This is what I wrote in my Cancer Diary Wednesday, June 14, 2023:
It was a good day. I got lots of things ready for the camping trip in Iowa! What was I thinking? Today Sean and Natalie set up our trip to Maine for the end of July. I am so grateful for them and this trip. I went to Ron and Cindy’s for Ron’s birthday party. It was good. And yet I come home and I am empty of feeling, of connection with any of the things that happened today or for many days, weeks past. I feel alone, devoid of connection and I know my friends feel my disconnection as well. I am hoping sometime this weekend, with women I do not know, I will attain some sort of fellowship that leads me back to myself. Isn’t that what a retreat is supposed to do? I cannot sustain this feeling of floating alone in the world with no mooring, no sustainability. I eat because I need food for life. I speak to people because they expect conversation. I work in the yard because it is big and it needs me to do the work. I clean the kitchen because that’s what you do to survive and cook again. Maybe all of these things will eventually bring me back to being some sort of a human. I hope so. How long can this go on? I am so very tired.
Here’s what I wrote a few days later:
Saturday, June 17.
So I am at this retreat in Iowa with all of these lovely women. Some of them have more trouble than others. Some of them are here to share their knowledge and experience. It has been good. A! I’m sleeping in a tent! Who would have believed that? And B! I think this is the kind of introduction to self knowledge and healing that I have been needing. I’m very grateful for it.
And I’m trying to make sure that I make the most of it, and I don’t waste the opportunity by pretending that I’ve got it all together when we all know that I don’t.
And I don’t know what I want to end up with. But I hope that I end up with a way to a move past being stuck because of Jimmy’s death. And to move past being stuck with my life in general for the past ??? years. I know that I could be living a different life than I’m living and I don’t mean moving to California or something like that. I mean being more open and honest and free from all these restrictions I put on my life. I know why I put them on. I just need to stop.
Oh, my children will be so happy if I can do that!
And I will be so happy when I figure out how to do that, so it will be a double blessing, a triple blessing, my friends will be happy! Quadruple blessing, I know that Jim would be happy if he were here. It’s what he always wanted for me. He never understood why I was so stuck. I think he understood intellectually, but not really. But how can you understand something that you’ve never felt?
I’m taking pictures as I walk. We are in the Loess Hills area of Iowa. In fact, the northern part of it. The hills are lovely. Jimmy would be able to tell us all about it. You can see the plates, the layers of probably sandstone underneath. That would be my guess. Jimmy would know. They are low soft hills with these horizontal lines on them. And they are pretty. They look like Hobbiton could be just on the other side of that ridge or actually the trees at the top of the ridge could be the beginning of the Old Forest! Oh, the spirit of Hobbiton in Iowa, I love it. (I was wrong. This is what the USGA said about them:
But I digress. It’s been comforting to be quiet, to listen, to engage with these kind women, to see that other people are seeking solace as I am. I also see that my problems seem so much simpler than so many of these other people. Bad marriages, divorces, cruel parents, fucking cancer! (Sorry, I can’s say one word without the other.) I mean my parents weren’t the best, and my childhood was difficult, but nothing like what I have been hearing. I wish them all peace and comfort and happiness. It looks like a lot of them are finding or have already found a way past their worst troubles. I am glad for them.
Now it’s my turn to do the work. As my daughter reminded me to say to myself, “I am not broken, I am just human.” For this human it is time to do some soul searching, some self reflecting and some growing. And because of the generosity of these wonderful women, who I now consider friends, I believe I have the tools, or at least the beginnings of the tools to make a start.
Thank you so very much.