changing of the seasons

Once again I find myself looking out my living room window at our beautiful maple tree.  The red leaves are slowly returning despite the wind's efforts to blow them away.  At times it seems as confused about this weird weather we are having as I am; but the squirrels are back and the birds are back and my dog is enthralled with watching every move they make.  


When I bought this house the maple was one of the selling points even though, from the street side, it had the definite appearance of an apple with one bite taken out.  Big, beautiful, red and round... except the spot where no leaves would grow and the branches had died.  But from the inside of the house, the view of our tree was beautiful and perfect.  I once had a professional look at the tree and they informed me that the tree had been hit by lightning quite some time ago, leaving this permanent scar.  Each year takes a larger bite out of our maple and now a fourth of the tree is missing leaves.  Funny thing is, the view from my window has improved, the tree is older and more colorful than ever.  The "bite" is only obvious on the outside.  


And that's how I feel today.  From the outside I am scarred - no breasts, no hair, no eye lashes, spotty eye brows, and finger tips and nails that are decaying.  It's as if a lightening bolt hit me last fall and over the last 7 months I have continued to lose my "leaves".  But when I take a different perspective, I can see that I am much the same as I ever was and maybe even a little bit better - from the inside, the view is improving.  


When I first was diagnosed, I remember joking with friends about having to wear pink and participate in walks now.  Then a few weeks ago, while talking with a friend, she mentioned how it seems that there is a lot of pressure on cancer patients to take something away from their illness,  "cancer has changed me" is commonly said by those who have gone through it, and shouldn't it be enough that we fight and survive?  It was a great observation.


But here's the thing -  sometimes you do change, because sometimes you want to.

Like everything else on this journey, this too is a personal decision.  I can understand those who need to focus every ounce of mental and physical strength just to get through each day, each moment.  And I can understand those who want everything to remain the same and just put cancer behind them and pretend it never happened.

But for me, I can't imagine going through all of this and not finding someway to learn from it...to change for the better.  At the end of the day, I want more from this journey than to survive - I want to thrive.  And I don't want this to just be about the cancer, because if it's just about cancer, then I've turned over 7 months, 10 months, a year to cancer and I refuse to give cancer that much power.  In many ways, I need this to be about something more than cancer.  


So don't be surprised if in the future I wear pink and walk walks. If, like my maple, I am older and more colorful than I was before. But don't say that cancer has changed me - because the truth is, if anything changes it will be because I choose to change.  


And I choose to change.