Just when I think I have arrived someplace, I find out that I haven’t arrived at all. I have simply briefly landed. This awareness was brought home in session with a client. But yesterday, it came to hit me again.

So, let me take you back in time a little. I’ve been in bed with a bad chest cold for a week. This has given me a great opportunity to binge watch HGTV on Hulu and obsess about my health. The HGTV came from… well let’s face it, HGTV is amazing. And the obsessing about my health came from a recent biopsy that was benign, combined with spending my second New Year’s Eve flat on my back, sick, and feeling crummy. Thoughts about my health circled around what I could do differently to be stronger and physically more resilient. Obviously, these are the kinds of thoughts you share with your partner. That is where the story picks up…

Brandi held up the mirror and I had to look at choices I make. I talked about not eating sugar and avoiding fried foods. She reminded me I sneak french fries from her when we go to Beef-A-Roo. Going out for pizza with friends often includes my sharing in the fried appetizers, liked fried mushrooms and cheese balls. But as Brandi held up the mirror, I felt something creep up inside me. It was shame. a deep shame that I have cancer. The nagging questions begin to surface about whether or not I did something to cause it. Yes, I’m careful with my food choices, but am I careful enough? This kind of shame is baffling to Brandi, and perhaps to others who have not had cancer. It is the shame that makes me want to defend myself when people talk about cancer patients as though we are all one flavor. You know… the couch potato, eating McDonalds, smoking two packs a day, slurping Coke by the liter flavor. Why does shame rise up like this? I believe that as someone in recovery from an eating disorder, I still carry shame about my body in general. Cancer just adds another complicated layer to it.
I want you to know I talked myself through the shame. I reminded myself of all of the ways I have cared for my body over the years. I reminded myself that perfection in self- care does not exist and sets me up to try to meet impossible expectations. I reminded myself that my body has one job and that is to carry my spirit while I am on earth. And it has done that job admirably through many painful challenges. 
This process has happened before. And that is what I mean about feeling I have arrived. I feel I have gotten to this loving, non-shaming place with my body in the past. But I don’t arrive. I just keep briefly landing, only to return. This may sound depressing, but actually it leaves me hopeful. I know that whenever shame about my body and cancer gets triggered, I have the ability to process it and let it go. And that, my dear readers, is what life is all about… the process of living.