Archives for category: Marriage

Bride’s Room Revisited

March 10, 2015 //

My husband, John and I were married in the late winter of 1990. It snowed that morning, creating a slight but unnecessary panic. I remember waiting A LONG time in the bride’s room. My niece, Tricia, who was about 5 or 6 years old at the time, kept unwinding the greenery from the rose she was to carry in the ceremony. She picked off the leaves and then dropped a couple of them down the front of my dress, in the space between the satin lining and the lace overlay. Tricia also entertained us with comments like, “I wonder what would happen if a MAN came in here while we were all getting dressed?” She seemed to find the whole bride’s room experience to be titillating.

I remember a few other things but honestly, I remember so very little from the actual ceremony and reception. My friend, Lisa, who had gotten married a few years previously had advised me to try to pay attention to what was happening so that I would remember my wedding day. I remember feeling nervous being the center of attention especially when I realized that my butt, clothed in a form-fitting mermaid style dress, was going to be facing the guests for nearly the entire ceremony. Yes, this was silly. And you may be thinking that this was an awful lot of self-consciousness for a 10 minute long ceremony. However, it was a Catholic wedding and an hour long! My butt was on display throughout Bible readings, songs, and candle lighting. Go ahead and judge me; I just want to make sure that you have your facts straight. Kidding aside, although our wedding was very meaningful, it was also very stressful. I was not as present as I could have been.

That wedding day 25 years ago today. A lot led up that that day in March. We had dated for three years. We were young but we did not rush into anything. I was ready to get married, as ready as I could be. After all, I’d caught six wedding bouquets! It was my turn! I’d also purchased my dress before John proposed. (There is a reasonable explanation for that. Just believe me.) Seriously, we were seriously in love and although like any relationship, ours was imperfect, I was confident that John was the man for me.

I have thought a lot about what to do for John for our silver wedding anniversary. We exchange gifts, though typically not lavish ones. I thought I might write some wedding vows for him to cover the next 25 years of marriage and post it here.

I started thinking about a lot of promises, old and new. I started thinking about the challenges were are likely to have in the next chapter in our marriage. Every marriage is different. Our marriage is built on a foundation of love, honesty, and genuine fondness for one another. Even a foundation made from the strongest materials needs, mortar however. Ours is being engaged with one another.

My vow is to work my hardest to be present. And when I find myself stuck in a past that will never change or in a future that I will never know, I will find my way back to you as fast as my legs will carry me.

This is where we celebrated our anniversary last weekend, Salish Lodge at Snoqualmie Falls. This is about a 45 minute drive from Seattle.

On the drive back home, we stopped on Mercer Island for a walk along Lake Washington.

Tags anniversaries, Marriage, mindfulness, Silver Wedding Anniversary

Categories Marriage, Mindfulness

Lonely brain

January 13, 2015 //

As a person with “no evidence of disease”, I am grateful. I am also grateful that I continue to heal physically, emotionally, spiritually, and yes, cognitively. I have written of the attention, concentration, working memory, and organizational difficulties I’ve had since being diagnosed with cancer. (Some people call this “chemo brain” though I didn’t have I.V. chemo.) These difficulties have slowly but surely improved over time. A huge boost came after I completed a cognitive behavioral sleep program and then later, when I took gaba pentin for a few months to reduce my nighttime hot flashes. I have also had improvements through working to reduce my anxiety and grief through my mindfulness practice and personal psychotherapy. Last but not least, writing this blog is one of the most therapeutic endeavors I have ever undertaken. It, of course, has side effects like any therapy in that my posts sometimes worry my mother.

Although a good deal of my energy has returned, I still don’t work full time. I find that it is too hard to maintain my emotional and physical health when I do this so although I sometimes schedule a full time or slightly overtime week, my average is about 80%. Prior to my diagnosis and shortly afterwards (I had to cram my schedule in order to take off time for surgeries), my schedule varied from week to week but I worked up to 150% of what is considered full time.

Despite my reduced hours, I am quite busy. Although most of my day is meaningful and productive, a good portion of my day is being busy for the sake of being busy, doing trivial things that do not fill me up. And some of the trivial things would not be trivial if I stuck with them for more than a couple of minutes. But I spent some part of my day alighting from one activity to another in rapid succession.

