gonna wait until I am sick to turn off the world and tend to my needs.

My friends, what do you like—I mean REALLY like? Sometimes it takes forced rest to remember what comforts us most. But let’s not wait until our bodies give out to eat, play, hydrate, and rest as we like. We are worthy of having our needs met NOW.

© Rachel Macy Stafford 2022

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Learning a LOT

I almost feel like I’m back in school, I’m learning so much these days.

It’s especially interesting because I’ve never had all that much interest in science. In fact, I regularly cut my high school biology class and was not terribly enthusiastic about my one required chemistry course at junior college.

But I just spent a considerable amount of time this evening reading about blood platelets and ways to increase them, in order to stay as healthy as possible through the bone marrow transplant process.

Indeed, Ramesha and I are becoming accustomed to medical terms like apheresis, subcutaneous, spirometer, autologous, and allogeneic. And we’re even beginning to understand them!

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An exhausting day

What a day this was!

Drove to UC Davis Cancer Center in Sacramento.

Had a meeting with the physical therapist, followed by another with the nurse coordinator in preparation for the bone marrow transplant.

Received a ton of information from both of them, as well as an entire “patient education binder” full of details (see photo); both Ramesha and I were pretty much fried by the the end.

Then it was time to drive home. And now we’re simply pooped.

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Yard sale time

We’re having our first Ananda Village yard sale since before the pandemic, and you can tell Village residents ( myself included) have been saving stuff up and are super happy to finally be able to let it all go!

The Village Office has already received so many items that they moved the donations cut-off from this coming Friday to today (Monday).

I managed to get my stuff down there just before the deadline, but then I couldn’t help browsing around to see if there was anything there that we “needed”.

It’s a bit of a paradox really. We go through our closets and drawers to find things to get rid of, but then we turn around and bring more stuff back home with us! As I said to my friend, Patricia, it’s like we get to practice non-attachment by giving stuff away, but then we practice — I’m not sure what; maybe expansion?!? — by collecting more.

The good news is that I took down two bags of clothes; a projector and screen; a rug; and three boxes of miscellaneous items, but I left with only one bag of goodies.

So, I didn’t do too bad.

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Falling into old habits

Got carried away reading all the comments to a very interesting article in the New York Times. As a result I’m writing this way too late into the night.

Thank goodness I fall into such old habits less and less often these days.

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A grape-loving coyote

Who knew that coyotes liked grapes? I certainly didn’t!

Which is why I was pretty surprised when I looked out the window this morning to see this guy scarfing down grapes that had fallen to the ground.

Well, the grapes hadn’t just fallen; they were helped by some critter (probably a bear) that has been climbing up into the tree to reach the grapevines.

Yep, we’re definitely in the country here.

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A breakthrough week

I had to wait until the end of the week to share this, because I didn’t want to jinx it!

For a number of years I’ve struggled with consistency in my meditation practices; spending six months focused on fitting cancer treatments into my schedule didn’t help.

But somehow the time had come — there must have been an inner shift of some sort — and this Monday I got up extra early, did my full energization exercises, then went to the Temple of Light to meditate.

Most importantly, I repeated those actions every single day this week, and it feels great.

I know this is my best way to prepare for the upcoming bone marrow transplant, so–

Yay me!

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What’s really real?

Last week Nayaswami Devi wrote a beautiful blog post titled “What Changes.”

The blog is full of insights and wisdom, but there was one particular sentence that stood out for me. Devi wrote: Time and space—they really don’t exist as we usually perceive them. We may be dreaming them, but our souls aren’t bound by them.

In fact, that sentence brought to mind an experience I had when I was living at Ananda Assisi. I’m not sure whether I can successfully put it into words, but I’ll try.

Before I found Ananda in 1998 I had been involved with an Irishman from Galway. I developed deep connections with the Irish-Irish (as opposed to Irish-American) community in San Francisco and felt a deep affinity for Irish music and culture. I even visited Ireland briefly in 1997.

Then, several years after coming to Ananda, I moved to Italy — another European country for which I immediately felt a deep affinity.

At one point I met two Irish women — I believe they were sisters — who were guests at the retreat in Assisi. We enjoyed a nice connection; no big deal.

But then there was one afternoon when they were approaching and as I went to greet them I suddenly was aware of feeling a strange kind of disorientation.

I caught myself thinking — although “thinking” isn’t really the right word; it was more that there was an awareness — that we were in Ireland and the two women were returning from visiting Galway. But with a figurative shake of the head, I reminded myself that, no, we were in Italy and they had been to Gualdo Tadino (a nearby city).

It was so strange! As though for just a few moments I had lost track of where I was in the dream.

Although it was a fleeting experience, it left me with the briefest sensation of the truth that none of this is really real.

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Making adjustments

Yesterday was the first Tuesday since February 8 that we didn’t visit the Infusion Center for my chemotherapy injection.

It took me until the evening to realize that the discontinuance of the routine had me feeling a little “off”.

It would be too much to say that I miss getting blood drawn and drugs injected every single week, but we did get to know and appreciate so many lovely people over the many months — at the check-in desk, in the oncology and radiation departments, and especially in the infusion center, where I spent from two to three hours every single Tuesday.

So, I’m kind of missing the people, and it’s definitely an adjustment.

Of course, just as we were congratulating ourselves on doing a lot less driving, we realized that we’re about to start weekly trips to Sacramento in preparation for the bone marrow transplant.

More adjustments!

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Spinning top thoughts

There’s so much to do and to think about lately that I’m having difficulty getting my mind to stop spinning from one topic to another.

Which means that my difficulty itself becomes my topic!

Hopefully I’ll be more successful tomorrow at slowing down my spinning thoughts, so I can get focused and make headway on my to-do list.