After my mom died, I remember how every morning in the days that followed I would wake up and for just a few moments, I would be free. For just an instant, I would forget she was gone.

And then with a jolt, it would explode to the surface, “Oh my god, she’s gone!” And a day of fresh grief would start anew.

Same with a cancer diagnosis. I would finally find sleep but would wake up during the night to pee, and on that five-foot walk to the bathroom, I would suddenly remember, “Oh my god, I have cancer, I have cancer!” And the grief, and the agony and the spin would start anew.

Also during cancer treatment, I would regularly have bad dreams. A nightly one was where I was running in a marathon. Running and running and running, I would arrive at each mile marker, yet no one would tell me which mile it was, or how much farther I had to go. In the dream, I had no idea how many miles I had come, yet I knew I was exhausted.

About 3 weeks into our COVID stay at home order, I posted on social media that while I had been doing okay so far, this week I had hit a wall. I was surprised how many replied, “me too, me too.” Everyone it seemed was saying that they had done okay with it,–until now.

It was a wall hittin’ weekend for a lot of folks.

I can think of a lot of reasons why this happened.

First, like in my running dream, it is very hard to do something when you don’t know how long it will last. Uncertainty is draining.

I am a girl who likes to pace myself with difficult tasks. No matter what is ahead of me, I want to know how long. A dental impression, a long flight, I always ask how many minutes, how many days will it be? With each element of an MRI, I ask the people in the booth to count me down, to tell me the lengths of each new segment, and how many minutes are left in each one.

Mentally, it makes it more doable for me. I can eat an elephant a bite at a time if I know how much is left.

But it seems with COVID, we are finding that number, that “how long,” is always changing, ever fluid. We think we know what mile marker we are running toward, say 14 days, but the goalposts keep getting moved. And with numbers being floated that it could be 18 months, it’s exhausting to imagine.

I remember a day when I thought the first part of my chemo treatment was finished. It was a particularly nasty chemo drug that made me very, very sick. I got up that day and happily went to chemo, mentally feeling ready to swallow that last bite. I remember my chemo nurse Marcy gently breaking it to me, saying, “No Lauren, you have six more weeks of it.”

And I absolutely lost it. I thought I had scaled the first wall, only to be told, no Lauren, there is still another 100 feet to climb.

I hit the wall hard that day. I bounced off it and laid on the ground for a long time.

And I wept.

We all have hit that wall these last days. We made it through the first difficult weeks, only to find that there is more above, and more ahead. We had paced ourselves and mentally prepared thinking, “Oh I can do this for a month, I can stay inside and I can home school, and I can stretch my finances for that long”

And then we were told nope another month. At least. Another month. Maybe more.

And we hit the wall hard.

And we wept.

Uncertainty is exhausting. Not knowing “how much longer” is one thing, but uncertainty about the outcome is another. Uncertainty about our health and our family’s health. Uncertainty about ever finding normal again? It takes a lot out of you.

I was horrified when I was told my chemo protocol was 18 months long. It seemed impossible and undoable. It was overwhelming to imagine what those 18 months would be filled with- no hair, social isolation, icky treatment and the loss of all the things I would miss out on as a mom of young kids.

The uncertainty about outcome ping-ponged in my head on the daily. “Will I live? When will I feel safe from this again? Will my family make it through?” I had no idea, no assurance that if I did A & B, I would get rid of the big C. Each hour was constant mental darting between “I’m gonna die from this,” and back to, “it will be okay, your odds are good if you do what you are told.”

We have all hit the wall of wondering about the uncertainty of these things with COVID. We are exhausted and the goalposts have been moved. We are longing for normal.

The crisis phase of grief is busy and loud. We are just now rounding out of that phase with COVID.

While the shock of finding out I had cancer was exhausting as it stole sleep and headspace, the “doing” of early cancer diagnosis was even more taxing.  The prepping and navigating all the things that had to be done under a downpour cloud of, “Oh my god I can’t believe this is happening,” Things like finding an oncologist, preparing my kids for what was ahead, getting a port put in and sorting finances.

Each day it seemed, was a new crisis to manage, a new adjustment in my life, a new thing to grieve, a new fear, a new facet of what would fill the 18 months ahead.  It was a time filled with waking up each day feeling normal and then, remembering it was happening. Each day was overwhelming grief about losing my normal.

The busyness of that initial phase made what was ahead seem even more impossible to imagine. Living 18 months whilst sustaining this exhausting, early-on-level of anxiety, chatter and adjustment seemed undoable.

With COVID, we have all been in crisis mode. Zapping our energy with the hunting and gathering of our supplies at a frantic pace, making arrangements to get kids home from college, learning ZOOM, and canceling big social events while grieving their loss.

We have been busy busy busy learning about COVID, learning to sanitize and wash our hands, packages, and groceries.

We have been adjusting to the loss of social contact and are using up tons of mental energy for hypervigilance about distancing. All this being done under the downpour cloud of “Oh my god how is this happening?”

We are unable to restore energy as many are having the bad dreams, waking up only to remember, “OH MY GOD COVID is happening.”

The crisis phase is filled with LOTS of chatter, a lot of noise, a lot of talk about nothing but COVID. I remember in my crisis phase of cancer, there came a day when I told my dad on the phone that I was calling a moratorium on cancer talk.

I realized that every square inch of my brain 24/7 was being taken up with cancer talk, cancer information, and cancer thoughts.

Cancer Cancer Cancer.

I had cancer fatigue.

COVID COVID COVID.

I now have COVID fatigue.

We all do.

COVID fatigue comes from anger about why aren’t people distancing, or taking it seriously.

It comes because sustained fear is exhausting.  Worry is exhausting. Anxiety is energy-sapping. Hypervigilance is draining.

It comes from the constant chatter.  The noise in our head, the noise outside our head.

It comes from the constant mental pinballing back and forth between, this is deadly serious vs. I am over-reacting.

COVID fatigue arrives with the abatement of the initial surge of adrenaline needed to get through the crisis phase.

It comes from climbing a wall with raw scrubbed hands whilst in isolation, only to wonder, will there be an ICU bed and vent for me?

It comes from our dissection of and freak out about every cough or sneeze. Every hot flash, every tiny body ache is suddenly a BIG THING to think about.