I do this less than earlier in my cancer treatment. The main reason back then was fatigue, boredom, and the need for fun. Since I was having trouble with sustained attention, I flitted around lot. Although I have never written as much or as frequently in my life, I stopped reading books. There had been no time in my life since about age 10 or 11 when I was not reading on a daily basis, with some breaks for a few weeks during adulthood, when my stress was at its peak.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about accepting the things in my life about which I feel feel, grief, and anger. I know that a common fear for people impacted by cancer is fear of abandonment. My husband worries about losing me. My daughter, although she denies it, worries about it too, I think. She acts very much like other teen girls with whom I’ve worked, who have a mother with a serious disease. I worry about losing my family, through decreased participation in family life if I were to get ill again and through my own transition to death, which may not come any time soon, but will come some day.

I had a epiphany last week. Although I was aware of my own abandonment fears, I realized that I was continuing to give myself busy work to avoid feeling lonely. I have been filling up spaces in my heart and mind with filler. I have too often disengaged from my husband because I associate him with our fear of my cancer as well as the stress we have in parenting.

Since that epiphany, I have made some changes. Trivia is okay but not as a main course. And trivia is much better when enjoyed with a loved one. I also realized that a lot of my life is serious and difficult. I have a serious job as a child/adolescent psychologist. I have personal psychotherapy, our family class on mindfulness and emotion regulation, and couples therapy with my husband. Between my job and my appointments, I spend the majority of my waking hours in a mental health facility. Last Friday in couples therapy, which we have been attending weekly I said, “I want less therapy and more fun. John, I want to spend more time with you having fun.” Our psychologist thought this was a great idea. John agreed, reluctantly, because this scared him. But we’ve been spending more time together. Yesterday, I received a note from a childhood friend. Her husband “out of the blue” told her that he is divorcing her, on the day before their 27th wedding anniversary. This has also reinforced my resolve to continue to work on my relationship with my husband. Too often people live separate, lonely lives, full of activities, suffering in silence.

I am not by nature, a lonely person. Cancer has a way of whittling away at security, even for those of us with “no evidence of disease”. Breast cancer also has a way of striking women at the prime of life in terms of professional and family responsibility. Many of us have full careers, children who are not yet independent, and elderly parents who may need support. It is easy when juggling these balls, to feel fragmented and flittery, to feel engaged with everything but intimately connected with no one, not even with ourselves.

Balance right now means more fun and more depth.

Tags abandonment fears, acceptance, balance, Breast Cancer, intimacy, mindfulness, psychotherapy

Categories Breast cancer, Family, Marriage, Mindfulness, Parenting

Equations

January 10, 2015 //

My Wednesday “learning to keep my shit together” class reconvened this week after a holiday break. The topic for the evening was acceptance, a mindfulness practice. The purpose of mindfulness is to reduce suffering. Acceptance is one process by which suffering is reduced.

I am working very hard to accept some hard truths about my life, some about my present and some potential truths in my future. These are truths about my life as an individual, as a wife, and as a parent. As I was thinking about this, one of the instructors wrote two equations on the white board:

Pain + acceptance = pain

Pain + non-acceptance = suffering

I think of pain and suffering as synonymous. But this is not a dictionary course or a vocabulary test. And I have to admit that “suffering” sounds worse than “pain”. Suffering sounds like pain with a large side dish of something nasty. Perhaps the space between pain and suffering, within this framework, is filled with a roil of self-inflicted things. Another way to say this is that suffering may result from coping with pain in a way that enhances it and perhaps makes it last for a longer time. Everyone does this from time to time.

There are “hot button” issues for me. There are experiences that I have for which I have an immediate, negative response. They push a fear button, an anger button, or a grief button. And as I am having the response, I often know that it is out of scale. I have gotten upset too quickly and too intensely. There are also times when I feel stress in the back of my mind and it wakes me at night or invades my dreams. I think these are examples of suffering.

