Other voices

For the first time in months, I have been perusing the Breast Cancer blogs on the net again. I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but maybe it's perspective? Hope? A final farewell? I feel like I'm pushing myself back into the storm, if only to remember what it was like when I was actively in it, so as not to lose the connection (with the group I never wanted to be a member of)! Just when I feel myself starting to get beyond it, I feel a nostalgia for the intensity of last fall. Like The Godfather, it keeps pulling me back in...

There are some astonishing blogs out there--really amazing, honest, infuriating, funny, sad, and ironic stuff. One article, "Gag me with a Pink Ribbon," at http://www.assertivepatient.com/ had me laughing so hard, I had to go get a cold cloth for my head. The author declares, "It's a disease, not a marketing opportunity!" and catalogues her outrage at products such as Breast Cancer Barbie, (she suggests marketing companion dolls such as Prostate Cancer Ken and little sister, Benign Girl, who "loves her big sister, but doesn't want to grow up to be like her!"), provides a mural of herself made out of pink M&Ms entitled "What I See in the Mirror--and It Ain't Pretty!", and sports a militant attitude about surviving not just cancer, but the whole falderol (spellcheck isn't working here, so I apologize) of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Last October, when we were in the thick of it, Bill complained about the barrage of pink-marketed items we had to wade through everywhere, saying, "Thanks, but I think we're aware now!" There is an element of exploitation when marketing everything from yogurt to power tools by slapping a pink ribbon on the package and supposedly donating a paltry percentage of the sale to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It's gotten out of control.

Another blog, entitled As the Tumor Turns at http://www.spinningtumor.blogspot.com/, features truly amazing art and photography, as well as articulate posts about dogs, Mexico vacations and life in general, as well as the daily struggles of adapting to post-cancer life.

I hesitate sharing these in one sense--for people who haven't lived this, some of it is pretty raw, and might be taken the "wrong" way, whatever that is. I found some of it offensive too, but I am also encouraged. All these voices provide a community of people who are pathfinding their way through it, just like I am.

Since I can't afford therapy (and could barely tolerate the smugness of it in any case--I'd have to hold in my snorting impulse, I distrust psychobabble so), blogging has become the place where I try out my emotions, work through conflicts and learn to heal myself. Reading other people's blogs gives me touchpoints of similarities and differences, a way to gut-check what I'm really feeling and see if it rings true to myself.