COVID fatigue comes because of uncertainty about how many walls are ahead of us, or how much longer this will last.

It comes from using up all the immense energy used in having to learn a completely new way to live. The busyness and all the prepping for this new thing.

And COVID fatigue comes from grief, and the longing for normal again. It’s exhausting and terrifying to have people say “This is the new normal get used to it.” It’s like getting a plate of poo and being told you will like it. Yeah, not so much right now.

COVID, COVID, COVID.

I remember too, the defeat I felt on the day when I finally scaled that first cancer wall and triumphantly looked out ahead. I was thinking I would see the promised land of Normal, but all I saw were more and more walls ahead, some of them even bigger than the one I had just climbed.

It made me hit that first wall with my fists and weep, “I can’t do this! It’s not fair!”

But I did it. Cause the alternative wasn’t so spiffy.

And COVID fatigue or not, you can do it too.

I promise you, you can do this. Here is how.

During cancer, a friend sent me a note early on that said, “You won this battle, now win the war.”

And that was how I learned to pace myself through the ordeal. Not by OH MY GOD 18 MONTHS! But instead by simply navigating each “battle of the day.” A bite a time.

I climbed only the wall in front of me and trained my brain to avoid thinking about those walls ahead, allowing myself to see only as far as the headlights could shine that day.

I refused to focus on the uncertainty of “how much longer” and “what will happen?” anymore because no one had the answer. I knew 18 months was a likely endgame and that was it.

I cut myself some slack and allowed for rest. I allowed that I was mentally exhausted from those early weeks of the crisis phase. With COVID fatigue, you have bounced off that wall. It’s okay to lay there for a bit. It’s a lot to navigate, so it’s okay that you haven’t cleaned closets yet, or written a novel. Balance will come, I promise.

It’s okay to feel you can’t follow the advice of well-meaning friends. I had so many people tell me how to “do cancer.” Eventually, I discovered this: there are no Cancer Police. Similarly, there are no COVID Police. You have to find a way to navigate COVID that works for YOU. You do you.  Find a way to fill your cup and cope, within the confines of COVID.

In hindsight, I learned this very important truth: the first wall is the hardest.

Each wall thereafter isn’t easier because they are smaller or lesser, but because you build both the mental and physical muscles to climb them. You gain dexterity, as climbing becomes more the norm, so it’s not as taxing and fatiguing. In crisis, I didn’t have my “cancer legs” yet, and it made me imagine that all walls ahead would be as hard and tiring to climb as the first one. But they weren’t.

We are just getting our COVID legs. The rest of this ordeal will be less exhausting, more doable, and will be, I promise, more normal feeling.

I learned not to add unnecessary weight to the climb. A head full of junk and noise and fear and worry was heavy enough, without me adding other stuff (I’m talking to you Google, CNN and Twitter) to the climb. Sometimes information/news is not the rocket fuel we think it is, but sludge that exhausts and weighs us down.

And finally, here is the ultimate golden rule I learned about getting through the hard stuff. Never look at swimmers in the other lane.  Let me say that again, never look at swimmers in the other lane.

I learned there are a thousand different types of breast cancer tumors, and it did me no good to look at the other swimmers to inform me of my outcome or progress. Looking at the other swimmers only served to fill my head with heavy junk that made me sink.

With COVID, resist the urge to read up on who has died and for the love of God, stop comparing their pre-existing conditions, age, weight to yours. Just swim in your COVID lane. Do you. Take care of yourself and your family the best you can.

Lastly, embrace that worst-case scenario on the duration of this. I know that sucks right? But hear me out.

I can confirm that once I wrapped my head around, and swallowed, “okay, it’s 18 months of chemo, I can do that” it got a lot better. It was then that I knew how big the elephant was. New energy arrives when you just put down the sword and anger about it and just decide to live in that space. Remember, struggling against something will drown you.

This week after listening to experts, I simply decided in my non-medical brain, 18 months is a good estimate for a definitive endgame for COVID and quarantine.

In 18 months, we will likely have a vaccine. And yes, we may even have a cure/treatment earlier and that would be dandy. I can do 18 months, just as I did before, considering the alternative.

We can do it by reminding ourselves that each day is one day closer to some super smart person coming up with a treatment or a vaccine. We can do it by remembering if we do what we are told and stay home and wash our hands–if we do A & B, we will rid ourselves of C.

Each day will be easier as you build your COVID legs, and will seem more normal. It’s doable if it keeps you healthy.

While it’s too early, and we are too tired and cranky to “feel the good” that will come of this, know it will come. Lean into the early snippets of it that you come across each day.

Remember this, you are never as far from “normal again” as you are in the crisis phase. From here on in, you get closer to normal each day, each minute, each second.

You have won this battle, now you can win the war.

I promise you, you will once again have a day where COVID doesn’t greet you each morning or shake you awake from dreamy innocence. A brain free from COVID thoughts will greet you for a few seconds each morning, and then will linger a few moments longer, and eventually, it will start to stay around all day. And you will find that COVID, like cancer for me, will become something that happened long ago.

And you will have lived your way into normal.

But the funny thing about that normal we long for? It’s sometimes not the same, it’s even better. But that’s another blog for another day.

When I was a little kid, I used to love to watch Bewitched. Samantha was so glamorous. I so wanted their home when I grew up, the whole layout and the warm feel of it all. I loved all the magical things that happened there-just ridiculousness of it all.

I especially adored the madcap entourage of relatives who popped in like Endora and Dr. Bombay, and Uncle Arthur and Aunt Clara. I loved how Mr. Tate (in what was in hindsight likely an alcohol-induced haze) just ignored what was going on and went with it as normal. Good times.

I always wanted to be just like Samantha when I grew up, with her cozy and fun life.

But I find recently that I am not Samantha at all. You know who I have become?

Mrs. Kravitz.

Gladys Kravitz.

Remember Mrs. Kravitz? That spying neighbor across the street who was a freaked out witness to all the hoopla going on at the Stephens house?

Remember how she would pull back the curtains and peer through her living room window and her eyes would bug out as she screamed AAAAHHHH!? She would call her husband Abner to come to look at what was going on at Samantha and Darren’s house, but by then it was over? Remember how she was the only one in the whole neighborhood calling shenanigans?

