President's day 2009 was when I found my lump

and I wasn't sure how I would feel on President's Day 2010 but it was actually a light day (more and more, in letting go of deeply held emotions, I am able to flow through my days and tread more lightly through my life than ever before). Here in the Northeast, we've been buried in record-breaking snow, but the Sunday before President's Day, roads were clear enough that I could drive down to Arlington and see my brother and Steph and my new niece, Mira, who was born in California last October. It was pure joy to meet this baby girl, to connect with and to hold her. She is fabulous! After spending the day with Miss Mira and parents, I drove to Fairfax to have dinner and stay overnight with my sister, brother-in-law and nephews which was also really fun and then I got up early Monday, President's Day, drove home and spent the day with my kids.

It was light, it was fun, we went to the Hiway to see a matinee of "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" and then my friend Steph came down to take June ice skating for the first time which didn't work out great since the ice skating rink was closed but we did find another one and then we ended the day with dinner out for gluten-free pizza. I thought I might be full of emotions--

remembering a year ago...I had come back from a weekend away working at a teen retreat where I didn't shower at all. I missed the kids so badly. I came home late Sunday night and Monday morning took a long, hot shower. I was shaving when I felt the lump. I ignored it at first but kept going back to touch it. I called my primary care doctor and they told me to come in later that day. That began everything...Wednesday I had an ultrsound and they rushed me to get a mammogram then to see the surgeon and the next day I had my biopsy. That's how my cancer (or awareness of it) began.

But President's Day wasn't especially sad or freaky or even unusually joyous for me: it was just a day that I felt really grounded in and that's how most of my days are going now. I think

that I am opening my heart in a very new way, I think that I am lighter, clearer, and also more honest, both with myself and others. I think that I have waited my entire life to come in to this honesty. It is hard to voice

things that maybe I haven't been conscious of before or that maybe I have avoided, but now, a year after finding that lump and looking hard at the state of my mortality, I am not willing to avoid the truth.

This is hard and beautiful stuff. Fred and I are starting to do some serious work in our relationship; looking hard at how we relate to each other. There is an incredible foundation that we have built of love and support for each other and now we are ready to go deeper and look at what energy feels blocked and what patterns we are unconscious of that are preventing us from unleashing the depth of love that we know we have to give.

Being honest and present is shifting my whole world. Not needing to be nice or to be liked continues to liberate me. I mean, I am generally an especially nice and friendly person, but I'm allowing that more to come from an inner place than from a fear of what will happen if I'm not nice or if someone doesn't like me. And a year ago, I was not conscious of just how I lived that way and that I lived that way out of fear.

I'm in a deeply creative place at the moment, with interesting projects and possibilities coming up for me; also, I am valuing myself and my creative abilities in a new way. There is no ceiling for me; anything is possible. Maybe to others it would seem like I knew that already--I've written and published a bunch of books, I've created and performed in one-woman shows, I currently lead creative worship services for children. But somehow before, there was a place connected to my creativity that felt that what I did wasn't really good enough or it was limited somehow. Just now, I don't believe that at all anymore--and I am finding a new respect for and belief in my path.

It was funny, Sunday night at my sister's house, we were playing a word game with the boys after dinner where everyone gets tiles and you have to use them all to make as many words as you can (like an individual scrabble where everyone is competing at the same time). I just sucked at it. My 12 and 10-year-old nephew were much better at making up words than me and my sister was amazingly quick and would finish while I was only half-way done with my tiles. I looked at her and thought, Damn! She really is smart--

while all the while, when we were growing up, I felt so stupid in her shadow. I mean, we must have played games like that all of the time and there was no way for me to compete. And i know that my parents didn't compare us and I know that they really encouraged all of my creative activities, but it was beyond their control. I got from the world around me, from school, that there was one way to be smart--

and I wasn't that way. So it is great to be here now, at 38, feeling young, feeling like life is ahead of me, feeling like living honestly can feel hard at times, but is really sweet in that just as I can see the shit that my ego has created to survive in the world, so I can feel

the pure joy of stripping it away, and finding my whole self, my whole.

And that is where my creativity lies. That is where my sense of God lies and my connection to every person, who lives with an ego battling fear or anxiety or insecurity. In my honesty and coming from a soul place, more often in my days I am connecting to other people in their soul places and that is what I mean by my need to not be nice anymore. It's deeper, where I'm coming from these days--

because of the President's day that I experienced in 2009 and from how I went forward.

(And I can not be jealous of my sister and instead be proud of her and appreciate her for being so smart and also understand that who she is, her soul, has nothing to do with how fast she can make words...or not).