Metamorphosis!

Greetings dearest loyal readers - I have been silent for several weeks awaiting the final news - and the news is fabulous: I am CANCER FREE! My Doctor told me Friday that there is No Evidence of Disease in my

system as of this week - I am grateful and humbled.

You my loyal readers and friends have traveled this journey with me - your support has provided me with life energy as I completed the 12 months of chemo and the surgery. It is truly a season of rebirth. As I reflect on this strange journey, I am so thankful for the amazing love and friendship extended to me. Together we have explored this strange anti life form called cancer, confronting mortality, finding healing powers in our unconscious and our imagination, examining the politics of health care. Knowing you are out there has helped me keep the gray matter active, even as the targeted poisons were confronting the cancer in my system.

I spoke at our Unitarian Fellowship meeting yesterday on the idea of rebirth - of meeting each new day, hour, minute as life renewed. I found a fabulous essay by Barbara Kingsolver in which she writes:

Every one of us is called upon, perhaps many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job. And onward full tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another...that is surely the basic instinct... crying out "high tide!" Time to move out into the glorious debris! Time to take life for what it is!"

So I am moving onward full tilt - into the glorious debris. I plan to continue this blog, at least now and then: I will keep all posted, but move on to other topics as my journey is no longer primarily a cancer journey. I hope to explore personal and political issues as my personal apoptosis continues: my cells living, dying, being reborn. Cancer cells - good bye: may we find a way to help you pass away, to experience your natural death and rebirth as healthy cells.

As the Indian mystic poet Rabinadreth Tagore wrote:

You have made me endless, such is your pleasure. This frail vessel you empty again and again, and fill ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed you have carried over hills and dates, and have breathed through it melodies eternally new.

At the immortal touch of your hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Your infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still you pour, and still there is room to fill.

And fill it up we will! xx to all in overwhelming gratitude. ApopSal

SING OUT, LOUISE!

Dearest loyal readers,

Last night I attended a "Voices of Hope" concert at the down town University of RI site - an enthusiastic collection of women singing for our lives. The small but appreciative audience joined in as the impromptu, non auditioned women's chorus sang rousing renditions of such classics as "Lean on Me". And thanks to Michele Obama for her statements supporting raising our daughters to be leaders! This is OUR time.


As the public employees, especially teachers (mostly women) , in Wisconsin fight the efforts to end collective bargaining rights in that state, we must remember the origins of international women's day, including honoring the women who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire during efforts to unionize shirtwaist factory workers. Gloria Steinem, tireless voice for women's rights, noted recently that women STILL earn only 77% of wages earned by men for the same jobs.

On March 8th, Michele and Barack Obama honored women for our struggle to gain equal rights, and recognized that the 'glass ceiling' still exists, that our sisters, daughters and nieces have much work still to do. I, of course, am currently especially interested in women's health issues, but also our need to focus on the voices of women who are still oppressed, lacking voice, and still experiencing the vicious effects of a monopoly capital system that engages a few women 'stars' while continuing to promote economic and social policies that continue to victimize women and girls.

BUT WE WILL CONTINUE OUR STRUGGLE, WE WILL CONTINUE SINGING, WE WILL BE HEARD! Always more to come...xx