notes on a recovery

Healing from my latest breast surgery.

I am lighting my Magic Hour “Renewal” candle and I am ready to write this to you.

Three weeks out from my surgery and I received the recovery I wished for after my mastectomy—restful, healing, generative. There have been no October surprises, no complications that have sent me back to the hospital like the first time. Thank g-d, thank goodness, and as my rabbi would say, HELL YEAH brother!!!!! (emphasis and exclamation points her own).

How lucky I am. How lucky to have chosen surgery. How lucky to do everything in my power to prevent breast cancer in my thirties, when halfway around the world a close, elder family member of mine who also has the BRCA mutation, and is a breast cancer survivor, has cancer again and is recovering from another invasive surgery of her own.

People with boobs, go get your mammograms! They’re not that bad, I promise.

Proof of life!

The first week of recovery was toughest, with somatic mirroring from my first surgery that sent my mind into anxiety spirals. I’ll save the stories about the morning of surgery, the Rorschach blot bruises, the concave dimples in my chest, the cold wet washcloths wrapped around my feet at night to keep the hives in check, the tightness in my armpits, the elation of breasts that look like breasts and disappointment that they don’t look like my breasts of before… I’ll save it all for later.

Once I made it into my second week, and now my third, my body began to trust this feeling good sensation, this sinking into wellness. This crisp, warm October with cornflower blue skies every day and cool nights that demand a cardigan. Dark early mornings, bright mid-mornings, slurping up the sun with a book in my lap. A return to walking a little further each day, gooey side stretching, good energy. Days that don’t require naps or a coffee just to make it through. But still respecting my boundaries and knowing when I’ve pushed myself too far, backing off, sleeping in. This time is a gift.

Morning walk rituals include a destination where I can sit, eat a little snack, sip a little something, knit a bit or read a steamy sex scene.

Meeting mugwort during an herbal class.

I’ve been quilting! More on this in another post.

Seen on my walk route. Free Palestine!

A walk with a friend, and orange cosmos everywhere.

This yarn and this color are bringing unexpected overwhelm of ecstasy

Mirrored mosaics on my walk route

What I read

Several books have me thinking of possessions. Demons, gollums, the rougarou, Sedna. This is certainly the right time of year for it and I’m savoring the parallels and differences across cultures. This includes:

• The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World by Malcolm Gaskill, a non-fiction title I picked up in London last year and finally finished. It’s about the first witch trials in the colonies in what is now Massachusetts. More history and less analysis than I was expecting and hoping, but fascinating nonetheless.

• Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott, a Jewish fantasy that did a thorough, and a times heavy-handed but mostly well balanced, handling of the themes of generational trauma. Bridges this theme across other cultures delicately but well, not centering Jewish pain and suffering as the barometer for universal pain and suffering, which we need more of right now. Also read The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley which does this as well, but differently and to a lesser degree. I loved Ministry and it was a surprise climate fiction novel! (i.e. Not billed as such, but climate catastrophe is a big underlying theme and driver of the plot.)

• Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline, a Native writer I love who took on the story of the rougarou within the context of colonization, mining of tribal lands, and Christian ministry. The plot wasn’t that unique or surprising and most of the characters and their relationships were too thin for me, but I appreciate what she was trying to do.

• Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich, another favorite Native writer and owner of Birchbark Books who just released a new book, The Mighty Red, that I’m excited to read. Another surprise climate fiction novel that reads like if you put Oryx and Crake, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Round House into a blender. That said, I think the comparisons to Handmaid are unfair because Erdrich is a force of nature in her own right (as is Atwood) and she started writing this in 2002, before Oryx and Crake and before Handmaid really took off as a cultural phenomenon. Content warnings are plentiful—this is a dystopian story, pregnant people are imprisoned, pandemic vibes, etc. And maybe they’re carrying cave people-like demon babies? Unclear, and also, stop picking on Neanderthals.

• Currently listening to the Native horror short story anthology, Never Whistle at Night, which is a D-E-L-I-G-H-T on audiobook and includes all the Native writer heavy-hitters and previously unpublished writers, too.

What I’m writing

I haven’t actively worked on my book for a couple of months, although I acknowledge the less active process—the little notebooks I carry with me, the capturing of ephemeral ideas, the reading and thinking about characters and plot lines. Work was intense (summers always are), preparing for surgery was intense, and I’m hoping that as I feel better and return to work, I can recommit to my early morning writing routine. I have also thrown my hat in the ring for a writing intensive next year; fingers crossed I’m accepted into the cohort.

A good friend suggested I write more about my previvor experience, and I’ve been thinking about it as a side project. Another friend is writing autofiction, and I’m inspired by Shayne Terry’s writing (and publishing!) about her postpartum experience while also working on a novel.

What I’m reading

Books about breast cancer, the books I’ve kept at arm’s reach until now, that trigger tightness in my chest but I think I’m finally ready to read.

• Mourning a Breast by XI XI, translated by Jennifer Feeley

• The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care by Anne Boyer

• Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd

• Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (who I GUSHED at when she came to Baltimore for a talk at Red Emma’s)

• Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation by Maud Newton; not really about breasts or breast cancer but absolutely 100% hitting deep on my experience with genetic cancer risk and lost family ties

A book I'm working through, a quilt I'm working through.

Two (maybe) helpful things

First. In this pre-election precipice, with so much unknown and so much bad, so much potential for a deepening of the pit of despair and suffering, I think of this line from Ursula in The Left Hand of Darkness.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

I still really love this 2020 article (and the art by Jacqueline Tam) about Left Hand and Ursula from The New Yorker that includes this quote, with more context, if you’re curious to read more.

Second. Do you like to listen to a new playlist in the fall? Me too. Here’s mine. Between this and Laura Marling’s just-released (and maybe last?!) album, Patterns in Repeat, I’m going to be in my fall feels all weekend.

Thanks for reading, friends. If you’ve made it this far (go you!), I would love to hear what you’re reading and writing in the comments if you’d like to share.