I am coming through yet another hard phase of this cancer experience — this time, fighting a cold or flu that has lingered for weeks. The physical experience of the sickness has been relatively minor, but still hard. I also started the hormone suppressant drugs three weeks ago, and I think I’m also pretty low because of the drastic shifts to my chemical body.

I haven’t had enough energy to exercise for weeks, which feels awful, especially since movement is usually my easiest way out of a rut. But more excruciatingly, I have felt like I’ll never have the energy to exercise again. I know that sounds extreme, but somehow the physical lows of cancer and chemo, even when they’re not-so-low, have taken me to deep emotional lows. It feels something like depression. I almost dropped out of grad school a couple weeks ago when I felt no creative energy, and, more dramatically, I felt like I would never have a creative impulse again. (Full transparency — in the midst of that, I did have short windows where I willed myself to write and turn in work, and my mentor says it’s great work. She is a wonderful writer, so I am trying to believe her.)

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts this morning, “Death, Sex and Money.” (I mean, there are so many good political and comedy podcasts out there, and some of those are also favorites. See “Scene on Radio” and “The Handsome Pod.”) I love “Death, Sex and Money” because the interviewer is so good at asking people hard questions, then giving space to the guests to reflect on hard things. Today I listened to the latest episode, an interview with a former professional climber who got ME/CFS (aka chronic fatigue syndrome.) I won’t tell you about it — you should go listen (and I haven’t even finished yet.) But I felt so much kinship listening to a disability/chronic illness story that is not about overcoming or even a clear ending. During the interview, the former-climber describes lying on the couch with his an eye mask blocking the light because that’s what he needs to get through the interview. He is making meaning, yes, and he has lots of wisdom gained. But he does not have a “happy ending” to his story of chronic fatigue. I am so relieved these days to read and hear stories that do not have happy endings.

When Lucas was a baby, a friend gave him a copy of Zen Shorts. It is a kids book version of ancient Zen parables. I read him the book over and over because they were stories I needed to hear. I was especially rattled by the parable of the farmer who keeps having, apparently, both wonderful and terrible luck. Something happens in his life — good crops, his son not being conscripted into the military. Neighbors say, “what good luck,” and the farmer answers, “maybe.” After each windfall there is some loss — locusts, a broken leg. Each time there is tragedy the neighbors say, “what bad luck,” and the farmer replies, “maybe.” At least in the children’s book version of the story, there is no end to the cycles of gain and loss. This struck me as so much more real than the hundreds of children’s books we read that narrate a story where something bad happens, then an ally or wisdom arrives, and things are repaired to an equilibrium state of “good.” I want that to be true so badly. But Jesus. I cry every time I read the news right now. Obviously the equilibrium state for our world is not “good.” It is gain and loss. It is power and greed and genocide. It is love and resistance. It is birth and death. Both, all the time.

This weekend I met yet another younger woman in active treatment for breast cancer. (This means I now know five people, women in my friends-of-friends circle, who are currently getting chemo/radiation/hormone therapy for breast cancer. Not to mention all the women in my life who have been through it.) We were in the corner of a loud bar at a birthday party, leaning in and, ten minutes into meeting, talking in shorthand about some of the most intimate parts of our lives. It was so relieving to be able to talk in almost medical code about our unique but similar experiences, talk without explaining the hardships, headaches, and even the ridiculousness of this experience. It was good to be able to talk about mixed feelings about my choices with someone who had made different choices along the way — and who could understand, deeply, the ambiguity of medical decisions that everyone else assumes are cut and dry. It’s not that we have cancer and then don’t have cancer. We have cancer and then play the odds, try to balance risk and suffering with the odds of recurrence. It is a strange place to live, and it is so good to connect with others who are in it.

I wrote last time about wishing for a hero’s journey through and beyond cancer, but I mean that in jest. Or in a wink, wink, I know it’s problematic way. The hero’s journey is so individualistic. Often so neat and pat. Somewhere there is a smart article in The New Yorker critiquing that hero’s journey as a masculine ejaculation story arc — I wish I could find it, maybe one of you has it? Anyway, if I remember correctly, the author writes about a femme story arc being circular, with resolution not being peak and climactic but more about going inward, toward depth. I think they write about a feminine story arc as concentric circles. I love it. I am circling around the big questions right now – questions about how to live with acceptance and surrender, how to live my best life given the losses and limitations and gifts and pure luck I’ve been handed.

One of my great blessings is knowing a lot of amazing people. Right now Burke and Lucas and I are fighting back against the City of Seattle’s budget cuts, specifically the way they will affect disabled youth this summer. As I was making email lists, thinking about who we know who would email the city council, I was struck by how many people care deeply about Lucas and our family. (In fact, I keep thinking of people I didn’t send it to. If you haven’t seen our call to action, please let me know and I’ll forward you the email. We are still fighting and need more voices!) I feel lonely sometimes, isolated by care and illness. But man, if I look at the overwhelming number of people I can ask to support our family, I feel rich beyond belief. It’s not a happy ending. But it is true, and while I’m trying to make peace with this moment of feeling low, I am buoyed by turning my attention toward our incredible community.

A few more things that are lifting my spirits right now:

My friend/teacher/writing mentor, Anne Liu Kellor, wrote a beautiful essay about friendship, including the work it takes to make and maintain, and some deep questions about how to build meaningful, close community beyond the nuclear family, called “How to Make Friends During the Apocalypse.”

Both kids. Lucas is deadpan funny; Ida is ridiculous silly funny. This morning she woke up at 5:50 am, but stayed in her room listening to her audiobook until 6:30 am (this, alone, makes me happy), at which point she came into our room and bodyslammed Burke and me and declared that she was drinking (invisible) silly sauce at the world-record-breaking pace of a gallon a minute.

Nurses. We had a nurse leave Lucas’s team in January. In the past, we’ve gone weeks or months with open shifts when a nurse leaves, which puts more work on Burke and I and means Lucas misses school. This time, his two other nurses adjusted their schedules to fill in the open shifts until we had a new nurse on board and fully trained. Today is her first day! So, so, so grateful.

Burke. If you haven’t asked him about his new job (and how we can build progressive and radical grassroots movements while also defeating fascism in 2024), you should! Also, he is still getting me treats, even post chemo, even while I’m still sleeping a lot and he’s doing more of our family’s load of caregiving. Most recently he got me a new, lefty cancer book, All In.

I feel like I should tell you something awful to end this, so I don’t risk having a tyrannically happy ending to this post. But I trust you follow me. There’s not always a happy ending. Anyone (me?) who expects that of cancer is delusional. But also, when things are good, there’s not always another proverbial shoe to drop. Or, maybe more to the point of the proverb, there are a lot more things that will drop (mittens! hats! feather boas!). Maybe I put all those things in a circle and making meaning  out of the mess.

(For reading this far — thank you. Here are some pictures from a month ago, back before I was feeling low, when Ida and I traveled to Joshua Tree. I don’t take a lot of feeling-cancer-depressed pictures, so, you know, it leads to some incongruence between text and image.)