Acceptance is a process, a continuum. I am trying to work my way. So far I am learning that there is a cognitive part. In order to accept something I need to acknowledge it. I need to name it. I need to reason with it. That is what I have mostly been working on for the past couple of years. The acceptance that takes place in my mind. On Wednesday, our homework was to think about what acceptance would look like for each of us as behaviors. If we accepted the aspect of life with which we were struggling and suffering, how would our behavior be different?

Changing my behavior, making it consistent with acceptance, is really hard. I have been making a concerted effort on this for the past month or so. I have seen changes. I have experienced shifts to a more positive place. My anger and fear are reduced. My pain and sadness are still there but the suffering is getting less.

Tags acceptance, Family, Marriage, mindfulness, pain, Parenting, suffering

Categories Breast cancer, Marriage, Mindfulness, Parenting

Effective effectiveness

December 8, 2014 //

I am taking a six month class in skills designed, basically, to help me keep my emotional shit together. Unsurprisingly, the first unit is on mindfulness. I got into the class thinking, “Mindfulness, I’ve been doing this for over two years. This will be easy peasy lemon squeezy.”

I am here to tell you that week two has not lived up to it lemon squeezy potential. I have a lot of practice in observing without judgment. I also have a lot of experience describing my feeling states and being somewhat non judgmental about that.

Apparently, there’s other stuff. One of those things is doing things effectively. This has to do with thinking about my goals, at least that’s what I understand so far.

The instructor explained the whole thing. Meanwhile, I can tell you using my describing skills that I felt confused followed by elucidated followed by the realization that I was elucidated and not just confused, but in a different way. Then I think I got it but we will see on Wednesday when I check in about my homework.

And you know that I practiced on hubby. I can go through an interaction with my husband thinking, “Hm, that hurt my feelings and I don’t think John meant to do that. But wow, I am hurt and angry.”

That sounds good, doesn’t it?

Except that often what comes out of my mouth is, “Why did you say that?”

I am here to tell you that asking someone “Why did you say that” or “Why did you do that” when you are hurt, angry, or scared, will get you no where good, fast.

And yet I find myself saying this over and over. It is utterly not in keeping with my goals to be a peaceful loving wife who communicates well with John, whom I love dearly.

Another thing I might do is say nothing and think to myself, “This is not a big deal. Don’t start a fight.”

But in that case I did not accomplish my goal of communicating a hurt that was important to me and I risk getting resentful about it.

So I tried something new. John did something I didn’t like. And I said, “Honey, I am not trying to punish you or fight with you. But I am feeling anxious and angry about x and wondering if we might talk about it?”

It was not the easiest conversation but it was much easier and it was not a fight. But then I got very hurt and angry about something else. In time, he apologized for what he said and sincerely, but I found that I was still hurt and angry. I couldn’t let it drop. But it took me awhile to understand why I couldn’t let it drop. He had said something that might not upset someone else but because of who I am and what is important to me, it hurt. I was still upset because what he’d said had surprised me and I wanted to know that he understood why it was upsetting. I wanted reassurance that he still knew me and what is important to me. I said, “I’m sorry, I am still really hurt about this. I am sorry that I can’t let it drop. I need you to say, x, y, and z.” And then he said those things and he said them sincerely. We had been stuck in one of the arguments that go around and around. And then I felt so much better. We had a very nice evening after what had been a tense couple of days.

The best thing about this class? I got confused because I encountered some new ideas and skills. That means there are more tools out there for me to learn. This is very reassuring to me.

Tags communication, goals, Marriage, mindfulness

Categories Marriage, Mindfulness

On this day in 1954

November 25, 2014 //

On this day in 1954, my parents got married. Congratulations, Mom and Dad!

My mom recently suggested that my blogging so frequently about how stressful my life is, might be adding to the stress in my life.

So, Mom and Dad, for your anniversary, I will be a font of positive communication until tomorrow, at which time, we will be back to our regularly scheduled program of life, with its ups and downs. And I will be writing about both.

I also promise to post photos of pies on Facebook. That always makes everyone happy, including me.

Seriously, I love you, Mom and Dad! Happy Anniversary!

