Why write? Where did this personal journey start? To honor people and struggle in life. Their story matters. My story matters. Yours does too.
It was the blustery, hurricane moment of my soul. The clouds hung low in the Costa Rican jungle, suffocating the 2 am taxi's progress as we raced towards the airport.
I just hope I make it home in time.
My father had only been diagnosed with cancer 10 days ago. It was stage 4. Metastasized to his liver. Stunned shock was the normative experience; just a few weeks ago he had once again effortlessly beat me to the top of a 14 mile hike. This was Superman. Cancer was an impossibility.
We stubbornly argued--a rarity. I said I couldn't leave to chaperone that trip of high school students to Costa Rica. He said he wouldn't get treatment if I didn't go. More importantly, he said it would break his heart more to not see me live and continue helping kids. Cancer was just cancer. Don't let it be more of a death sentence than it already was. He needed to see life.
So I went. What's a daughter to do? And halfway through that life-giving trip the text came: "You need to come home now."
I tried. Desperately. Apparently 12 hours wasn't enough. The 4 am phone call came: "Daddy's gone." I missed saying good-bye. And it all happened so fast...I truly never thought I would have to.
“Cancer was just cancer. Don't let it be more of a death sentence than it already was.”
These are the moments so difficult to process that impressions and barely formed sentences scratch at our souls. In the weeks that follow, they either claw their way out in unintentional bursts of tears or stab bits of impatience in tedious meetings. So instead, because who needs more chaos during such a time, I choose to release them. To not hold them. To honor the pain and simply bunker down while it raged around me, hoping that a Greater Wind would eventually crowd away the chaos and gently restore peace.
Unable to process the grief, I turned to writing poetry. A genre full of impressions. But then another story came across my life--in this one, a little, 4-year-old girl lost her daddy too. Fresh pellets of grief hit. I couldn't process this reality as a grown woman. But my dad had be able to walk me down the aisle.
The book list on grief for children was short. And full of mostly the same type of characters and families. It broke my heart.
Cancer, unlike humanity, doesn't care about the same things: your age, size of your wallet, background or education, skin color, religion...it unabashedly reminds us that those categories mean absolutely nothing. Why was there such a short list of books? Why should that list only include one type of family?
Thus a children's story began to form. And slowly a friend or two said, "Write it!" Then a student in my English class asked about self-publishing, and I had few answers. Since I exhaustively push growth mindset in my class, I realized I had some growing to do, too.
And finally, immediacy reared its head. So as I was still processing how to write a book on cancer, my own wonderful 4-year-old and I went to a friend's in-home Oscar party. Less than an hour in, she came up crying, asking to leave. Why? No one said they liked her dress. There was no mean kid. Just no one complimented her. Even though I fought so hard against society's suffocating beauty standards, my little girl had still internalized them to the point of knowing what all grown ups do: a compliment means you stand out enough.
“These are the moments that are so difficult to process that impressions and barely formed sentences scratch at our souls...I had to choose to release them. To honor them.”
With momma bear fiercely activated, urgency set in. My baby girl needed a book. Right. Now. I never expected other moms and dads to like it too. It was simply a love gift to her. A tribute to her pain, even as a little one. Apparently it's a too common story.
And I don't recommend the writing path I took. Months of 4 am wake ups, with two small children, a baby on a bottle strike, a full-time career, and a last minute move to finally get into a house (Colorado real estate market --we are not friends). I don't know if I was brave or stupid or just really desperate.
But I can say this now: Write! Write in a journal, write a story, spell impressions out into song and dance and scribbled notes of learnings. Let those undefined moments find life. Don't let them scratch their way out --use the full force of that diaphragm and push them to the surface. Honor the messy and chaotic and beautiful and hopeful people and memories. Because stories matter. People matter. And you matter too. Seek healing, and you never know, it might yield more than you had hoped.
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