Poor Mrs. Kravitz, being gaslighted before gaslighting was even a thing. Even Abner gaslighted her and accused her of being a little kooky when she claimed she saw Endora make a newspaper float into the house.

Yep, I’m Gladys these days. I peer out my window and scream a lot these days. My living room window, my car window and through the glass screen of my TV and laptop, doesn’t matter, there is a lot to scream about here.

Last week, after days of distancing in my house, I looked out my window to watch a St. Patrick’s Day parade go by on the street. All the parents and kids on my street decided to have a party apparently. Bikes and wagons all greened out. But with ZERO distancing for the grownups, I mean, notta lotta space between them, walking side by side down the street with beers, chatting as the kids intermingled through them on bikes for hours.

Later that day, I pulled back my curtain to see teenagers in my neighborhood going arm in arm dancing around out there, as if it was a snow day. Teens hopping in and out of each other’s cars, going god knows where, I dunno, maybe a Florida Beach.

And just like that, this kid loving, cool, Samantha like mom became Gladys Kravitz. Me, (now the same age as Gladys if not older) who usually sits out and cheerfully watches the neighborhood Halloween parade go by, now screaming AAAAHHH! and calling my son to come look. (At least he didn’t gaslight me, he texted AAAHHH too.)

I went out in my car once all week. I HAD to go to the bank before a slew of checks bounced. I agonized about this trip out. So I elected the drive-through, carefully washing and sanitizing my hands and steering wheel out of respect for the teller.  As I sat there waiting for her to do the deposit, I peered through the glass banking window. And there was a freaking line of people inside the bank! No distancing. No nothing. And I about blew a Gladys sized gasket.  I came oh so close to yelling in over the speaker AAAAAHHHHH!

I glance into store windows on my walks, and see people gathered because apparently shopping for antiques and getting your hair dyed is essential during a pandemic?

I turn on my TV and watched these idiot drunk kids on the beach in Florida and their “boomer remover” stupidity. I found myself thinking, “Won’t be so funny when the people bankrolling your spring break and providing that basement you live in are gone because of your asshattery will it?” And the rage, and the sense of being gaslit, builds.

And just don’t get me started on people who know they could have been exposed, or who are sick and are STILL going out. I found out this week that a knowingly sick person went to a concert at our arena, and walked around the floor seating all night.

Even as I watched our president do it, shaking hands with everyone stepping up to the podium at a presser standing side by side, and I realized my rage was escalating to unhealthy levels.

Let me tell you, there ain’t no rage like Gladys being gaslighted rage.

This anger has become something unlike me. I don’t want to be Gladys. I want to be happy go lucky Samantha again, or even high-risk group Endora now that I have aged into that. But not Gladys.

But my eyes are bugged out daily, I am just like, am I missing something here?  Wasn’t the idea to stay home and flatten the curve?

I am a rule follower, always have been. Sure, I have always had little flashes of indignation at people who cheat the system, who don’t merge well in traffic, who hop in line in front of you at Disney, or who take more than one of something offered like from the cookie box at the grocery store.

But that said, I have always been one to believe that rule-breakers get theirs in the end. I’m more of a let it go kinda girl. I believe that while the karma train often does take time to arrive, it always comes, and the scales are evened in some way. Hopefully in a way that teaches a lesson to the person. I mean, I fully believe Lori Loughlin will do her time one day.

My dad taught me to be a giver and not a taker, and my mom taught me empathy- to think about how your actions impact others. These too are rules of life I follow, as is the habit of making my actions pass through the litmus test of “need versus want.”

That’s how I do me. And usually, I can just shrug off how you do you.

But I can’t right now. Because how you do you could kill me and others.

Nope, I refuse to be Mr. Tate, and take a shot and go on with this as normal.

And I am mad. I am mad because I am old. I am mad because I have friends who have autoimmune disorders and asthma and cancer. I am mad because I have friends who are front line nurses and doctors in emergency rooms.

This blatant ignoring of mandates for public safety is just not fair to anyone.  The karma train won’t just arrive at their door, it will run over the thousands of undeserving people who, unfortunately, are on the same track.

And that is where my eyes bug out.

Why are people ignoring this mandate? Oh, I can think of a thousand reasons, but none of them are good. The arrogance of youth, lack of understanding the “flatten the curve” theory, lack of empathy, or just a basic inability to put other’s needs first are some of them. Selfishness and irresponsible folks who early on told people “it’s no worse than the flu and will be gone in the spring” are others.

Whatever the reason, it all boils down in a nasty witch’s cauldron chock full of someone’s inability to connect the dots of how their behavior harms others. How their behavior could harm our elderly and importantly first responders and nurses and front line doctors.

It’s selfish, it’s stupid, it’s egocentric and it’s wrong.

Like did Lori Loughlin, just not get that she was stealing slots from other kids who had the grades and who worked hard? Does the idiot in the hurricane targeted town who says, “Oh, haha, I’m gonna ride it out” not think of how he brings harm to others when he then calls first responders as he and his home is being sucked into the ocean?

Gosh how I wish that like Samantha, I could twitch my nose, and like a miracle, the virus will all go away, but it’s not going anywhere. How I wish Dr. Bombay could pop in with a cure, but not yet. We aren’t there yet people.

I think we all had hope that people would do the right thing. We admonished folks on social media with memes saying “grandpa went to war, and the least you can do is sit on your couch for a few weeks.” We tweeted “flatten the curve” charts, and hashtagged #stayhome, and #contagiousbutnotsymptomatic.

We have explained if you don’t do stay home, you will have to stay home longer. We have tried endlessly to explain what we were trying to do with distancing, that it was for the greater good of all, and that it would help our helpers there on the front lines making sure we all get help.

We even have said for god’s sake, “Anne Frank did this for 3 years people in 750 square feet with 7 people” surely we can hang on in our homes with internet and space and TV and amazon or instacart delivering food for a month here.

But it didn’t work. It hasn’t worked. Distancing and staying home is not what is happening. And when you tell people to quit taking more than one cookie from the box and they keep doing it, there is nothing left but to take the cookie box away, like Andrew Cuomo has done, and likely all of us will soon experience.

So I am gonna just lay it out. Don’t gaslight me. I know what I am seeing out my window, and it’s crazy and wrong. And scary. Stay home. I don’t wanna look out my window and see any more of this selfish behavior.