Tags Family, Marriage, Parent

Categories Family, Marriage

Mine

October 28, 2014 //

Last Wednesday, I was on a flight from Los Angeles, California to Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s pretty long for a domestic flight, from one coast to another. I boarded the plane and took my aisle seat in the coach section of the plane. Passengers kept walking past me through the aisle and I expected at some point that I would be standing up to let two people sit in the empty seats to my right. And then the announcement that we were about to take off occurred. How lucky! I was going to get an entire row of the airplane to myself.

Within about 5 minutes, a man in the row behind me asks, “Is anyone sitting there?” I replied, “I don’t know” because 1) sometimes the doors are re-opened for someone boarding the plane late and 2) I didn’t want to say, “no” because HE ALREADY HAD A SEAT! WHAT ABOUT MY ROW TO MYSELF?

He let about two seconds go by after my “I don’t know” to say, “I’m sitting there.”

I got up and let him in. He took the window seat.

Meanwhile the thoughts in my head, “WHAT THE HELL, MAN? HOW RUDE! YOU DIDN’T EVEN ASK ME IF IT WAS OKAY!”

But I kept my thoughts in my head. Even though he made me get up while I was trying to write a post on my computer, so that he could use the bathroom. HOW ANNOYING!

Then it happened. A woman walked up to the aisle, looked at the middle seat and said, “That’s my husband.” Apparently, this was her manner of communicating her claim to the seat beside him. I said, “You mean, you want to switch seats with me?” She said, “No, you don’t want my seat. It’s a middle seat.” She must not have been seated in the same row as her husband. It was a little confusing. In any event, I climbed out of my seat so that she could take the seat between her husband and me.

Meanwhile the thoughts in my head, “WHAT THE HELL, LADY? HOW RUDE! JUST LIKE YOUR HUSBAND, YOU DIDN’T ASK ME IF IT WAS OKAY TO SIT IN MY ROW!”

My row. My seats. Mine. You people are inconsiderate and have bad boundaries.

I observed my annoyance. I paid for one seat and since I used frequent flier miles, I think the total cost of this leg of the trip was about $5. I had fully expected to sit next to two other passengers when I initially sat down. But once it was announced that the plane was fully boarded, it took me all of five minutes to lay claim to an entire row on an airplane that didn’t belong to me. In fact, I was really just renting the seat that I was in.

In those few minutes, I had constructed a small web of expectation and entitlement, which gave way to irritation. The truth is, most people would think that the way this married couple spoke to me was a bit lacking in the finer shades of communication that translate as politeness. “I’m sorry, but I was wondering, would you mind my sitting in that empty seat?”

We might even think that it really would not have been so hard for either the wife or the husband to use a few extra words to acknowledge the inconvenience they were causing. What I am wondering though is why it wasn’t easier for me to initially think to myself, “It’s fair for people to move to another seat and it’s nice that this middle aged married couple wants to sit together on a long flight.”

Instead, my initial thoughts were that something that was mine was being taken from me. And this thought made me curious. I don’t think of myself as being someone who has difficulty with entitlement. I also think of myself as being helpful and generous. But like a preschool aged child who says, “mine!” when she sees someone else’s fingers grabbing for a marker, which she is not using, but is in a favorite color, I had taken ownership of seats I wasn’t using.

Children tend to say, “not fair!” when something they don’t like happens. Even if they’ve had more of their fair share of something and are asked to even things out. “Mine! Not fair!”

We don’t often notice when we have more than our fair share of something and when we do, it is usually not distressing.

I am not a little kid. I know how to take turns on the slide and share my markers. Sometimes I intentionally give myself less than my fair share of something. This has me thinking, though. It has me thinking about some of my pet peaves at home. Those tiny irritations that can accumulate into significant masses of stress. I was very excited to see my family last night after being away for five days. As soon as I walked through the door, I saw chores that needed to be done, just a few, but nonetheless things that had not gotten done while I was gone. My automatic thought was, “not fair”. But then I started commenting on the positives. My husband had gotten to the airport early because he was excited to see me. “John, thank you so much for picking me up.” “John, thank you for taking care of our daughter so I could have time away on my own.”

