Elephants and Tea - December 2021 - 5

My sudden aggressive breast cancer diagnosis
came on our first, long anticipated
North Carolina snow day, January 28th,
2021. In the fog between that day and my
late February treatment start date, while
receiving copious amounts of kind mail, a
book about grief caught my attention in a
way I could handle, despite the fog of my
unknown future. " It's OK That You're Not
OK " by Megan Devine encouraged me and
opened my eyes by discussing all the many
ways our culture mutes grief and gives it a
timeline, and how we really can approach
grief a different way. She says, " As you move
forward in this life, your grief, and more
important, your love, will come with you "
(Devine, 171). We need a way, as a culture,
and as individuals, to live in the pain, to
live with the grief, regardless if it resolves,
or when. She says of whatever the source of
your grief, " you will find ways to stitch this
experience into your life " (Devine, 174). We
need to detach shame from grief; the sense
that there has to be a way to be " OK " all the
time. " Grief is not a problem to be solved, it
is an experience to be carried " (Devine, 24).
I found myself reading Devine's book and
realizing I carried my grief like a weight,
bearing down, heavy as bricks, piling up
on my chest and causing shallow breathing.
Because of the shock of my unexpected diagnosis,
sometimes, I noticed the need to
remind my body to breathe at all. I began
learning that grief can grow or fade depending
on circumstance: what stage diagnosis
it is, how much you know about the disease,
or who died, how old they were, whether it
was sudden, on purpose, or unjust. I learned
grief doesn't always go away completely,
and arguably it doesn't usually go away at
all; we can't always move forward, leaving
it behind. Often, we need to move with it,
understanding that grief is a part of us now,
not the whole, but a part. And that is OK. Like
the kid's show Daniel Tiger says, we can feel
two feelings at the same time. We can walk
ahead with grief, and still feel a myriad of
other feelings: joy and grief, hope and grief,
wonder and grief. There is a both/and way to
live here, despite the inevitable weight that
is left in the heavy pain.
The grief accompanying my young adult
cancer diagnosis seems to have compounded
on itself with time and information; the
bricks that stop my breath stay on my chest
long past my clear margins. The unanswerable
questions I ask myself and Dr. Google
pile up too. Questions like, " How did I get
cancer? " and " Will it come back? If so, when? "
And, " Is there a way I can eat or exercise my
way into the certainty that it will not come
back? " I live inside the liminality of grief for
now, letting its truth wash over me, finding
margin to actually feel my feelings, so I can
become the new version of myself that's
waiting for my arrival, not on the " other
side " of grief, but in the midst of it. Death
feels too tangible now; too near and glaringly
obvious, and I no longer live life feeling that
youthful invincibility. The grief of cancer
took away my ignorance of Death, and with
it, the bliss. Neither are left. Only bricks.
Only the inevitability of death. Down at the
bottom of my grief pit, where the pain weighs
on my chest and the tears flow unsparingly,
I think of what the elf princess, Arwon, in
" Lord of the Rings " says when her father is
hoping she will choose to go with the other
elves and stay immortal instead of face what
he calls " only death. " She says, " But, there is
also life. " And despite the weight of the grief
accompanying the unknown after cancer, I
see that life too, and I am more and more
aware that we, as humans, are all liminal;
we are all experiencing grief and facing our
own unknowns.
FAITH Finding Meaning
I find life and scope, perspective and care
for my grief alongside my belief in God.
The Bible says in Isaiah 53:3 that Jesus was
" a man of sorrows, and acquainted with
grief " . And 1 Thessalonians 4:13 says that
we can grieve with hope because when we
believe there is life with God after death,
we believe there is an end to grief: to tears,
to sorrow, ultimately to death itself. We can
hope in the Resurrection of ourselves and
all things. We can acknowledge our grief,
share it with others, carry its load, keep
walking, feel other things at the same time,
and have hope. To me this is freeing, that
God knows my grief and has felt His own;
it feels like removing one of the bricks off
of my chest. It feels like a deeper breath. It
feels like much of the weight decreases, and
much of the pain dissipates.
When speaking of her grief following infant
loss, my friend Kristin Hernandez says
in her book " Sunlight in December, " " I will
face many troubles in this world, but I can
breathe easy knowing Jesus has overcome the
world (John 16:33) " (Hernandez, 118). Grief
is a part of life, and Megan Devine says, it's
" as individual as love. " As humans, we all
go through it, carrying some of its weight
along as we move forward. From what I've
learned from these books, and in my own
story with the deep grief of a cancer diagnosis
as a young mom, it seems if we could
collectively redefine the " rules " of how to hold
grief, if we could learn how to live inside of
it, not trying to " fix " it, as if grief's ending
was always inevitable, we could move away
from the isolation of grief, and simply feel our
feelings alongside one another. No timeline
or formula. No real rules. Just humans, being
human, together. I believe it's here we will
find access to our breath, a lighter load, and
that the pain we feel can soften; even if it's
just one brick at time. l
ERIN PERKINS IS A STAY AT HOME MOM TO A SEVEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER
AND A THREE YEAR OLD SON. SHE WAS DIAGNOSED WITH STAGE IIB TRIPLE
NEGATIVE BREAST CANCER AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS YEAR, ONE WEEK
BEFORE HER 35TH BIRTHDAY. SHE UNDERWENT 16 CHEMOTHERAPY
SESSIONS, AND A BILATERAL MASTECTOMY TO FLAT, AND HAS BEEN
NED SINCE AUGUST 9TH OF THIS YEAR. SHE LOVES TO SPEND TIME WITH
FRIENDS AND FAMILY, MEET NEW PEOPLE, VOLUNTEER IN ADVOCACY, READ
NONFICTION AND WRITE TO PROCESS LIFE .
ELEPHANTSANDTEA.COM
DECEMBER 2021
5
http://www.ELEPHANTSANDTEA.COM
Elephants and Tea - December 2021

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