I don’t want to feel Gladys kinda cray-cray anymore, OK?

Be a giver not a taker, don’t steal other people’s health safety away. Don’t take doctors out, many of whom are doctors with wee ones at home. Understand facts. You can carry the virus and give it to others and never know you had it. Young people too can get very sick despite early reports of invincibility. Just like Lori’s kids took some other more deserving kid’s spot in that college, you may wind up stealing an ICU bed or a ventilator from your Grandma.

And then put your big boy/girl pants and do the right thing, respond to your needs in the safest way possible-preferably a way that your asshattery doesn’t kill other people for heaven’s sake. Maybe even use your “need” to get out to leave groceries for an elderly neighbor instead of going to beer pong with friends.

Practice empathy. That means you stop and think, “Gosh how scary must this be for people with cancer, for my friends with asthma, or for my grandma or grandpa, what can I do to help?”

Please, people.

Don’t be a Lori.

And please for the love of God and fellow man, don’t make me be Gladys.  Older high-risk group or not, I am far too cool to be her.

I have been trying to decide if it’s a fortunate thing that I am holed up here alone during this quarantine or if I am deeply envious friends with spouses and family who I envision, are merrily playing board games together at home.

Thanks to the internet, 98% of the time I believe I am on the lucky end of things. Already just days into this distancing at home, I am seeing frustrated family posts. And this is coming weeks ahead of what I suspect may be more days together.

But in addition, I have come to realize these last few days that I am not alone in here in this house.  And I’m not talking about social media friends, or even my little doggo Toastaroo (who cheats at Monopoly BTW.)

The company I have is not the happy, fun kind at all.

See, during cancer treatment many years ago, I picked up two traveling companions-anxiety and post-traumatic stress. (I don’t capitalize them because they don’t deserve that importance.)

These two came as a package deal-the BOGO siamese twins of emotional baggage.

Back when I was toe to toe with the grim reaper, they brutally knocked me out of my emotional driver’s seat and loaded me down with their baggage. And let me tell you, these two are crazy-ass drivers, to say the least. They especially like to drive at night, do erratic donut spins, and recklessly drive down every possible road labeled, “Bad Outcome, This Way.”

For the most part though, now 15 years post-cancer, I have gotten the evil twins out of the front seat of my car.

They sit in the back seat now, like petulant children with arms crossed occasionally sticking their tongues out at me when I catch their eye in my rearview mirror. Sometimes these sleeping giants of trauma and anxiety even nap for days at a time, and it is bliss.

But occasionally, I find myself with, out of nowhere whiplash realizing all too late that they have slammed on the brakes somehow, and have taken a firm grasp around my neck and yanked me into the back seat.

And just like that, yep, they are driving again.

Usually, this happens at yearly rechecks, when all the delightful sights and sounds and feelings of days of old get replayed. The walk of bare feet on the tile in the hospital for MRI, the laying in a dark room on a bed when ultrasound goo is squirted, the hardwired in my brain sensory reminders of my cancer diagnosis. The things that my brain recorded during that frightening time not so much of what was said, but what was felt and seen and smelled. Peripheral yes, but inextricably linked to that whole cascade of yuck that comes with the trigger, with the yanking a psychic thread.

In the town where I grew up, there was a bread factory right next to our school. The smell on baking days was heavenly. Not just heavenly, but comforting, coming over me like a sensory blanket of warmth and hygge. That smell was something that was woven into the tapestry of my brain, alongside a lot of the good feelings of safety and security and my love of those childhood days.

So, here I am 50 years later driving through Goldsboro, NC (unbeknownst to me a bread factory town.) And out of nowhere, I smell it. And suddenly my brain lights up all these long untraveled pathways from years ago. Calm. Hygge. Good Stuff. The smell calms me in a way I cannot explain and pull over and gulp it in. I ignore the townsfolk who are looking at me like, “what the hell is that old woman doing?” and sit for a very long time.

What happens with good memories also happens with bad memories. In short, your brain catches a whiff of something, an event, a smell, a place and starts sniff sniff sniffing around going, “man this smells familiar.” And consciously or unconsciously, this lights up those old pathways as a result.

It’s a great thing when we are in control and can drive these triggers like with comfort food or driving to Goldsboro on baking days.

But often, with the yucky memories, you don’t like running into the trigger, you often actively avoid the trigger. And it really sucks when it blindsides you.

When traveling this world with past traumatic experiences in your trunk, you get a mental “whiff” and it feels familiar. That whiff can be like for me, something reminding you of facing a life-threatening illness or stir up health anxiety. When this happens, and you are of the anxious sort like me, anxiety likes to go, “Hey, hey remember that? FUN TIMES.”

In a broader sense for all of us, it may remind us of a time we felt insecure or afraid. When we felt food insecure, health insecure, financially insecure or when we experienced a big loss like that of a parent suddenly dying, or a sudden illness. Or when we felt our bodies weren’t safe.

These past trauma whiffs aren’t gentle or hygge or fun at all. They are akin to what feels like an unknown source pulling the marionette strings in your brain to summon terror and anxiety. It’s usually these jokers, the evil twins doing it.

The sleeping giants in the back seat wake up, and poke gnarly fingers in your back and whisper, “This is crazy, this is out of your control, we are all gonna die.” And before you know it, you are locked in the trunk of a car careening into a catastrophic death spiral, driven by two idiots with bad breath who should have never been given a license in the first place.

This pandemic is nothing short of a perfect storm for this girl. I may as well have just pulled over and put myself in the trunk and called it a day. And I suspect it is the same for so many of us who have these traveling buddies for one reason or another.

Cabin fever is less than fun with these two. The 18 months I spent in isolation during chemo with the two of them wreaking havoc in my house and headspace was a psychic shitshow. And yep, here we are again, with the isolation, the fear. Familiar whiffs and boom, they are back.

These two fools are now doing nightly PowerPoint presentations of catastrophic outcomes, whilst I am duct-taped to my bed, immobilized by my terror, forced to watch. They drive me daily down overgrown and treacherous roads I haven’t been down in years. Last night we went down the “You fit all the criteria for a poor outcome and no vent” road. The night before it was the “You won’t be able to afford health insurance ever again” road.

It is exhausting.

