It’s my birthday today, and I am 50! It’s a crazy number, but I am excited and so happy to be alive. It’s fun thinking that I have seen half a century, fun and wild. Goodness knows I wouldn’t even try to hazard a guess what’s next, for myself or anything else.
My 49th year was a big one, and its magnitude had nothing to do with its number value. To begin with, I celebrated my 49th birthday in a place I never in a million years would have expected to be: Newry, Ireland. It was magic! I hope I get to go there again someday.
Back home, I went for my annual mammogram in November, and began a new journey. . . . although really I was already traveling a certain road without realizing it. But maybe I did realize it, maybe I had always known it was coming. November’s mammogram turned into a sonogram, then a biopsy, which came back as invasive ductal carcinoma: breast cancer. What came next, after a lot of poking, prodding, scanning, and testing, was surgery and reconstruction, thankfully all at once!
Obviously I am summing things up briefly. My experience with breast cancer, and how I dealt with it, is a topic for some other platform than this one. I am happy to share it, however: if you or someone you know is suffering with cancer, please, reach out to me. I would love to talk to you and encourage you however I can.
Part of my method for processing things involved photography. Almost immediately, I decided to channel my energy in a positive way into the act of creating art. This ended up turning into a self portrait, narrative series, made almost entirely with black and white polaroid film. Whether or not I share the work is still undecided. Honestly, I entered one of the photographs to a magazine and it was not included. I’m not sure my heart is ready for the indifference of the art world about a project so intensely personal and meaningful. This is the photograph, titled Wrapped in Light
And here is another version of it, made with an Ondu pinhole camera:
I’m sharing a few more photos from the series with you today, I suppose as a little bit of a glance inside the world I’ve inhabited lately, the world I continue to inhabit although it’s full of life and joy and hope! Don’t get me wrong – I am honestly so, so grateful for the experience of breast cancer. I am not at all sorry I was chosen for this journey!
Dust:
This photograph I made the morning of surgery:
And this one at the 6 month mark, on August 4th:
One final photograph from the series, which is titled Confidence, based on a quote from St Therese of Lisieux: “C’est la confiance et rien que la confiance qui doit nous conduire à l’Amour”. “It is confidence and nothing but confidence that must lead us to Love”. St Therese is my confirmation saint, and has been a source of inspiration (and intercession!) for me since I was a teenager.
If I strove to take nothing for granted before, I strive that way even more now, including the man standing next to me in the above photo: the man who did everything for me during recovery, including washing my hair! Life is a gift, love is a gift. Every moment I have left, I want to share mine! Do I have another 50 years? With my family record, who knows! Thank you for looking; I’m glad you are here.
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