The Inner Ostrich

Maybe it was two weeks ago that I "hid" status updates from a Facebook Friend because I needed a break from the Cancer-thon my days had become. Each day I'd click through multiple links, read frightening statistics or of another young diagnosis. I was reading books about survivors, about hope. There were days I cried quietly at the screen while on the Planet Cancer site. At the same time I am trying to do something worthwhile for the Relay For Life® in Simsbury, though I haven't been as successful as I'd have liked. There was a lot of cancer in my day-to-day. Too much.

Here is my Ostrich.

I don't want to think about cancer anymore. Not every day. I want to erase it. I want to be something else besides a cancer "survivor". Of course the other side of the coin is that I want to give myself credit for my strength. I want to remember where I've been and what I endured because it is part of me. I want to remember the outpouring of love and support.

We went through so much in the last 2 years. I have much to celebrate today. My children, my family, our home, our life. My hair - gray as it is.
I understand wanting to stick one's head in the sand and pretend it never happened. I get it. I hear it in the voices of my family. We dance around it some days during conversations; other times we can speak of it calmly & openly. But the more time that passes the more I realize how traumatic cancer is to so many people. More intense for the survivor and their immediate family perhaps, but painful for countless others. It's as if we need treatment for PTSD.

So I cannot begrudge anyone their Ostrich Day. I need those days - but they are bittersweet. And that's just a part of our story.