My mom used to say, house guests are like fish, after three days they start to stink.

Today marks my 3^rd day of quarantine and it’s time for them to go. They are stinking up the place.

So today I got up and said, I have to do something here. I have to figure out how to wrangle these two back into the trunk, if not, at the very least, in the back seat.

And perhaps put a cover over the rearview mirror.

As I talk to friends, privately and look at online COVID-19 support threads, I realize SO MANY of us are experiencing the same emotional fallout. The sense of our own personal anxiety genie being out of the bottle. So many of us are up all night with these jokers filling our already taxed noggins with the stuff of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. The evil twins are eating us all out of house and home, chomping away at our ability to remain calm, to keep hope and to rest well.

It needs to stop.

So how do you do that?

Well, plot twist, I am not gonna tell you to meditate…oh I know that helps a lot of folks, but for this girl, it’s like trying to get a cage full of a thousand squirrels to all quiet down at once after dumping a bag of sunflower seeds in the cage. It just ain’t gonna happen.

What I will say is this. Start pulling a seed out at a time.

The first seed, the first thing to do is to simply recognize the source of the river. Follow the string on the marionette to find what is yanking your chain. Figuring out what it belongs to and realize it belongs to that time. Sometimes, there is great calm in saying, “Oh this feels like X, but it is not X.” Sometimes, there is great calm that comes with saying, “Oh this feels like X and now I remember that I got through X.” Sometimes there is great calm in saying, “Oh this feels like X, but I didn’t die from X because I did a lot of the right things.” It can deflate the tires a wee bit when you realize where this is coming from is all.  Once we know the source of the river per se, we can take steps to prevent falling in again.

We can also take different roads instead of the worn ones with tire grooves so deep you don’t even have to steer. We can think new thinks. We can say “No, I am not going down that road today.” When the car veers right, find anything you can do to go left. Walk, run, sing the Bare Necessities, think good thinks. Pro-tip, this usually involves summoning a thought, replacing a thought, or choosing a road that reminds us good things are to come.

Cover your rearview mirror. Put in earplugs. Figure a way to get updates about what you can do to keep yourself safe without all the hoopla. Turn off the dang TV and stay off twitter. Don’t get updates from places that feed the evil twins. Pro tip: get a once a day updates from an official, or a friend you trust.

Recognize how the sense of loss of control is something you can get control of. Part of the angst for me in this is the sense/fear that no one capable is in control. I remember the calm I felt when I was diagnosed with cancer that I picked who I thought was the smartest most capable oncologist, and I could turn it all over to him. Now, I don’t feel like that with the virus.

But I remind myself that there are very smart people in control. And that gives me control over this thought and corrals panic. There are wise, good, hard-working people doing their best this very minute to make vaccines, antivirals, and to create solutions to shortages.  There were many many people who legit did see this coming months ago and who prepared, and who rolled up their sleeves right then and got on it. Pro tip: good people aren’t always the ones blaring how great they are on the news because well, good people are busy doing what good people do, finding an answer rather than talking about it.

Remind yourself daily that there are people who WILL help us. Mr. Rogers’ helpers are out there. There are people who will risk their lives to care for us if we get sick. Remember that most folks with this virus do well at home and recover without needing these superhero people. There are also people who will talk to us online, people who will help us figure out how to get groceries and walk the dog and yep, there are people who will share toilet paper with us.

Think about this. Governments are responding. Almost everyone is in the same boat facing the same financial issues and they can’t evict us all, they can’t foreclose on us all and they likely won’t. The safety net is being woven by good people (see above) as I type. It may not make for a less terrifying fall, but I am pretty sure that net will catch many of us.

Recognize that ALL things pass. I am old and know this as fact. I have been through some awful stuff in my life, more than the average bear and it has all passed. All stages of life that we think will never pass do. Our terror after 9/11 eventually diminished, and we got through unimaginable fear at that time. Online posts remind us that things like the fires in Australia, things we felt certain would never get under control, have passed. Think back on your own worst times, they are passed am I right? China is moving out of it now, vaccines are being trialed this week in Seattle. Pro tip: Kidney stones, rotten bosses, and Dick Cheney have passed on through, so will this.

Here is a harder challenge. Think about the positives that will come. Now I will be the first to admit I have gotten a lot of crap over the years from the “cancer is not a gift” campers. But I still believe hardships launch gifts, and almost always catapult us to the next level of play. Good things come after things pass (which remember they all do.)

Lance Armstrong, early in his diagnosis, said he got an email from another survivor that said, “You don’t know it yet but we are the lucky ones.” He was like “what the F?”

But later, he got it. I get it too. We will all be the lucky ones.

I promise you. My perpetual pro tip is this: every single thing you do in the future will, as a result of passing through this hard time, feel like the lucky privilege that it is. Nothing will ever again feel like something you have to do. Every single gosh darn thing–school, work, boring meetings, and even future really hard emotional stuff, will feel like something you get to do. It is game-changing. It will be sweeter.

We are lucky now. We will all be luckier after all this is one day passed. We will come out of this with laser clarity about life and love and family and about what is really important. We will have slowed the pace for our kids and ourselves and will have been reminded of the need for downtime. Time to think thinks we don’t normally have time to think. We, our whole sweet little earth and worlds, will reset.

I woke up today to hear the news that the water in Venice canals is clear and that dolphins are swimming there for the first time in 60 years.

I imagine that a lot of proverbial dolphins will find us in the days to come. Good thinks will swim back into our hearts. And when that happens, because of all this, it will be crystal clear and it will summon comfort, like the smell of bread baking. Our brains will go, “Oh there you are, I had forgotten how wonderful and lovely and sweet you are.”

Just breathe in the good when the panic comes, catch a whiff of those good things. Let this be a time we can pull over and sit and breathe it in. And let that whiff of goodness light up the way, let it blanket you, and let that be what navigates you through.

And tell those jokers to take their antics elsewhere.

I know right? Can you believe it? December 12 marks ten years since I was told, “Unfortunately, you have cancer,” and 5 years since I began the blog. When I began writing, my intent was to explore (and work out in my busy buzz-buzz little noggin) the trauma and heebie jeebies of living in that precarious space that is the first five years after breast cancer. Writing, I found, was like letting the steam off a pressure cooker. Bit by bit, week by week, with each new post, the pressure lessened and the intense push of emotional junk in my brain against my skull ceased.

