Heather Janssen, publisher of get born magazine, mother to four daughters, and stage IV breast cancer survivor, writes about being broken in both breast and soul, living with metastatic cancer, and how her fight against cancer is neither pretty nor neat.
“I’ll collect my tatters, the perfect pieces of me, and notch them together in an informal pattern just to suggest myself. then I can start the welding process, and in a short breath, I’ll be fine.” Susan Mrosek
Recently, one morning, I lost and then found myself again while listening to the k.d. lang song “Hallelujah.” As the next song in the playset started, my three year old caught my attention. She had dressed herself in a lace–edged skirt, then layered her ¾ sleeve jersey shirt with a fluffy white vest. I picked her up and waltzed her around. We danced cheek to cheek, her little eyes squeezed shut in seeming awareness of the sacredness of the moment—her mommy, lost in a chemo and medicine induced haze for over ten months—what must seem like an eternity when you’re two and then three, was actually acting alive.
This daughter of mine is moved greatly by music. While I rehearsed a song for church several weeks ago, she wept throughout the entire rehearsal. I finally had to hold her as I rehearsed. The song was in a minor key, and the only thing I can think is that the soulful, mournful nature of the song stirred some deep sadness in her little soul. Perhaps it’s related to my endless watering eyes, an unfortunate side-effect of the chemotherapy I endured for five months. Perhaps she was tired that morning and just wanted to be held by her momma. Perhaps there’s something deeper than I can explain or even understand: this formative year of hers has been shaded irreparably by the spectre of death. And not just any death—the distinct possibility of her mother’s death. Standing so close to her, it’s hard to see how my diagnosis and struggle, fighting daily for both my life and my sanity in the midst of cancer treatments accompanied by swim lessons, packing lunches and managing a busy household, has affected her. Would she have been such a snuggler if cancer hadn’t hovered it’s black, consuming cloud over our family? Would her own made-up songs take on such a soulful, almost mournful melody if her dad and my own inner songs hadn’t ceased altogether, silenced by a fear so deep that breathing became a conscious effort?
It’s both easier and more difficult to see the effects of cancer on my three other daughters. My eldest escapes into her books, buoyed by other worlds where the heroine’s mother is safely ensconced and healthy in the house, barely warranting a mention in the narrative. The second oldest flees to school, comforted by the distraction of friends and schoolwork, her penmanship a testament to the fact that controlling something is better than controlling nothing. My second to youngest clings to me like the monkey our family owned during my high school years in the South American mountains, exhibiting her own insecurity by hugging more tightly to me.
I doubt they know, at least on a conscious level, of the fear that grips me in the dark, when I weep, terrified that I won’t be around for their first kiss, or to comfort them after their first broken heart, or to see my face beam with pride as they graduate summa cum laude from Harvard (hey, a mom can dream, right?) But they must know, because children know these things. My children float on the unseen vibes that tremble through the halls and walls of my home, and this reckless highway of cancer has thrown them every which way. No booster seats on this ride, no tidy lines directing the gush of bad news to one side of the road or the other. No speed limits and certainly no laws by which cancer must abide. Though they’re not privy to my every thought or fear, they can’t miss the speed of this shocking rollercoaster.
Still they dance and sing and play in the snow, and when I can, I do too. It never feels like quite enough, and the fog in my brain rarely lifts enough to afford me the even a moment of transcendence.
When the news of my diagnosis first broke, I felt tremendous pressure—whether from outside sources or merely from my inner critic, and it doesn’t matter which—to handle cancer graciously, like a lady. I sort of felt like the expectation was that I be all dewy-eyed and reflective, and make lots of statements about how much cancer would teach me. How much I would learn. I purposely ignored these expectations and came out swinging both fists. I wrote frequently on the support blog a friend had set up for me about my very real, very messy, often ugly battle with fear, and with death. I was determined that cancer wouldn’t take from me the snarky edge I’d come to love about myself.
Nonetheless, in spite of my best intentions, cancer has given me a bitter gift. Cancer has afforded me a grace for an existence far from perfect or ideal. I have had to rest in my fatigue, being utterly unable to do much else. I have had to give myself the benefit of the doubt, trust that the universe and the myriad of hands and feet who have shown up for our family will be, in the end, plenty. Plenty. Enough. Because I am so inadequate, even damaged, now. Before, I had fooled myself into believing that if I just tried hard enough, and kept trying harder, I could be everything they would need. Nevermind the fact that I failed miserably every time and the ensuing guilt sapped me of any energy I could have given to being just “enough,” rather than perfect. Now, it’s clearer than ever that I’m not going to be enough, and that this, perhaps, will be one of the greatest gifts I give to them—tragically, a flawed, very mortal woman.
I am no longer a whole woman in the definition we’ve come to understand. I gave up my breasts, a small sacrifice for the greater whole. I sacrificed my ovaries, those brilliant centeres of fertility through which my four daughters were breathed their lives. I have lost much. Yet these tangibles pale in comparison to the loss of my naïveté, the loss of a future I took for granted. The loss of assurance and security, no matter how imagined. The net gains exist—I have an early-morning waltz with my little girl or the pause to take in a conversation with my nine-year-old that leaves me wondering where she gained such wisdom. I gaze at my scars and murmur a thanks to my absent breasts and ovaries, grateful that they took the fall so I could remain.
I am broken, but I will be whole. Death has not yet succeeded and I will run like hell when and if the cloud shows up again. The days are not endless Pollyanna bright, nor do I awake every morning blissfully aware of the gift of life. But sometimes I dance, and, for today, it’s enough.
