I remember learning from homebirth midwives about creating a quiet, safe and sacred space at home because birth requires so much surrender. Physically, emotionally, psychically being able to soften, release, let two bodies that have been nestled together go through the process of separating.

This week as I’ve felt physically OK, I’ve felt a pull toward return. Toward acting like I’m OK again, the same again. Sometimes I am making it through this transition by letting myself pretend I’m fine, whether it’s going out for lunch with a friend in town or letting myself just be distracted (like, I’m finally finishing Schitt’s Creek.)

But also, I am trying to allow myself the space to cocoon. To go into a cave and let my spirit be transformed, maybe even birthed anew, by this experience.

So I thought I’d share my sort of multi-media cocoon playlist. The things that are helping my heart and mind as I move into this new body:

Poetry: Alison Gibson is the best person I’ve found on the internet in a long time, and I only clicked because their bio said something about cancer. Check out their amazing Tiny Desk Concert performance of “Maga Hat Guy in the Chemo Room.”

Fashion: Monokini is a Finnish art studio that is making fashion bathing suits for one-breasted women.

Podcasts: Tig Notaro just got better, by joining forces with two other comedians for silly, raunchy brilliance on Handsome Pod. This goes into the category of distraction, mostly. Except that I could justify it as more than distraction if I wanted to.

Movies: Lucas and I watched Elemental, the new animated Disney movie last night. And Burke and I watched The Other Dream Team, a documentary about the Lithuanian men’s basketball team of the early 1990s. It was fantastic. Also, mostly distraction (no one in either movie has cancer), but also the documentary made me cry the good kind of sports movie, little guys vs. big guy, team-coming-together-at-a-clutch-moment tears.

Reading: I have books I really want to read about the personal and political nature of having a body and illness. Jen Soriano’s Nervous. Anne Boyer’s The Undying. Catherine Gutherie’s Flat. But somehow they’re too hard, too close, this week. Instead, I picked up Crying in H Mart, a book that is about grief, but somehow the subject matter is a little bit further removed (though the grief is largely about losing a mother to cancer, so it’s not that distant. Suddenly, though, everywhere I look there is cancer.)

Images: The SCAR Project, beautiful pictures of women post breast cancer surgery, with their bodies reshaped by the disease.

Conferences: I found Alison Gibson (see above) because a friend sent me the link to this amazing online conference about healing collective trauma, with a track for poetry. And the poetry track includes some talks with AMAZING and favorite poets, like Ada Limon and Carolyn Forche and (tomorrow) Claudia Rankin.

Meditation: thank you, friends, for reminding me to meditate and breathe. Even the hospital discharge instructions for healing start by saying I should pause and take some deep breaths a few times each day. A dear friend called and has led me in a couple of amazing meditations, offering me grounding and acceptance when I didn’t think I could find it. And for pre-recorded meditations, this “Befriending Fear” with Tara Brach, has been especially good.

Fiddler Crab, an asymmetrical beauty