“Thereby [she] is driven to entertain [herself] alone and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, [she] mends [her] shell with pearl. … Our strength grows out of our weakness.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is an interesting reality that unfolds when a doctor says, “You have cancer.” Everything lived up to that moment is filed as “Before” and everything lived immediately after feels like a dream.
I have been given the news of cancer being in my body three different times.
The first cancer was taken care with a simple day surgery. The second cancer required major abdominal surgery and chemotherapy, and altered by body in ways I am still dealing with (I am looking at you, Osteoporosis). 👀
The third cancer surgery ensured I made it my intention to resume living (instead of sleep-walking through whatever time I have remaining here on Earth).
“Being afraid for your life can scramble the senses, can turn your tongue to chalk.” -Suleika Jaouad
Reading these words from Between Two Kingdoms, inspired two different meanings for me:
The obvious, feeling frozen in time, but also “scrambled senses” as being without inhibitions, and “your tongue to chalk” as writing words onto an ongoing, sidewalk canvas with colored chalk. I have definitely experienced both versions.
Right brain planning is a way of holding space and jotting notes, and then eventually, crossing over amidst the clamoring.
Crossing over like living out loud—a trial-and-error option in real time, doing so freely and without apology. 💃🏻 To live Life like an 🥼 experiment, lowering ⤵️ the stakes and giving yourself the 🔔 freedom of 🏷️ “no sale is ever final”—and everything is data. 📊🧮🔠
Right brain planning serves as a data 📝 log, a chronicle of inspirations and notes from the present-self to the future-self. 🔮🥠
✅ Right brain chronicles (jotted notes, 🌈 color vents, ✂️📐 collage and 🖊️ doodles of 💭 ponderings and 🗓️ dated mental wanderings) are the data + a map of living, serving as a tangible record of:
- questions, declarations and 🪄 wishes
- keywords and phrases 📝 that hold meaning
- daydreams and nighttime dreams 💤💭💤
- what we feel and think 🙃😐😣😜
- what we want to experience ❤️
- what we need to foster our well-being ♻️
- what we want to discover and learn about 🧠🤓
- sky meditations + phases 🌙 (everything cycles)
✅ Right brain chronicles can become a sacred 📿 space for 🌀 processing what we need and desire—space where we 🔎 observe and process the data of Life; and to ♻️ empower us to make 📊 choices (and prioritize) what matters most to us. ❤️
What matters most to us changes and evolves throughout a lifetime. Chronicles of what is true + valuable for us ensures we experience more of what matters to us.
“A strange gracing of my darkness” (of dealing with cancer) is having my right brain planning practice to move beyond my default of “it’s not that bad/try harder” and listen to the chorus of orphaned voices exhorting me to stop 🚫 minimizing my suffering.
“Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me, and they came with a force and dazzle that I couldn’t contain. I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born.” -Sue Monk Kidd, When The Heart Waits
Right brain planning (self-compassion + expression) + (attention + review) enables me to identify the details of the clamor, and “time the contractions” as a means of midwifing a new self struggling to be born. 💓(how.exciting!!)
Seven years ago I experienced a paradigm shift in the way I viewed my life and what matters most to me. Suddenly everything was a swirl of loss, sorrow and suffering.
It was the beginning of contractions for a life that refused to be denied.
It marked the ending of what-was, and the beginning of a creatively therapeutic (and eventually, dazzling) season of healing + freedom for me. ✨
“You don’t have to overhaul your life—you just have to explore it.” -Anne-Laure Le Cunff
I remain open and curious as I continue to live my questions about what I want to live next. (And it feels dazzling!)
Thank you kindly for your presence here, Braveheart. 💗
I appreciate your interest and support.
~love & good wishes~
⭐️ I am an artist and curator; I am one who communicates with color, found words and collage, inky marks and doodles as I cycle like the moon (as my calendar), chronicling oracles and abiding with the sky as a meditation.
⭐️ I host creative communities, safe spaces for gathering and sharing. I choose love and creativity for coping with the ongoing challenges of this world and I go to work—not because everything is fine but because I believe art heals.