After Five Years in Cancerland, I indeed, had accrued a hoard of emotional junk. A friend politely said after listening to my weepiness, “Jesus girl, you have a LOT of stuff rattling around in that head of yours.” Indeed it often felt like ALL OF IT MIXED TOGETHER–a crazy aunt in the attic- a banshee screeching senselessly as she wandered.

Writing, it turned out for this scattered and exhausted looping mind, turned out to be one of those Major Organizer ladies. She efficiently walked in and stopped the hoard in its tracks. She spent weeks thoroughly sweeping through all the junk drawers, sucking the dirt out of the nooks and crannies in my brain and tidily putting things various marked boxes. Labels, like “Thigh Cancer” and “Cancer Fatigue” emerged, and it became easier and easier to toss things in where they belonged, as I wrote and wrote.

Emotions and crazy thinking were released like bags of trash to the universe, a week at a time.

And then something more magical happened. Salve for wounded places in my heart and brain came back to me, as I listened to the songs and echoes of my blog sisters in Cancerland in comments each week. My readers, mostly Cancer chicks, sat patiently with me each week (like those nice psychologists do on hoarders) as I picked up each item, one item at a time to sort.  They quietly waited as I turned stuff over  and over in my hands, and listened to what it meant to me. They heard my reluctance to deal with it. With no shaming, and in so not judgy way, they helped me dig through my trash—helping me chose what to keep, what to trash, what had value, and what to donate to the universe. I am eternally grateful for those who sat with me through that tedious sort, and for those offered labels when I had exhausted all those my wee brain could muster. “Twang arm” and “Grumblers for the Cure” being some echoed back.  I wrote and wrote each week, until finally the looping stopped as I was finally, out of gas.

I credit those women for getting me to After Ten Years. One would think the second five years would be easier to cope with and keep organized…but I am here to tell you that there are still so many lessons in that space of still uncertain, but not quite as uncertain as the first five years, space.

But I have lived.

I have lived to see things I literally begged God in the dark of the night on a pillow wet with tears, to live to see–proms and graduations and homecoming dances, just the day-to-day life of teenagers and kids fledging from the nest. I have lived to see the joy on my wee ones faces for 5 more Christmases and 5 more birthdays. Disneyland, San Francisco, Niagara Falls….are all now off the bucket list.

I lived to see losses great and small. I have lived to lose the most important people in the world to me– to death, and in other intangible ways. I have lost my dad and my beloved Scout the Wonderdog, and while not rocket science that people and dogs don’t live forever, it is still deeply sad. But I am glad I lived, to hold their hands and paws, as I walked them home.

This last year, the year I was sliding into year ten, has turned out to be worse than Cancer. Yet, I find, I have now lived my way into perspective. Because I lived, cancer has been talked down to size; an itty bitty dot on the horizon behind me at times. See, I once thought (like say, five years ago) that Cancer was the worst thing, the hardest thing, the cruelest thing that ever happened to me. My handy yardstick, attached to my hip, used to be, “Well, it’s not Cancer.” That yardstick has been replaced now. I am glad.  Cancer is not the worst thing that can happen to you, losing your Pop and sweet, sweet dog in a month are, as are losing people you love in other ways. But still, I lived through it. I am lucky.

I lived on and learned how, even after ten years, cancer and PTSD still change to this day how I deal with illness– in anyone, dad, dog, friend, myself or my kids. How “illness” still has the power to flip that switch, to set off old familiar alarms and anxiety and make me kind of cray-cray. The smell and feel of hospitals is overwhelming to me still, stealth, like carbon monoxide seeping into my cells.  It’s invisible to others, but inside the medical doors I am in constant anxiety; feeling sick and dizzy. I have lived to learn that even being put on antibiotics, being around someone with a bad cold freaks me out, as do routine doctor visits. Thigh cancer also still looms in the rear view mirror, bouncing around in the back seat like an unruly kid, sticking its tongue out at me from time to time.

I have lived into the wisdom that PTSD is worse when anxiety robs sleep. It is completely paralyzing when I am on the losing end of the battle. And it rears its ugly head as I insist that ALL BE DONE to help, because I realize at one time, I was a lost cause and had I not insisted that ALL BE DONE to kick my cancer, I would not be writing this.

After ten years, I have learned a big lesson though. To forgive myself for the cray cray.  As far as other people forgiving me, not so much, but that’s understandable and okay. A veteran recently said to me, “I don’t have PTSD, I earned my PTSD.” I don’t know that anyone can or even should be expected to understand the nuances and horrors of however you earned yours and how it shows up–which makes it mine to navigate, not theirs. I won’t beat myself up for it leaking out here and there. New cracks develop as you age and LIVE, like wrinkles on the skin.

I have realized too, that gentle and kind people recognize it for what it is and catch your tears (even though they are sometimes caustic and burn smoky holes through their hands.) They will still hold you in their now holy hands; a blanket of warmth as their words surround you like a nest. I have lived to see how lucky I am. In blogging, I heard a chorus of, “You too? Gosh I thought I was the only one.” And that is helpful. It makes you feel less cray-cray.

I have lived on these last five years, to feel the cognitive dissonance of recognizing how lucky you are, being juxtaposed with depression.  How can a person who survived cancer be depressed for God’s sake? But I have lived on these last five years to feel so beaten down at times by life– the very life I begged God to let me live. I would be a BIG FAT liar if I didn’t admit that coming off this year, I was often plagued with thoughts of “Why go on?’ when everyone I loved died. This creates quite a fucked up dichotomy in your head, when you have been given the gift of more days, and now feel like they don’t matter, or are too painful to endure. But I have lived through this too.

See, we always think about and bargain with god about the fabulous things we want to live to see when we are diagnosed, but forget we will live through these hard things too. I am grateful to have lived through both.

I have lived to find inside me an endless font of compassion, created by the tears I have cried. I am less judgy of others, realizing fully for the first time very deeply these last years, the walk in the shoes thing. I reach out more. I always was built this way, but now, it bubbles out to the tenth degree. This empath has become even more empathic, and better so, even more empathetic. I am glad that I lived to have my edges smoothed, and to have lived my way into laser clarity about why I am here.

What else?

