Die Before you Die: The Gifts of the Death Lodge

I was grateful that timing worked out for me to be in our little desert home in the Owens Valley for the pivotal weekend of the expected chemo induced hair loss, and away from the buzz of the Bay Area, where …

Crossing the Threshold: A Cancer Survivors Tribute to Inauguration

They say people react with a wide range of emotions to a life changing diagnosis, the loss of a loved one or other devastating news.  But no matter if we externally emote with tears, rage, and wailing or internally go …

Remembering Our Most Essential Self: Re-Shaping the Story of Cancer

The mythos of cancer certainly presents like a picture book dark tale:  A hostile take over of unwholesome, mutated, out of control cell growth that is quite literally aiming to kill us.  Talk about a chilling image!  Posing as an infamous evil …

Yes, I’m writing!

  Wow!  Summer has just come and gone and here we are now in November!  It’s been a full few months for me, with back to back Lost Borders programs, the Washington Guides Gathering in the Eastern Cascades, and travel …

Harvest

Pulling out a bunch of multi-colored carrots from the small corner patch planted late last spring, in our garden in the Owen’s Valley, something hits me.  It’s a golden mid-October morning, the kind of day that opens your soul to …

The Writing Grant

Sitting in front of the blank page for the third morning. In front of the writing program that my lover gifted me during cancer treatment. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, in the summer of 2011, words would flow …

Cracked open: The Nature of Grief, Loss and Illness

Death and dying are hard topics to bring up in modern day life. Society prefers to navigate around the truth of our impermanence with an unspoken yet powerful “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude, leaving those confronted directly with death and …