I started to feel calmer. I still got annoyed with some other things but I was able to get myself back on a positive plane more quickly than in the past.

Appreciation, the buffer against “mine!”, “not fair!”, and “gimme!”.

Tags appreciation, communication, entitlement, Family, manners, mindfulness, positive thinking

Categories Family, Marriage, Mindfulness

The Numbness

October 6, 2014 //

As many of you know, breast surgery often results in a lost of sensation. I had a right side mastectomy. I would make sense that in removing all of that tissue that nerves would also be removed. Now my grasp of physiology is better than the average person, but by no means expert. What I can tell you, though is for nearly two years, I have had no sensation at all in the area where my right breast used to be.

This means feeling no pressure, no heat or cold, and although it is delicate to say, no sexual response. Actually, if I want to be really clear, there is no response at all. No affectionate response. No, ”ow, you just accidentally elbowed me in the boob” response. My husband could hold a hot coal to this breast and I would not feel it. No one warned me of this side effect but I had read about it myself. So prior to my second lumpectomy when my husband asked about whether a bilateral mastectomy was indicated, I responded by spelling out the implications for our love life. I had already completed a literature review on my risk of contra-lateral breast cancer, learned about the Gail Index and so forth. I knew that my estimated risk of cancer in my left breast was at a level low enough that I found personally acceptable.

In the last few months, I’ve noticed something. The numbness in my tissues has subsided to some point. I am starting to regain sensation, at least around the edges of my mastectomy site. But what I am feeling is the occasional itch. Sometimes it is deep down and unreachable. Most times it is on the surface of my skin. I am allergic to wheat and when I do eat it I get a flare of eczema within two days and it takes about two months to clear. If I cook all of my own food, this does not happen. But over vacation last August, I ate out, had a salad, and there must have been some wheat in the dressing because I am still waiting for my skin to clear. At one point, I could see that I had an eczema flare over my breasts. We also had family photos taken at the time. It looked like I had acne. Oh well. In any event, I could feel the itch of the eczema. However, when I scratched it, I felt no relief. As my internist told me when I described it to her, “That’s just not fair!” My rash, however, got worse.

In addition to itch, I have also had the return in a sensation that can only be called, “uncomfortable”. It is the mildest of pain, though still noticeable. And it is, again, felt around the edges of my mastectomy, which was performed in August of 2012. It would not be until March of 2013 that the major part of my breast reconstruction would be completed. I am no surgeon but in my own logic, it seems likely that more digging around and transplanting that occurs, the longer tissues take to heal or as my plastic surgeon describes it, “settle”.

I have numb parts. They are starting to awaken. To what extent they will awaken is unknown. But what I do know is that the awakening is uncomfortable and at times, a bit painful. This has called to mind the numbness that can happen to each of us emotionally and cognitively. I consider myself to be above average in self-awareness. However, I have neglected parts of myself, the parts that are numb. And numb parts get that way through damage, through loss of trust, emotional baggage, past trauma. Our mind protects us from many scary and lonely thoughts and feelings. The problem is, however, that it can do too good of a job.

Sometimes the parts of us that are most important, most in need of attention, are the parts that we just don’t think about or feel. The parts that are tired, afraid, and numb.

As you know, I have been digging deep and trying to feel what I need to feel and process it all through. It is a painful but productive process. In keeping with my mindfulness practices, I have tried to keep with my thoughts and feelings throughout. This has guided my decisions. At times, I move forward, full steam ahead. At other times, I take breaks. At these times, I catch my breath, assimilate new learning, and observe a new way of looking at my life.

There are parts of me that are coming alive. At this point, there is discomfort but I believe that in time there will be continued healing and awakening.

Tags Breast Cancer, healing, minfulness

Categories Breast cancer, Feelings, Marriage, Mindfulness

Why good news brings us to our knees

October 1, 2014 //

Many years ago, I was to meet my husband at his work and then his co-worker, Dwight would take us to the airport. I think this was actually the trip we took to the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was a big deal.

I left plenty of time to drive there and because it was before the era of electronic devices, I got detailed driving directions to John’s work. You see, I get lost really easily when I drive. GPS technology changed my life. But we didn’t have it back then. We also didn’t have cell phones.

