It’s been a little bit over two months since my last chemo session, and I cannot believe I stayed quiet all this time…
Although I had a tornado of blog-worthy thoughts spinning inside my head, I couldn’t bring myself to run my fingers on the keyboard. I wanted to, but something kept holding me back…
Why am I so energy-depleted? —I kept asking myself over and over again. Am I procrastinating? Is my blog yet another project I start and leave half-way done?
Then, it hit me: I needed a B-R-E-A-K!
You see… with the end of chemo, part of my identity had faded away. I was no longer a chemo patient, yet, I was still unable to go back to my corporate existence. I was scheduled to begin radiation, but first I needed to take a one-month pause…
I was in a treatment and professional limbo.
Add to the mix a few twists and turns in my personal life (including the end of a twenty-year relationship with the man soon to be f/k/a my husband) and I landed in identity limbo: not a chemo patient, not a practicing attorney and not even a wife! Sigh…
Now… was that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Like with many things in life, the answer is “it depends”.
A break is an interruption of continuity. It can mean the end of something, but it can also be just a pause. And, if a pause, a break can be followed by the resumption of what was interrupted, or it can be followed by a new phase (or a transformed version) of what was brought to a halt.
They say breaks can make us feel better by providing a renewed sense of focus, but not all breaks are created equal. Good breaks can reduce mental and emotional fatigue, whereas bad breaks may actually backfire, leading to boredom and more stress.
So, what kind of a break was mine?
Well… why keep things simple, when one’s break can be a combination of both?!
With my glass-half-full mindset, I treated myself to a decadent end-of-chemo trip —destination shall remain secret until a later time TBD—, I continued to carve out time for coffee-shop day-dreaming and kept going on endorphin-releasing energizing walks. This was my good break. I felt alive. Ideas and projects kept popping into my head. There was laughter in my days, and, although I knew the road would be bumpy, I had an overall sense of hope.
But the stress of life and the absence of structure gradually took over… I found myself lost in an emotional maze, without a tangible purpose and wondering what to do next with my life. I kept jotting down ideas to write about, creating action-item lists, planning and scheduling, only to find myself getting to the end of each day E-X-H-A-U-S-T-E-D and with two-thirds of the to-do items on my daily list not done. The stress of my days carried into my nights, and the cycle repeated itself over and over again from the start.
It really S-U-C-K-E-D…
I tried every strategy I could think of: meditation, running, barefoot-walking in the grass, drawer-cleaning and even affirmations… You name it!
Did I feeling any better? Nope. It still S-U-C-K-E-D.
I could literally feel cortisol crawling up my head, while a heavy sunken feeling pressed my heart down…
So, I decided to do something that goes against my nature: S-U-R-R-E-N-D-E-R.
I stopped fighting the suckiness —is that even a word?— and gave my mind and my soul a break. I stopped making lists, gave myself permission to accomplish nothing, cried on and off (as-needed) until, one morning, the big dark hole in my heart felt less hollow and part of the suckiness was gone.
That morning, I went for a long power walk in the sun, then I took a shower, washed my hair, slipped into a white summer dress and (following my mom’s wise advice) put a bright scarf around my neck and some make-up on. I shook my dark wavy hair and took a good long look in the mirror: Ta-Da!! There you are —I said to myself reclaiming my power.
I was ready for a come-back.
After many weeks of good and bad break blending, things had decanted. The bad-break particles had fallen to the bottom, and the good-break components had surfaced and were in plain view to be capitalized:
I was no longer a chemo patient, but the six-chemo-round journey had left me with a new level of resilience, and I was ready to pour my new strength and growth mindset into the next phase of my treatment and, overall, into may life.
For the time being, I was not a practicing attorney, but writing had become a creative and emotional outlet (for myself and for others currently walking a similar healing path).
Last, but not least, I was no longer a wife to my twenty-year companion, but I had become a stronger role model for my daughters and an even stronger mom.
So, what is the moral of the story?
A break is not a fixed moment in time. It is a process, and it can be a necessary ending and a restorative pause at the same time.
I am no longer a chemo patient. And, at the present time, neither am I a practicing attorney or a wife. But, the glass is still half full, and this break has left me with a sense of transformed (and not lost) identity: I am redefining my role as a cancer-treatment patient, a creative writer and a mom.
My break has been a non-linear evolutionary intermission, and I am ready for the new chapter which is about to start. My break wasn’t just a necessary pause or a mere interruption. It was a generative transition into the next phase of my healing path.
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