Maybe Someone Else Can Say It Better

 Hey friends, 

I've heard from one or two people that you WANT MORE CONTENT on this here blog, but I don't have too much to say. For the next several months my life revolves around chemo every two weeks, hoping to have manageable side-effects, and waiting for my hair to fall out.  

I'll go in for scans in a few weeks, however my doctor said he doesn't expect to see a whole lot of change that fast. So then we are looking at continued chemo and another scan 8 weeks following that. Meaning, the answer to then most important question "Is the chemo working or not?" won't really be available until February.   

In the meantime, my bright and feeling-forward best friend Quinn Drew has offered a guest post. 

Enjoy.

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Feeling All the Feels  

 

Hi, friends. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Quinn. I met Jean in college, where we took many of the same classes and lived approximately 4 blocks from each other. These days we work at the same organization and live approximately 1 mile from each other, so obviously a lot has changed.  

 

Jean and Ruth have done an outstanding job of giving us the facts related to Jean’s diagnosis and the related processes thereafter and I am so grateful. One of the reasons I love them so much is their ability to think-me-through almost any situation: what’s happened, what’s happening, what happens next, and what can we do to get there?  

 

I, on the other hand, am predominately a feeler. Don’t get me wrong – there’s a warm chocolate center under both of those thick candy shells – but if they’re the M&Ms, I’m the melted Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. 

 

I asked if I could write this quick guest blog to both give shape to my own feelings, and perhaps to give a voice to some of yours. In short, I’m feeling a LOT of feels. A sampling on any given day might include profound sadness, anger, disbelief, and heartache, but also gratitude, and extraordinary love.  

 

I ask myself rhetorical questions: does my best friend really have cancer? How does my best friend have cancer? What happens now? How can I help? Why don’t I just know how to help? If I’m feeling all of these things, how must she be feeling? How is Ruth feeling? How the fuck does any of this make any sense? Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.  

 

When it comes down to it, I have no answer for almost every question I ask myself. And while yes, I know I’ll learn to live with that uncertainty, it doesn’t mean that feels comfortable.  

 

Michelle Rial, an artist I follow on Instagram, posted this chart: 

 

  

 

While these ideas aren’t totally my jam, I do appreciate the reminder to do something as a way to get out of an emotion-led spin. Maybe you’ll also find it helpful, or maybe you’ve got your own way of coping. And if you do, I’d love to hear it in the comments. We’re all in this together, folks. Let’s love the hell out of Jean and Ruth, and also, take care of each other. --Quinn