Attitude

Yesterday, an MD Anderson friend who I had not seen for a while stopped me in the hallway and asked for a hug.  After the hug, she held onto my hand and said, “I know your cancer journey is getting tougher, but your spirit and attitude helps so many of us keep it together.  If there is anything I can do please just holler.”  I walked away thinking about my attitude and how throughout my life I’d been lucky enough to have others step in and help me develop the life attitude I have today.  We know that our attitude changes minute by minute, but what’s your life attitude?  Are you a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty person?  Think back to those memory moments shared with others that helped develop the attitude you have become.  Now think about sharing more positive life moments as an attitude adjustment for you and others.   

Holding On Letting Go

It was a beautiful Easter weekend.  Saturday I worked in the garage sorting through boxes and storage bins that hadn’t been opened for years and quickly filled up a trash can with things that should have been tossed long ago.  Sunday, the Easter service music kept me in tears, and the resurrection lesson left me deeply thinking about my own life resurrections, transformations and being empowered by choosing to “be” and live as a child of the light.  But “being” takes a balance that I’ve struggled with most my life for my Enneagram type is a two, The Helper, warm-hearted, empathetic, friendly, generous and self-sacrificing.  Over the years, I’ve learned it is so easy to lose myself, my challenges or pain by helping others. 

Monday, as I rode my scooter into work, I stopped on the bayou bridge, looked up at the waning gibbous moon, and realized if I was to heal, I needed to give myself more time.  Rumi’s words, “Life is a balance of holding on and letting go”, has fluttered around me like a butterfly the past few years, a sign for me to embrace life differently.  Last year I said goodbye to my friends at National Wellness Institute after a 30-year love relationship.  Yesterday, I wrote the board of directors at IAWHP (AWHP, AFB, Fitness in Business) and resigned my board position.   This was hard to do.  IAWHP is an Affiliate Society of the American College of Sports Medicine, the first professional organization I had joined in 1978 as a young doctoral student.  As a member of IAWHP, I have written multiple chapters in books the organization has published, and in 1992 was one of three authors of the industry best seller Guidelines for Employee Health Promotion Programs.  In 1988, AFB awarded me their Exceptional Leadership Award, and in 1991, AWHP recognized me with Fellow status.  Resigning from my board position was letting go of an almost 40-year passion. 

When first diagnosed with cancer, I felt like I had to cram as much as I could into each minute, hour and day.  As I crammed more into my days, I slowly learned that cramming left no time for living and the practice of being.    Yesterday, I took another big step toward making more space for my need to be and heal.  Let Rumi’s words flutter into your life as you consider how to better balance holding on and letting go.         

Transformation & Rod McKuen

It was the summer of 1967; I had just graduated from high school and was going to spend the summer in New Hampshire working at a YMCA camp.  The love of my life, my mom, was losing her battle with cancer, and I knew deep inside my life was would never be the same.  Rod McKuen’s songs and poetry about love and loneliness had kept me company for many years and on the plane ride to New Hampshire the tears flowed as his lyrics “If you go away on this summer day….” played again and again in my head.

Have you ever had a moment when you wished you could be someone else?  Sitting on the plane with tears streaming down my face I so needed to be someone else.  When the camp director picked me up at the airport, I told him “this summer I need to find a new me, and I was going to be Shawn McDowell, not Billy Baun”.  In his wisdom, he recognized and honored my need, and that summer everyone knew me as Shawn McDowell, a kid from Louisiana.  The kid that mosquitos didn’t bite, was not afraid of snakes and wrote to his mom almost every day.

Today, I sat with my oncologist and studied the body and bone scans that showed my cancer had spread to several new places on my backbone, right adrenal gland, ribs, and the tumor on my left hip was larger.  April 11^th I will start chemotherapy by infusion one-treatment every-three-weeks.  As I sat listening to my oncologist talk about the potential side effects, for just a moment I was back in New Hampshire with Shawn McDowell experiencing life as he learned to open Billy’s heart.  As I walked out, Rod McKuen’s lyrics played again in my head, “But if you stay / I’ll make you a day / Like no day has been / Or will be again”.   Billy was back and his love of life and passion for experiencing every day fully brought the promise of living mindfully through an open heart, no matter the journey.  Are you having moments you wish you could be someone else?  Stay you, mindful of making your days, like no days have been, or will be again.  

Purple Iris and Healing

The third day of my Healing Circle meeting the group from Vancouver called Callanish, whose mission is to “create a healing space for people who have been irrevocably changed by cancer”, held a grief circle.  As the circle started, I remembered too quickly flag draped caskets and coming back to a country tired of war where veterans who had been through too many horrific experiences stood on street corners begging for food.  Steve and I had served and as the memories resurfaced, I cried and trembled, Steve wrapped his arms around me as Janie held my hands.  Only one other time had I come close to doing the deep soul work to unleash these demons, but the circle experience started deep healing that spread as the day progressed. 

After the circle, I remember walking to the cliffs, drawn by the thunderous sound of the waves as they crashed onto the sand.  The light rain mixed with waves of tears dripping down my face, and as I tried to wipe the waves away, I found I was not alone.  Clumps of purple iris stood around me linking the ocean with the sky, heaven and earth, and reminded me of my forever link to warriors like me.  Words from Marcel Proust (1871-1922), in his book The Prisoner; have become infamously paraphrased, “The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes”.  That day on the cliffs, as the waves roared far below, and overwhelmed by the deep soul work I had shared the purple iris became symbols of faith, wisdom, bravery and friendship giving me new eyes and deepening my healing.  Look with new eyes this week and heal.       

