Tag Archives: breast cancer

surviving in the land of women

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downtonI am about to lead off into a post that might make people go “huh” in the first few paragraphs (or all the way through).  It is however, just something I have been pondering, so I decided to write it down.

My friends will tell you that I think some women on occasion are wasted space.  And I am not saying that to be mean, I just have great female friends and relatives and don’t have time for the games and the hormonal B.S. that exceeds P.M.S. in a lot of  “adult” women.

And face it, a lot of purportedly “adult” women are still pulling the same stunts they did in grade school and high school. I try not to be intolerant, and I want to be understanding always, but sometimes it is just not possible.

Such is the nature of relationships women have with other women. If we are honest with ourselves, that is. And if we are truly honest with ourselves as women, surviving in the land of women can be like navigating a maze or an obstacle course.  And in that vein, every woman goes through phases where other women make them want to beat their head against the wall.

I don’t expect everyone to like me, to understand me, to want to be my friend.  And I am quite o.k. with that.  I know who I am, so it’s all good. I do not pretend to be perfect; I am a human and I am flawed.  I am just me, have no desire to be anyone else.  Like everyone else I love, I laugh, I have experienced hardship and loss.

Those who have seemingly magical lives untouched by anything unpleasant are really, really lucky.  I will never pretend my life has been a continual paragon of perfection because all relationships take work and sometimes life circumstance takes us where we never expect.  Besides, acknowledging occasional bumps in the road isn’t a bad thing.  It is part of who we are, adds character. I guess I don’t understand when people are afraid to live life out loud and in color.

As women our differences and similarities shouldn’t freak people out so much.  But have you noticed how it often does?

Where I used to live, some of us (male and female) used to refer to this group of women as “the mean girls.”  And oh, were they ever.  They were like a gaggle of mean, pecking geese.  If you weren’t like them, didn’t share their politics or parenting style, you were literally a target.  They were rather parochial in their very limited bullying ways.  It was somewhat astounding and always amusing. Especially when they acted like  quasi well-bred alley cats and then lectured others on manners and decorum.

Of course one of the things I always found amusing was one of them who was always particularly critical and mean to others  had the worst body odor.  I often wondered if she ever knew the reason people backed away wasn’t always just because they did not want to deal with intimidation, but because she was rather odoriferous.

Even out here in my newer world I have found that it is not always easy to survive in the land of women.  One such creature contacted me unbidden the other day.  She said to me (and I quote)

“Stupid bitch.  It’s ok to have an opinion as long as it agrees with yours.  You’re ugly inside and out, blogging bitch.”

Amazingly enough this woman sent this to me with full disclosure of who she was.  Equally amazing is that this woman was never a friend or an acquaintance, had never met me, never had a conversation with me.  Nothing.  She just did not like my opinion is pretty much what it boiled down to.  Hopefully she feels better now.  Did I mention this woman is a grandmother I am told?  I am sorry I just can’t picture my grandmothers ever doing such a thing.

Other things about women that drive me occasionally crazy as an adult (and also did as a teen and in my early twenties) is the way some women can obsess over what others are saying and trying to divine what they are thinking, search for hidden meanings where none exist.  Some women can even create issues and drama where there are none to worry about. This happens a lot more today I think because of social media.

Have you ever had someone ask you if your Facebook or Twitter status is about them? Maybe some people roll that way, but I do not.  When someone did that to me recently, it actually creeped me out a little.  It also annoyed the bejesus out of me.  I am pretty darn direct and if something bothers me, I spit it out in person.

Does what happened bother me still?  No.  But I am writing about it because I think it is germane to what I am writing with regard to how women interact with each other. The person who did this will undoubtedly be upset to see this written down, but again, nothing personal please avoid drama- it just is a good example of the dumb stuff that happens.

Recently, out of the blue, someone I let go from my life easily fifteen or twenty years ago surfaced.    This is one of those people who always used to leave a trail of emotional wreckage and drama behind her.  She was one of those people you just let go of because among other things you get tired of hearing what she has done and living in the wake of unecessary drama.

As life always comes full circle, this woman is back again.  New husband, new life.  I am in truth, happy for her and wish her well.  But it doesn’t mean I want to pick back up.  I don’t.  The funny thing is she doesn’t get that  I feel neither hate nor animosity, but in truth, feel nothing.  Not being mean, but she is just not part of the equation of my life. Maybe it is file under once bitten, twice shy.  I don’t know.  All I know is I just can’t go there again.  And it should be o.k. to feel that way.

