This photo is the same one I take all the time. The entrance to the (almost) daily running route we have taken the last 8 (9?) years. And I am putting it here on purpose. This morning we ran 3.45 kilometers. So close the “morning 4” I can taste it. So close to “normal”.

My goal is to ramp up to 6K by February, since a half marathon by then seems unreasonable. February 2025, we’ll get back to Northumberland and run castle to castle again. The last time (of what we thought would be an annual thing) was right before the lockdown in 2020. So long ago. Before long covid. Before cancer.

Things don’t always go as planned.

This morning am celebrating the beginning of week 4 of weekday yoga, runs and 3x weekly lifting. It isn’t a lot, but it is effort. There is a small voice that is saying I should have been doing this all along, but then that is how easy it is to forget how hard the Red Devil was for me. It is easy to forget that it was totally fine to give myself time to grieve – to “find my bearings” during a very uncertain and painful time.

I try to tell myself it is fine that I gained weight. But in reality, it is a bit frightening. Not wholly “fine”. One of the greatest risk factors for recurrence is weight gain. It isn’t about looking good in my clothes anymore. There are no guarantees when it comes to avoiding recurrence, but there are reasonable precautions.

Tomorrow is the 4th infusion of taxol. Last week I had a new nurse who corrected me several times – once when I said that after the surgery and the radiation, I will just have to take pills for 5 years (with a biannual infusion of zoledronic acid). “Don’t say ‘just’ pills,” she said. “They have side effects, too.”

I still don’t know what to do with that. I have been googling a bit much to try to sort out whether the side-effects of the pills are worse than the side-effects of natural menopause. When I asked the doctor, they answered, “That’s a good question.”

I’ve made it clear I am not the poster girl for “think positive” – but neither am I going to anticipate the worst. Life is continual adjustments – and they don’t all begin at a certain age or with a certain incident. In my mind, it all comes back to impermanence, and the truth that there is no such thing as a “new normal” because the grooves of steady states are illusions. The river just keeps flowing and we have to keep adjusting mentally to the physical reality. Our bodies are a part of that.

In the bigger world, last week people were swept into storm drains by flash floods. The question is never “Why me?”. Why not me? (So very much harder to have an attitude of “Why not the people I love?” – I don’t even want to think that, no matter how much I believe it is true.)

I’ll try to enjoy it while it’s here. All the “it”s that are enjoyable, that is. I’ll let those that aren’t be what they are, too.

There has to be a middle way with the perspective that all these things are true on their own terms. This is the only way I can live and be honest with myself. I refuse to spend my life castigating myself for not having a more positive attitude.

I tried out for cheerleading in high school. I did it because I was lonely, not because I felt it suited my personality. It wasn’t about overreaching. It was about reaching. Trying different adjustments.

(God, I really wish I could hug that young woman. She took risks. I think of Sondheim: “The choice was mistaken, the choosing was not.”)

I am having good mornings. I try to take advantage of them. Running. Listening to the birds. Walking the dog. Sex.

I was going to write about sex, but am censoring myself because 1. I don’t want anything to sound like advice, 2. I have family members that would be very uncomfortable.

But I will say, things like running, lifting heavy things, and having sex go a long way in giving me opportunities to appreciate being in my body despite the cancer tumors in my left breast. In a venn diagram, pleasure and effortlessness don’t necessarily overlap. In fact, I am beginning to think that intense pleasure and effort do. I am beginning to think that muscle tone is key. It is about moving a body in the external world. This is true for me… now. I can, of course, imagine finding pleasure if illness took that away, too.

In my second published poetry book, I have a poem called “In the Left Breast”. I wrote it after I’d found a lump (turned out to be nothing). I was in my early 30s.

Thinking about this made me wonder if we are really ever unprepared for possibilities? There is another poem in that same collection that questions whether “imagination is a good thing.”

In my mind, it is all about staying flexible enough to adjust. Adjusting is a response to the world. Sometimes it’s positive. In the context of my world view, a positive attitude is not the same thing as a positive outcome of a response.

I don’t believe celebrating a possible future outcome manifests that outcome.

This morning I am thinking about singing. Last week I sang with the radio while I was driving. It had been a very long time since I was in that kind of space. I remember now that magic spells require chanting, or singing. That’s a kind of effort, too, so I will leave room for that in my world view.

Right speech. Right action.

Right diaphragmatic effort.