Oomphalos

Day 1 Post Chemo:

I usually feel pretty good for a day or so after treatment because you get a little bang from the pre-meds. I'm in that now. I can glimpse my regular living until Taxol takes over tomorrow and turns me into a pill. People keep asking me if I'm going to celebrate and I've been feeling like I should do something. But I'm reminded that I'm well past lliving a life of should's.  We each have our own ways of celebrating and a party just doesn't feel in order. How I hope to celebrate is to return quietly to my regular life. To celebrate the afternoon light as it cascades through the bannister on my staircase. To kiss my children as they sleep at night. To rejoice in my relationships and feel my dog's warmth as she curls up against my thigh each workday morning. I really think that just living will be a celebration in itself.

A friend recently shared an interesting model or a paradigm for self-actualization that I hadn't seen before. Here it is if you are interested:

http://www.brendanhughes.com/the-human-slouch-towards-narrative/

I think this has kinda changed my life. Prior to encountering it, I'd subscribed for Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as the best approximation of adult growth but for a bunch of reasons, I like this Hughes model better. For one, concentric circles feels more holistic and more intuitive and less linear than a triangle. For another, this model holds the individual in the context of the larger, social community.  And of course, I happen to hold a deep conviction about the power of narrative to heal and grow.That's why I think it works at the macro level.

On the micro level, it addresses some very internal struggles I've had  in my adult life recently. I think after my partner left under such euphoric (for him) and embarrassing (for me) circumstances, I got stalled in the B ring, "the story you tell the world about you." I hadn't ever really confronted my own need for validation with such proximity and it might be the most uniquely yucky thing I've ever experienced about myself. I practically had an imaginary spreadsheet so that if I bumped into somebody that knew us as a couple, I could share my version of the story as I understood it. It was painful, ineffective, and completely without reward.  Likewise, when I look back at where I was at the diagnosis stage, one of my primary concerns (after my kids, my life) was what people in my community wiould think. At the time, I would have rather had organs removed than lose my hair,  because the former would have made me less visible. I just didn't want to be exposed again.

This is where the best two sentences from Brendan Hughes come in. "No one is watching. The cinema is empty."
Isn't that incredible? I think having to navigate the world with a bald head has helped me grow in this regard. I hate being bald. I hate it. But there was and is nothing to do about it. It felt wrong to hide so I mostly didn't. I grocery shopped, I presented at a conference. I took my kids on outings and to restaurants. I did the things I do. It turns out that even after all that effort, I have no idea what people think. It turns out it really isn't any of my business. It turns out this is finally how I'm learning to care a lot less.

I also love the concept of oomphalos. I've been trying to apply it to my bald head. Sometimes at night, I take off my hat and scarf and study my head. I find it pretty scary but I've been trying to look at myself through this lense of oomphalos. Why should I love or like myself less because I'm bald? Rather than be frightened, why not try to see this bald me as the one that anyone would fall in love with if they only knew me? Why not, right?

Thanks, B, for sharing this cool thing with me.