And that is at the crux of change sometimes: it just is, and it is not done for others, it is done for yourself.  After surviving breast cancer a lot of crap doesn’t matter to me any longer.  I have let stuff go and moved on.  I have also let go of people I did not feel were positive in my life.

It sounds a little zen, so maybe it is.   There are other things I want to do, other people I want to meet.  My core group of friends remains the same and I am blessed because a lot of them pretty much go back to the cradle of it all. But as for others?  Sorry, but I have to do what is best for me.  In some cases that means walking away and ignoring people, in other cases just letting people go.  Life is too short and often too hard to spend it around people who do not make you happy.

niaIn this odd land of surviving woman also comes something cool this week:  I will be reading  an advanced copy of actress/director/writer Nia Vardalos’ book Instant Mom.  I will then review it for this blog and possibly interview her.  She is one of my favorite actresses, so how cool is that?

I also have been published in a book that is a compilation of a book of essays written by breast cancer survivors.  A long while ago my friend (and amazing writer) Nicki Boscia Durlester told me she was writing another book.  Only this one would be different.  It would not just be her journey through breast cancer, it would be the stories of many.

Nicki asked me to be part of this, and I said yes.   And as the calendar creeps up on the 2nd anniversary of my diagnosis and the 2nd anniversary of my surgery, the book is out and published.

I am incredibly proud and rather emotional at being a part of this book.  There are a lot of survivor stories out there, and it is an honor to have been chosen to stand with all these amazing and incredible women.

Like every breast cancer diagnosed, no one woman’s story is exactly the same although you will find threads of commonality that bond us together.

It is called The Pink Moon Lovelies: Empowering Stories of Survival [Paperback] .  It is available on Amazon.com. And again, Nicki Boscia Durlester is the overall author, editor, and provides the inroduction.

Anyway, life is a journey.  And we all deserve to be happy.  But as a woman, sometimes I just find surviving in the land of women an uneasy sisterhood at best.  I am sorry if that upsets people, or others interpret this post as a weird betrayal because it is not.  Some of what I write is from my own life experience, and my writing mentors have always said “write what you know.” Well this is part of what I know.

Do I think women should be more supportive of each other? Yes, but we also have to be honest.  And part of that honesty means acknowledging to yourself and others that you are not going to get along with everyone, nor should you be expected to.  We are all different.

Thanks for stopping by.

wow…so real housewives of them

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crap“The Scoop on Breasts”? REALLY?

Sorry, this is one of those things that drives me batty: the fact that so many people seem to feel that the only way a woman is sexy is if she supersizes her bust line and does other plastic surgery augmentation. If not that Botox beauty.  Or Juviderm to go.

You name it, a woman isn’t beautiful unless she has been sliced and diced and maybe had a glycolic peel or three.

I am a breast cancer survivor who had a partial mastectomy.  I am a little lopsided now but so what?  That bit of lopsided means I am alive to write this post.  I am also a woman who decided to forgo hair coloring and am graying here and there and you know what?  Less chemicals is beautiful. I think I am relieved to not have to spend the next however many years worrying about unnecessary chemicals and wondering if hair color makes me look fake.

I am not a bra burner by any stretch of the imagination but to infer (either directly or indirectly) that women are only beautiful if they consider boob jobs is just wrong. And ask your doctor how they have to manipulate breast implants for mammograms some time.

I have no problem with oh so pretty lingerie or a real bra fitting – that is a very valuable service.  But a book signing which is in my opinion just existing to sell more boob jobs? How does that help a woman’s self body image to send the not so subtle message she needs a boob job to be beautiful?

Ladies, you want to celebrate your sexy? Be self-confident in who you are and revel in it.  Be yourself.

six minutes of television worth watching before the election

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Last night I did not watch the Republican National Convention, or listen to Ann Romney’s speech. (See and interview with her here.) To get personal, I am sorry she had breast cancer, but you know what? I am a survivor too.  She also spoke about having multiple sclerosis, and again, I am sorry, but I know a very brave woman who struggles with this every day who I think is amazing.  And she doesn’t tell people about her disease, nor do I tell people what I had so other women will identify with me.  It is simply now part of who I am, and to an extent how I view the world.

What did I watch? The season finale of HBO’s The Newsroom which I had missed on Sunday night.

But what I do not get about my own political party, the Republican party, is they put the candidate’s wife, Ann Romney, out there to speak to the women of this country, yet behind the scenes there is embracing of political zealots who I feel have very little respect for women, their bodies, their opinions, their wants, their needs.