After ten years, I have lived to reflect and realize how much people did for me in that space and time, to see not just how cancer affected me, but others.  How kind people laid their bodies down to make bridges for me to walk on through cancer sewage, so that I can be here writing this. I get weepy when I think about how much my Pop did for me; he was my Wingman and my North Star. I am standing, fully and solidly, physically and mentally, because of him. In the quiet of my house, I weep too, when I remember a friend who saved Christmas. I have lived now five more years to decorate at Christmas with sock snowmen made when she arrived, bringing in her bags of joy to a house of a single mom with two wee little kids where cancer came knocking, blowing its toxic black smoke over everything that sparkled, just two weeks before Christmas.

I have learned that in the first five years, life is lived with a wide-angle lens, capturing a whole lot more than you would normally capture. Statistics dictate that there is a valid need to capture a bigger picture in those first five years and that is not necessarily a bad thing.  But in the next five years, I have (mostly) gone back to living life with a normal lens. Yes, I still have a perpetual colored filtered lens that makes ALL things more vibrant, but life is more normal in scope.

Cancer offers less permission these days. In the beginning, Cancer was quite manic and reckless as it yelled, “Go ahead do it! You don’t know how long you have!” Nowadays, cancer shrugs its shoulders and says, “It seems like a great idea, but don’t do it on my account.”

Cancer is less of a taskmaster. Where once my life was lived with weekly chemo for a year, shots to myself in my bathroom, surgeries, daily radiation and endless re- check appointments…now we are whittled to once a year where the Big Guy (my oncologist) is thanked annually for saving my life. And I while I get a little cray-cray at those visits, cancer doesn’t rule after ten years.

I sleep soundly now.  In the first five years, it was routine for Anxiety to jab its gnarly finger at me until I woke up yelling, “What? What is it?” for it to yell with its windy, halitosis-y breath, “CANCER, THAT’S WHAT!” Now, occasionally, it wakes me and whispers “cancer,” and I say, “Oh that’s all? Go back to bed, monsters aren’t real.”

I have learned that after the first five years of recklessly driving the car, CANCER has now acquired operative equivalent highway hypnosis. Its eyes drift shut periodically, nodding off as life moves down the highway. But at times, admittedly, just when there is sound sleep, its eyes snap wide open, re-righting the car back into the Cancer Lane. But mostly, after ten years, cancer has finally moved to the back seat Some days, I don’t even see cancer in my rear view mirror, and suspect it has even moved to the trunk. Some days though, there it is in perfect focus, as I glance back; it sticks its tongue out at me with its arms crossed, sullen that I don’t engage it anymore.

I have lived to fully grasp that what Scout the Wonderdog tried to teach me every day of his life was so very true–that you don’t have to be whole to be whole.  That we aren’t what happens to us, we are what we make of it.

I have lived into wisdom, becoming wise to the Wiley Coyote ways of cancer with its anvils and bombs. Cancer has simply become one of the many, many merit badges on my sash. It has been lived down to size. I have lived to gather more badges, infinitely harder ones to earn, since then. Perspective comes with years of survival.

The point of all of this is that I have lived. Something I never thought I would do literally (or figuratively) after the initial “all clear” was given.  I never thought I could mentally live life again, and have moments of joy again where Cancer wasn’t photobombing an otherwise idyllic moment.

Cancer hasn’t died, but has finally hibernated. Cancer has mostly left the building that is my head. Five years ago, I wondered if that would ever happen. I am happy to say that reports of cancer’s death in your head after ten years, have NOT been grossly exaggerated. Years ago, I wrote a blog called Outlive It. It didn’t mean outlive the cancer and survive, it meant, outlive the ability of cancer to haunt you, to define you. I have, after ten years, outlived cancer.

I have lived on to notice in every moment, the feel every last drop of life on my skin. Still after ten years it is there. That feeling it. In a speech at a college commencement called, “This Is Water”  David Foster Wallace tells the story of two goldfish swimming along, and an older goldfish coming upon them saying (to their confusion), “How’s the water boys?” I feel the wet every day. The water is life that is not taken for granted.  After ten years, I am still wet. That never goes away. This is a good thing.

But what next? This year, sliding into year ten, I suddenly realized that I only had a ten-year plan. That I never got beyond “seeing my kids graduate and not leaving wee children motherless.” Both kiddos are launched now into life plans. I never dared to consider life after ten years, perhaps thinking I would jinx it, and after all, I only asked for ten.  I saw a quote today I love, that perhaps will be my motto from here on, “You didn’t come this far, to only come this far.”

I don’t think of these last ten years as a journey, but as an adventure…where initially I burst out of the gates like Carl and Russell in the movie Up, with the mentality that Adventure is Out There!  My adventure began ten years ago, and continues, even after ten years. Life remains definitely sweeter. Every minute and second is still recognized and given its due honor as something I could have lost. Something I am damn lucky to have. As something I get to do, not have to do. In the first five years I felt a little like Russell—now I feel like Carl. Wise about what was given to me, wise about the need to keep looking forward to what will be, instead of getting stuck in what was, and in what happened to you.

Indeed, I have come so far after ten years, and still have many more to go, because after all,  I did not come this far, to only come this far.

Thanks for listening all. You all have become my adventure, and my world.

(My dad passed away on February 23…this was his eulogy)

A couple of weeks ago, after endless weeks of setbacks and difficulties and trials, my Pop told me this story. He said there was this farmer who hired two little boys to do some work. Their first job was to move a huge 8 foot tall mountain of manure. The first little boy dejectedly picked up a shovel and was crying as he shoveled.

The second little boy ran up and quickly picked up his shovel. He started shoveling away, eagerly, scoop and after scoop with excitement and a big smile. The farmer looked at the kid and said, “What the heck are you so happy about?” and the kid looked incredulously at him and said, “With all this poop there has to be a pony in here somewhere!” Classic Howard, I know.

A few days later, I was trying to encourage dad through yet another setback, and said, “Look for the pony Pop, look for the pony.” He said, “You know Lauren, I am starting to think I might find a zebra in all this.” This of course launched one of our discussions about life, and about how answers and gifts don’t always show up looking like you want. And that sometimes what we find, is even better than what we ever imagined.

