As the moon rises

One of my absolute dearest childhood girlfriends showed me a photo of a “moon rise” holding space over the world the evening before my double mastectomy.

She said, “When the sun sets, the moon rises.”

The week before, another of my dearest girlfriends told me there was a full moon lined up to illuminate and support my surgery.

Yes, my girlfriends are a lot magical.

June 6th. This somehow was also the same date scheduled for my sister’s second breast surgery. Our times would overlap unplanned from across the country, she carrying the BRCA1 gene mutation as well.

I just knew that our surgeries had been aligned from something outside the physical with these matching dates and this bold moon.

As darkness comes among us, during the harder times in life, we can’t see as well. The light has faded. 

The evening before my double mastectomy, the land was blanketed in darkness, but there was a light that shined so brightly from above; lighting my eyes to see clearly and my heart to take in the glow of truth.

Have I cried about losing my breasts since having my double mastectomy? 

No.

I HAVE cried a few times since the surgery to my husband, saying, “This was really hard. This was really hard.”

This journey over the past couple years to today has been really hard.

But I was ready to lose my breasts. It was time.

And since choosing a life without my breasts, I’ve cried nearly a hundred times out of gratefulness to make this choice. To have this choice. To have a choice. 

My breasts don’t define me. They don’t get to decide if I’m healthy, and they don’t get to decide if I’m happy. 

It took me some time to get to where I am. To navigate what I feel and what felt truly aligned for me, because when I began, nothing did. Nothing felt aligned. 

I cried.
I cried a lot.
I mourned.
I sobbed.
I grieved.
I was inconsolable. 

My whole heart felt shattered and my whole existence was rattled. 

But that was it. It was rattled. I was not broken, ever. I never was and I never will be. No matter what. 

I believe this with every beat of my heart.

Over the past year, I’ve lost my mom to a two-year tango with aggressive ovarian cancer, I’ve lost my ovaries, and I’ve lost my breasts. 

And I’ve found out who I am deeper than I ever dreamt possible. 

I am strong. 
I am brave. 
I’ve built a big voice. And an even bigger heart.

These things have multiplied ten fold. 

I can never go back, and I don’t wish to. 

Whatever my trials are that I experience in this life, I choose to know myself deeply and to see life as a gift in whatever form that sets in, sun or moon. 

I choose gratefulness for life. 

I believe the hardest moments we live shape us in a healthier or unhealthier way. We have the greatest power during these time periods, because we get to decide which way we go, both during and after our storm subsides. 

We are grown from these moments.

These moments, and my responses to them, have brought me into the woman I am now.

And I really like her. 

When we open our hearts to the experiences that bring us pain, and truly weep until we are able to look up to the light, we start to become aware of the cracks beneath our feet that we could feel, but not see, before. 

These cracks expose jewels glistening beneath the rubble, that can only be seen in the dark... as the moon rises.