What's Your Cramming Style

March has been “Vege Out” Month as our team promotes eating more vegetables and chill out or vegging out to increase the effectiveness of your daily de-stress efforts.  Today we set up a Frisbee Golf course on our prairie from 10am – 2pm.  We had four holes and 20+ Frisbee’s of all colors.  A healthy mix of forty-one employees participated representing faculty, nurses, research coordinators, and facility personnel.  I have no doubt that next weeks Frisbee Friday will bring over 100 players looking for a little fun during their break from work.

About 15 individuals walked by and would say, “no time” and walked off with their heads buried in cell phones trying to read / answer emails and unaware of the new colors splashed across the prairie or the Texas blue sky dotted with big white fluffy clouds.  Wayne Muller in his book Sabbath talks about how our relentless busyness and drive for success has seduced us into cramming more into our lives.  Through cramming more in, we’ve lost the essential rhythm of rest and have forgotten the reenergizing power of still and silent moments.  As we bubble over with too much, life becomes more urgent than it really is, and we stop making memory moments as our mindlessness spreads.  This weekend consider your cramming style, and next week add reenergizing moments of stillness and silence every hour.  Start living and experiencing life fully again!

Gifts of Courage and a Smile

The plane to Atlanta was late, which meant I would have to rush through Hartsfield-Jackson airport to catch my flight back to Houston.  A long line had already formed behind the ticket desk of anxious individuals being rerouted to final destinations.  I was tired and after taking a deep breath, asked the women in the seat next to me, to wake me if I fell asleep, so I wouldn’t miss the plane. 

As I lightly slept, my dreams took me back to my healing circle experience in California the week before and the deep soul work and emotions I had experienced.  At one of the circles, I had thought about my dad and his short prostate cancer journey, his courage, smile, and how I wished we had more time together.  After that circle I’d gone out to the cliffs and wrote: “If I had only listened / To every word / Paid more attention to his wisdom / Maybe this journey / Would have been easier / But I didn’t / So now I have moments / When I wished I had a dad to call.”

I felt a light touch on my arm, and for just an instant thought, maybe it was my dad, as the women next to me said our plane had arrived.  As I walked onto the plane, I thought about how much my dad had given me.  Love you dad - billy   

Lord of the Dance

Friday, my oncologists tried to reach me with the results from the body and bone scans I had taken several weeks ago but missed me since I was working an information table on sleep at different locations around the hospital in my pajamas.  Several hundred people stopped at the table to see if I was a lost inpatient (smile) and gained a short coaching session on sleep.  Finally, my oncologists called MaryBeth and told her that my scans had moderate changes suggesting my latest chemo was not working.  The clinical trial I am in has three oral chemo’s and I have been through two.  We will meet in two weeks and decide if I move to the final oral chemo or chemotherapy by infusion. 

Sunday morning as I walked around the yard following a large swallowtail butterfly, she stopped by the pear tree with its nectar-rich soft white blooms.  As I stood and watched her gently kiss each flower, the stillness of the moment surrounded me and I felt my anxiety about the upcoming chemotherapy decision fall away.  I could feel God dancing as the large swallowtail fluttered her wings, and I heard my dad’s favorite hymn, Lord of the Dance.  “Dance, then, wherever you may be, /I am the Lord of the Dance, said he, /And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be.  /And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.”

This week, dance, wherever you may be with me…………

Are You Mindful Enough?

Sunday, I took one last walk to the cliffs to stand and watch the waves far below, and instantly I was back in high school English reading the words of William Blake, “To see a world in a grain of sand / and a heaven in a wild flower.  / Hold infinity in the palm of our hand / and eternity in an hour.”

Maybe it’s just me, and my stage IV cancer journey, but multiple times a day the fragrance of a flower, a whimsical cloud formation, a blade of grass sparkling with morning dew, or rainbow window reflections become moments where I move from the mundane to extraordinary.  It is in these boundless moments of a broader vision of life and its meaning, I hold infinity in the palm of my hand and eternity is but a moment I experience.  Are you mindful enough “to see a world in a grain of sand”?

Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…

Where am I going?  Where have I been?  What choices along life’s way have made all the difference?  Last week as I walked the forest surrounding the Commonweal Retreat I quickly became deeply reflective.  It was the mix of the woods and circle work in a community of learning and caring that each day had me reaching deep.  The mix of past, present, and possible futures were like ocean waves that I’d surf, and at times tumbled down their face reliving past moments or experience the fear of free-falling into too many possible futures. 

What did I learn at Commonweal?  It wasn’t so much what I learned, but the reminder of those lessons along the way making the journey awesome!  Much of the awesomeness has to do with the people, relationships, love, kindness, and their unconditional compassion.  I also recognized that I am the kind of person that accepts the mystery, unknown aspect of life.  Faced with two diverging paths, you can count on me taking the one that offers the mystery of untold possibilities.  Why?  Because I’ve learned that along this path I will meet unconditional people who also believe the mystery in life paths are awesome!  How about you?  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…  

My Visit to Commonweal

Last week I was at a Commonweal Healing Circle meeting held at their retreat center in Bolinas, CA.  It was an extraordinary gathering of people focused on small group work that “touches the soul and helps us find our way”.  Each day I experienced the power of circle practice and listened to stories shared about transformation and healing.  The rain and heavy morning mist kept me from climbing down the ropes hanging off the cliffs to walk the beach and feel the power of the raging waves far below.  Instead, I walked the deep green forest mindful of the poison oak, awed by the calla lilies, and lost in deep thoughts about my life and cancer journey.  Towards the end of the week one early morning after walking the labyrinth, I wrote, “again and again the goodness that surrounds me lightly brushes my soul; strengthening my resolve to fully live each day as my cancer slowly spreads.”  What is your resolve today?