So I drove from Chapel Hill to the Research Triangle Park in NC. I got utterly and hopelessly lost when I was very close to John’s workplace. By the time I got there, I was really late, and it was going to take a miracle for us to get to the airport on time. I hold my breath and tried my best to keep it together until Dwight got us to the airport. He drove us up to the passenger drop off site and we ran into the airport.

It was at this time that we discovered that we were not late at all. Our flight had been delayed.

You’d think I’d say, “hooray!” Instead, I folded myself into my husband’s arms and balled my eyes out. All of the responsibility and stress I’d felt about missing our flight, missing our chance to spend time in the tropics, flooded over me.

The memory of this event popped into my brain today. A friend from the breast cancer community was feeling incredibly anxious. She didn’t understand why. She had just gotten positive on her last MRI even though she’d expected the worst. I told her that this kind of falling apart happens. “Really?”, she asked. “Nobody talks about it.”

Hmm, she may have a point there. I actually MEANT to write about this myself. I don’t think I ever did.

I don’t think this process applies to everyone but it certainly does to me. I get most stressed in anticipation of stress, deal well with the stress itself, and then fall apart at least a little after I get to breathe again. Emergency mode doesn’t allow for reflection. It’s just decision, decision, decision, action, action, action. Then when the crisis has past, there is exhaustion and also reflection on what could have been.

I am feeling a bit of this today. I was triggered by my husband expressing a lack of happiness with my stress level. I didn’t do anything awful, I was just acting on edge along the lines of, “Are you sure you turned the stove off?” You know, the anxious questions. He told me that he didn’t like it. He wasn’t unreasonable about it except that I thought he could have given me a pass because of my anxiety about the scan. I told him this and then I also shared with him my distress that he tells people that I am “cured” and that I have “a clean bill of health”. I reminded him that the best I can be is “no evidence of disease.” This was not a conversation I have previously had with him though he reads this blog faithfully. I hadn’t talked to him about it because I thought he needed to think these things to function. But today, after being mildly rebuked and having had to remind him of the scans a couple of times, I felt the need to wake him up to my reality. Maybe it was a good idea. Maybe it was not. I don’t know.

What I do know is that cancer is damned stressful, having it, maybe having it, maybe getting it again, etc. I also know that it is stressful for my family.

As I write this, I realize that I don’t know how to end this post. But I guess that’s fitting. This process will be never ending.

If I’m lucky.

Categories Breast cancer, Marriage, Mindfulness

Counting My Happy Money

September 28, 2014 //

As I mentioned in my last post, my psychologist gave me much to think about when she linked the amount of work I spend on happiness to the fact that I have much to be happy about, which means taking inventory of it all through mindfulness would naturally take a good deal of time. The image that came to my mind was “counting my happy money.” I don’t know why it came to me, maybe because it is like the sayings, “an embarrassment of riches”, “count your blessings”, and “pay it forward”. In any event, I find it kind of amusing and so it has stuck in my mind.

Last week, I focused as well as I could on counting my happy money. Looking at each gold bar in my Fort Knox of things for which I am grateful. I am no stranger to Positive Psychology and know that expressing gratitude is linked to increased happiness.

Even so, I was taken aback about how calming it was to use gratitude and appreciation at the times I was feeling unhappy. When I wrote the post about appreciating my husband even though I was mad at him, he was actually sitting next to me. I knew I was mad at him for the wrong reason. I was taking some parenting stress out on him. But I was still upset. By writing, felt a gradual re-centering, a misting of calm, that cooled me off, pulled me back into my orbit around reality.

What a soothing exercise. I have used that strategy in the past at a time I was extremely distraught. I just started writing a list of positives, the resources I had that would help the situation. That a very constructive coping strategy, which helped me avoid panic. But using gratitude and appreciation last week, when I was not so stressed, actually made me feel happy and calm.

I am so very thankful to have had the Pay it Forward opportunity. What a gift.

John and I. 9/17/14 by Miguel Cornelio of Momentous Image.