Look at Rep. Todd Akin and his “legitimate rape” comments. According to him,and his vast medical knowledge,women’s bodies shut down upon violation making pregnanacy, etc impossible. And look in our own political trashcan in Pennsylvania to Tom Smith, who is running for senate.  He drew a parallel in an interview with the AP between babies born out-of-wedlock and rape. HUH????

Neither of these men should be running for those reasons alone, yet they are.  And they aren’t alone.  How am I as a Republican woman supposed to vote a Republican ticket when just underneath the surface exists a current that is terrifying to me?   Don’t misunderstand me, I am not feeling it for Obama for a second term, but I am having a personal political crisis wondering how the hell I am going to vote?

I have said before that I feel the politics of extremism is ruining this country. It is the undeniable truth.  Which is why when I heard what a fictional newsman (who sadly does better reporting the news that major networks in this country do in reality) talk about Republicans and the Tea Party as a fictional Republican, it was very interesting.

Writers do not just draw from imagination, they draw from real life,  out there are a lot of  people who are torn and apathetic at the same time just like me.  I don’t think this all came out of Aaron Sorkin’s vivid imagination alone.  (Read an interesting article on the series in the Atlantic HERE)

I volunteered for the RNC2000 when it was in Philadelphia.  I have to tell you, I believed a lot more than I do now.  But at that convention, the Republican Party on a national level had some balls and the political  zealots and extremists stayed firmly where they belong on the fringe.

I almost wonder what kind of target I will become now as a blogger for saying I am a Republican but political extremism isn’t the way to go?

Anyway, watch the clip I posted.  I don’t care who did it, or what their political persuasion may or may not be, as Americans it is a perspective we should at least hear out.

Here is what Buffalonews.com had to say:

Brilliant ‘Newsroom’ finale has impeccable timing By Jeff Simon

Enough of all the supremely supercilious Sorkin-bashing. No more. Sunday’s season finale of Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom” managed to be the most timely – and one of the best – season finales of a television show I’ve ever seen (and, in my case, that “ever” covers a lot of chronological distance).

On this very evening, the Republicans are gathered in Tampa to see how much commandeering of the American journalistic agenda a storm called Isaac will allow. Two days earlier, “The Newsroom’s” finale led off with fictional journalistic crusader Will McEvoy leading off his news broadcast with a very real issue hotly debated (“defended” is the most apt word) just a few weeks ago: efforts to deny voting rights to those who have no photographic identification…..Put it together with “The Newsroom’s” usual blowtorching of the Tea Party on the (also) plausible grounds that it represents extremism, not Republicanism, and you’ve got the most extraordinary timeliness ever recorded for a TV show in a presidential election year. And all this, mind you, from an HBO fantasy that, thus far, has had to restrict itself to actual events from 2010, when some of the writing was being done….

In the terrific season finale of “The Newsroom” – complete with historically appropriate sideswipes at “Sex and the City” – Sorkin revealed what his theme music all along should have been: bad, scratchy old recordings of Broadway cast albums from “Camelot” and “Man of La Mancha.”

Now THAT would have been the proper introductory tone – smartass, ironic, dweeby, willing to get bruised while pushing boundaries rather than defending a bunch of Holy Prophets who were never anything of a sort.

 

Like it or not, Aaron Sorkin and HBO via fictional characters have given a voice to people questioning the tides of American politics.  Even registered Republicans.

We, as Americans, have been suffering through an economy not seen since the Great Depression if we are all honest with ourselves.  We don’t (thankfully) have a World War looming on the horizon to snap us out of it, but you know what?  We all need something to believe in.

We need as Americans, to have not only something and someones we can believe in, but practical solutions and not pie in the sky ideals.

We do not need to set women back a century or better, and we need to stop a lot of rhetoric which if continued will merely induce more hatred between races.  We need people who actually want to get together from both parties and govern for the good of the people and this country.

Right now it is bull twaddle as usual in Washington, DC.  And in the actual district you see people running around hedging their bets in case the seat of power changes, which in effect means nothing is getting done and we are still paying for it as taxpayers.

You know, I had a ticket for Paul Ryan’s visit to West Chester but I did not go.  I did not go because I did not feel like dealing with the extremeists from either side who were there, including that old fool Frank Lautenberg.  I enjoy politics, I enjoy hearing what candidates have to say, and sometimes even their wives, which is how I got to meet Michele Obama last election in a small setting. I like to hear what candidates have to say, but I can’t hear any of them this election season because they are getting drowned out by the politics of extremism on both sides.

I am getting off the soap box now.