Our conversation, this joke, highlighted that wonderful thing about my dad, his eternal optimism and humor, his belief that we must always hope for, and actively look for, the positive. He said a thousand times these last weeks when encouraged about outcomes, “I hope so, I hope so, I hope so.”

I believe my Pop has found his zebra.
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My brother Tom, also noted last week that it is in adversity that someone’s true character reveals itself. When we see how they conduct themselves when their chips are down, when they are in pain.

Dad had lost his left side. He knew deep inside he would never golf again. But even when faced with adversity, Classic Howard remained class act. Indeed, it is what our family saw in my dad throughout the last months and days that confirmed really, what we already knew about him our whole lives. That he was one heck of a guy.

When nurses, or Sheridan or any of us would do the smallest gesture for him; he said, “Thank you.” Even on the day he passed, as people were doing things to make him more comfortable, still it came out, that kind and now soft and gentle voice, “Thank you.”

He remained concerned with how his illness had impacted others, telling Jenna he was sorry he missed most of her 5th grade year, telling me over and over how worried he was that Sheridan had sat for hours with him on a folding metal chair every day, and expressing concern about us coming to visit when there was bad weather. He was insistent that we send Olympia chocolates and get vouchers for golf lessons to the nurses in the ICU in Baltimore. Classic Howard.

About 3 months ago, dad was lying on a gurney in pre-op in Baltimore, ready to go in to get a PEG tube put in. It was quite a serious procedure actually, and we had asked Father Colin to call and pray with him before the procedure. Father Colin nicely said a prayer over the phone as we held it to dad’s ear, and we waited quietly for a response from dad. And dad blurts out, “Fr. Collin we still are going to organize a St. Mary golf tournament and I bet I can raise 25K for the church the first year!”

Classic Howard was always, and remained about the other guy; about what you can do for the other guy. About gratitude, being considerate, and manners, and humor, and kindness.

How lucky we his kids were, to be the “other guy” our whole stinking lives.

He called me a few weeks ago in the middle of the night and announced, “Lauren, I decided that even though I may never be half the man I used to be, half of me is good enough and I will be grateful and take it.”

He quoted endlessly of late, a line from an old John Irving book, “This can’t change the me in me.” And it didn’t. The stroke, and age really, never stole a single ounce of the Howard in Howard. And every time he repeated that line to me, I thought to myself, “Thank God, thank God. Lucky us.” Because having just “Half the Howard” still left us all… way ahead of the game.

My brother Tom called Dad “The George Bailey of Hagerstown.” So the astonishing part to all of us through these last months, was witnessing his internal struggle, not with the stroke and losses with it, but with the thoughts that I suppose we’ll all have as we sense we are in our sunset years. “Did I lead a good life? Did I do the best I could with this life? Was I a patient and good father? Could I have done more?” Those nagging questions baffled us because they seemed to convey that he didn’t grasp what an astonishingly good life he had led. Not just as a friend, or a husband, or a civic leader, but to us, as a fantastic dad.

It wasn’t until my long drive home to NC that I realized what it was that those questions really highlighted. It occurred to me that it is only a truly, humble man who sincerely asks those questions. It’s not that he wasn’t sure that he made a difference; it was that it was always so important for him to always challenge himself to do better or more, so much so, that those questions never went away.

It is no secret that I think my Pop hung the moon. The depth of our relationship now resonates in a lyric from his favorite show Les Mis. As Marius sings, “You would live, a hundred years, if I could show you how.” And Eponine replies, “And you will you will keep me safe…and you will keep me close…and rain, will make the flowers grow.”

It wasn’t that my dad was perfect or that he never did anything wrong-he would be the first to tell you that. His honesty about his own flaws was a lesson in itself.

But he got an awful lot right. He taught us how to handle the hard stuff and take inventory of our actions. But most of all, he taught me the quite-perfect lesson that life is easier when you look for ponies, and happier when you understand that rain, does indeed, make the flowers grow.

That’s classic Howard. He’s the guy who told his kids, “Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.” The guy who reminded us over and over, “That turtle didn’t get on the fencepost by itself.” The guy who nudged us to always, always take the high road. Classic Howard was the guy who told us repeatedly as kids, “I would cut off my right arm for you;” and the guy who played endless games of Monopoly to I suspect, teach us investment strategies.

He was the guy who threw endless bags of baseballs to my brother each night to teach him to pitch. The guy who turned jump ropes for hours for me, and the guy who talked cancer down to size for me, sometimes twice daily for 42 weeks. He was a guy with an innate gift for knowing what we needed to feel loved and nurtured and supported and cherished. And he did those things, every day of our lives. We had the happiest of childhoods, and that gift, has lasted us a lifetime.

My Dad absolutely adored the Legend of the Starfish. His favorite part of the story, the closing line, was a line we heard him say many times in our lives, “Well, it made a difference to this one.”

My dad was a man who walked the beaches of life and with every single step forward, paused to fetch a starfish, and with love, toss as far as he possibly could out into a new life. When others might be too busy moving forward, dad actively kept his head down seeking them. Yes that slows your forward movement in life, but gosh does it improve the width of your life. Even in his last days, I witnessed him bend to pick up, the last lucky starfish.

He liked to say he still had it in him to change one more life for the better. Everything he did, it seemed, was about making a difference for just this one. It was about big things, like adopting the apple of his eye Jenna later in life. It was about stopping what he was doing to talk, whenever we kids needed advice or solace, and tossing us out to where we could swim and breathe again.

It was about making a point of choosing to play golf with the people who really needed partners. It was about helping someone solve a financial problem, or giving someone a mulligan, or signing up to volunteer for United Way board at age 81. It was about quietly and anonymously saving someone’s dignity. It was about teaching other men to fish, and feeding them as they learned. Giving buoyancy. It was about jumping right in and shoveling with a smile to help someone else, find their pony.

It was about always reaching, to change one more life for the better. That was our dad. That, was classic Howard.

I was a starfish. Pam was a starfish, Tom was a starfish. Jenna was a starfish. The grandkids were all starfish. We feel so lucky.

So, I am going to ask you now, if you were a starfish, if you knew of one of his starfish, if you were taught to fish, or touched by Classic Howard in some way….If you were one of the ones he was talking about when he said, “Well it made a difference to this one”…I will ask that take a moment, and think of him, and lift him up now, as we walk him home.