John and me. 9/17/14 by Miguel Cornelio of Momentous Image.

Tags appreciation, gratitude, Happiness, mindfulness, positive psychology

Categories Marriage, Mindfulness

Pay it Forward Friday

September 26, 2014 //

I had big plans for my blog today. It’s Pay it Forward Friday to honor our friend Karen Sutherland’s late husband, Hugh. Today is his birthday. I committed to honoring Pay it Forward Friday with several posts this week about acts of kindness and gratitude.

Karen writes lovingly about her husband and their relationship. What better way could I honor she and her husband than to devote todays post to my appreciation for my husband, John and our marriage.

Then it happened about 20 minutes ago. John acted in a way and said things that really pissed me off. Nothing horrible was said. It was just a disagreement. But it was a disagreement with interrupting. Between my daughter who interrupts constantly and my husband who interrupts frequently, this has been a hot button for me for many years. Actually, interruptions are not bad per se but the ones that change the subject or serve to confuse communication happen far too frequently.

But you know what? I’m going to appreciate my husband, anyway.

John, thank you for being my best friend for the past 27 years. You are a wonderful companion, have curiosity about the world, are compassionate, and are damned funny. I had long thought that any romantic, passionate relationship that I had would need a basis in friendship to last. And so far, I am right about that!

Thank you for being a wonderful father. I still remember your absolute and unbridled joy at becoming a dad. You have one of the closest relationships I’ve ever seen a father have with his teen daughter. There are times that I envy that but mostly I’m just happy for the two of you.

Thank you for being excellent at your job and for your financial contributions to our family. You work more hours than I do and make more money. You carry the health insurance for the family.

I have such gratitude to you for being so good to my extended family. They love you a great deal but I also know that there are a lot of them!

Thank you for supporting my career aspirations and education. I remember when people would say to me, “Your husband is so nice to LET you get a Ph.D.” They were right about the “nice” part but for the wrong reasons. Thank you for not acting as if I needed your permission to be a highly educated woman.

Thank you for supporting my friendships and my life outside of our family. Thanks for being such an eager host for our many social gatherings. Despite your natural introversion, you have a demeanor that puts others at ease, you are a wonderful conversationalist, and help people have a great time.

Thank you for your forgiveness, time and time again for the times I have hurt you, often unintentionally but more often than I would like to admit, I have hurt you purposely. I have acted selfishly out of fear, lashed out in times of stressed, and stayed distant at times I felt most vulnerable and hurt. You have loved me through all of this. You have always been open to working on our marriage for the health and happiness of the both of us as well as maintaining a strong foundation for our daughter.

Thank you for taking a chance on me. I know that when we met and even when we were getting married, your frame of reference was one in which people didn’t stay married for more than a few years.

Thank you for letting me expose our relationship, bumps and all, in my writing. It shows trust in the strength of our relationship as well as your kindness in hoping that sharing our lives may help others.

I had a psychotherapy appointment today. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the work I put into being a happy person. I told Rebecca that at times, I wonder if I make life too complicated since I work so hard at happiness. But I also told her that I realized that I have the CAPACITY for happiness and that is a big deal. Yes, I work hard but I know how to be a generally happy person.

She made a really interesting observation, a profound one I think. “Elizabeth, you have a lot of happiness in your life. Because you have so much, being mindful of all of it from the smallest flowers to the love in your marriage, is a lot of work.”

I said, “Oh it’s like happy money! I have to work hard because I have so much to count.”

Finally, Karen I am so sorry that you lost Hugh. I am so sorry for your cancers and your suffering. I so appreciate you. I know that in your sadness and suffering, you are growing stronger. You are a very kind and resilient person with much loving wisdom that you have shared with us. I consider not only your friendship a gift but also your relationship with your dear husband. Your love for him has always been incredibly apparent and incredibly strong. But the reality of the difficulties of living even with a soul mate, have always come through in your writing. I have felt encouraged and validated by the real, loving picture you have drawn, bumps and all.

Tags Breast Cancer Community, gratitude, Marriage, mindfulness, Pay it Forward

Categories Breast cancer, Marriage, Mindfulness