Despite everything, I’m still here feeling grateful.
I believe I’ll be ok…but I’m also learning to make peace with the possibility that things may not always go that way, and, well……. that’s part of the journey too.
Today my mind wandered to memories I didn’t expect. Just a year ago, we brought Mom home from the memory-care facility. Now Dad cares for her every day.
A year ago, I ran the Turkey Trot with my brother and had breakfast with him and the baby afterward. This year, I find myself in my home office, typing, feeling a strange mix of numbness and reflection…. Looking back at moments I usually try not to revisit.
I’m learning to rest on what’s here, right now.
I’m grateful for this connection.
I’m grateful for this space to write to process.
I’m grateful for another year.
I’m grateful even for the inevitable, whatever it may look like.
I’m grateful for the flexibility my employer gives me.
I’m grateful for the support of my new friend.
I’m grateful for my spouse and everything he carries and gives.
I’m grateful for the ability to hope and dream, because that’s what truly keeps me alive.
The Oncologist told me I’d be losing my hair once treatment starts. It wasn’t something I wanted to hear. My hair has always felt like my life force….my own version of Samson’s strength…..and imagining myself without it felt devastating.
But after the initial sting, I did what I’ve been doing with everything lately, I gathered myself, and figured out how to be prepared. My husband and I visited a local wig shop, a world I never imagined I’d step into. It was a small hair salon with a well-lit mirror and two chairs.
A row of wigs lined a shelf from different colors, length, and style. Faux hair crafted to meet a woman at one of the most vulnerable moments of her life, offering her a soft shield as perhaps toxic chemicals enter her bloodstream, destroying sick cells along with everything else in their path. It struck me that behind every wig is someone’s battle, someone’s story. Mine will soon join them.
The shop owner, kind enough to come in on a Sunday, greeted me warmly. She studied me for barely a second before saying, “You’re definitely a 1.” I blinked in confusion until she explained the color scale: 1 is the darkest, 60 is pure white. I had no idea hair shades were cataloged so clinically.
She brought out boxes from another room…with shoulder-length styles, bangs, layered cuts and taught me how to place a wig on properly. Find the side tabs, line up the edges, lift them by the strands, not by dragging the lace. She said it as if she were training me to handle something sacred and maybe she was.
Then came the eyebrow conversation. I hadn’t even thought about that. “Once your hairline goes, remember it’s four finger-widths from your brows,” she said. “And if your eyebrows thin, you’ll want to fill them in, otherwise the wig won’t look right.”
Makeup has never been part of my life. She gently showed me a small box of powders, explaining stencils and shading, another skill I never expected to need.
In the end, I chose two wigs, one short with bangs for convenience, and one long…. closer to how I look now, for comfort. My husband nodded with that steady approval he gives when he knows I need reassurance.
We left with instructions on cleaning, brushing, storage… an entire new chapter I hadn’t planned on spending my weekend learning. I imagine countless women have walked this same path, each one wondering, as I did, how did I get here? The mind searches for reasons. Maybe it was the few years I smoked to survive night shifts. Maybe it was my old diet, the chemicals in my workplace, or simply the randomness of biology. I’ll probably never know. What I do know is this, I’m here now. It was caught early.
My Gobi March registration has been deferred to 2027. The race director responded with kindness and understanding. I look forward to crossing that finish line someday, dust-covered, exhausted, transformed with my long black hair tied back. But first, I must prepare… mentally. One step at a time.
Over a week of coughing up phlegm, speaking through a stale, worn-out voice. The flu is finally passing.
Today, I ran a half-marathon just to quiet my mind. To breathe. To try to hold myself steady before the storm of this coming week. Soon, I’ll learn what comes next, treatment, work, life. The shape of my future.
I hate being in this space of not-knowing. There’s comfort in normalcy and routine, and yet I feel severed from both. Everything I do feels like it’s for everyone else. What I want always feels just out of reach. So, I keep moving through the motions, numb and muted, the inner world tucked somewhere I can’t quite access.
Everything for others, rarely for myself. Except when I’m running. That’s where I still recognize me.
I started watching Breaking Bad again. Somehow it feels fitting now, with this diagnosis looming over everything. Maybe I’m trying to channel a bit of Heisenberg…. Walter White…. someone who seized control when life threatened to define him. It’s strange and comforting to see Albuquerque again, the city we once left to escape crime and heaviness.
This week I find out what happens next. Please let it be bearable. Please let it be something I can carry.
I can’t help but think…. I hate this. All of it.
Life feels sharp and unkind right now and that’s just the truth.
Fifty-five miles per hour down a two-lane rural road. I caught it in my peripheral vision—right shoulder—front paws stretched, hind legs exploding across the asphalt.
I glanced at the rear-view mirror; another vehicle trailed close behind. Stopping wasn’t an option. An oncoming car approached from ahead—swerving wasn’t an option either.
Maybe it will stop. Maybe it will make it across.
I held my line. It ran.
I felt no thud, heard nothing. For a moment, I assumed it had made it.
Then, in the driver-side mirror, I saw a tight curl of fur lying in the opposite lane. It hadn’t made it. It must have collided with the oncoming vehicle’s tire.
Still, I felt no sadness. No pain.
And suddenly I was twelve again—my mom driving me to a cross-country meet in the dark hours before dawn, heading toward the mountain to catch the district bus to Deming, New Mexico. A rabbit darted out. There was no time to brake, no room to swerve. The heavy thud echoed through the car.
I cried the rest of the way. My first encounter with roadkill—so sudden, so brutal.
But now—just another drive. I felt nothing.
Life. Death.
One minute, a squirrel sprinting across the road; the next, stillness. Its body will feed scavengers—crows, maybe others.
Journaling was Recommended 