Slow isn’t my normal speed. I walk quickly, type quickly, clean house quickly, stack wood quickly. It’s been good for me to slow down and enjoy the pace and camaraderie of the Walking 4 Wellness trekkers.
Iain Thomas writes this:

“And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, ‘This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!’

“And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, ‘No. This is what’s important.’”

As we yank our hands back from the urgencies and pressures, there are plenty of things worth slowing down for. In no particular order, consider these 5 as a start:

1. Outdoor physical activity. “Slow and meandering with multiple photo stops” is par for the course with the Walking-4-Wellness group. And then there’s lingering over coffee and Chai tea afterward as deep friendships are forged.What if we could engage in a slow, outdoor physical activity that would allow us to smell the roses along the path and refuel our spirits in the process?
2. Our people. When cancer caused my husband, Gary, to begin losing speed, I put away my to-do lists and slowed down with him. Reflective conversations. Playing Words with Friends. Reading or knitting as he dozed in the hospital bed in the living room. Relishing one more day with my beloved.What if we determined to slow down for our spouses, children, and extended families and friends because there’s no guarantee they’ll be with us tomorrow.
3. Gardening. By its nature, gardening is a slowing-down event. As a cancer widow, I live in a beautiful little guest house on the side of a steep hill. My garden currently exists of one hanging flower basket. And although it doesn’t take me long to water and pinch off the dead flowers, after a recent discussion with a friend, I’ve been slowing down and drinking in the pleasure of tending to my garden. It’s not simply one more thing to check off my to-do list, but one more way to relish the simple joys of life.What if we planted one container—one herb pot, one hanging basket, one leafy houseplant—and in tending to it, we were actually tending to our own souls? 

4. Cooking.  My beautiful little guest house has a tiny kitchen with a plug-in hotplate, toaster oven, and small fridge tucked beneath the counter. But for Christmas Eve last year, I was in a vacation rental with a full kitchen. And what fun it was to slow down in the kitchen and spend some time cooking for friends who would be arriving later that evening.What if we prepared something special for someone, not a required meal, but something unexpected and out of the ordinary and made in love? And what if that ending up feeding us as well – physically, mentally, and emotionally?

5. Reading, journaling, contemplating with gratitude. I love to brew a mug of tea. Grab a good book. Sit somewhere outdoors. Read. Contemplate life. Contemplate God and His creation. Capture my thoughts in writing. Add to my gratitude list.What if something as simple as reading and capturing our thoughts in writing refilled us to once again have enough love and service to pour out on others?

Nanea Hoffman shared this thought.

“Note to self: When you are whizzing through your day and your body is full of stress, a good way to slow your galloping mind is to take one moment to be thankful, even for a tiny goodness. Gratitude anchors you to the present. Then you can jump back into your regularly scheduled chaos with a bit of calm in your heart.”

As surely as we need to do things, what if we could also take time to simply be?

Yes, things need to get done. Our loved ones need to be tended to. Meals need to be prepared, bills need to be paid, and appointments need to be kept.

But what if we could simply be in a book, in an art project, in a leisurely FaceTime conversation. Be in the music, in the daydreaming, in the journaling. Be with the people we love because, speaking from experience, we won’t have them with us forever.

Marlys Johnson is a cancer widow, author, speaker & blogger. We first met her through her work coordinating St. Charles Medical Center’s Survivorship Program and her beloved husband, Gary – a CHN Support Volunteer for many years. Her passion for helping others navigate life’s challenges inspires us every day and we are delighted to share her insights.

To read more of Marlys’ work – and discover her love of all things outdoors – visit her blog Renew | Repurpose.

The post 5 Ways to Slow Down while Dealing with Cancer appeared first on Cancer Hope Network.

But there was also the uncertainty. How do you even begin to prepare for such an unimaginable loss? You see it coming as you’re standing on the tracks, a freight train bearing down. But you’re frozen in place, mesmerized by the light.

And you know this rather large thing is going to hit you. And you know it’s going to hurt. Significantly. But you can do nothing to move off the tracks. Or to change the trajectory of the train.

How do you keep hope alive and yet balance it with realism? I remember thinking ahead to Christmas plans that fall. Sun River, a mountain resort village just twelve miles from our hometown and medical care, was an option since we couldn’t be with our kids. “Wouldn’t it be fun to go to SunRiver for Christmas this year?” I said to my husband.

He didn’t make it to Thanksgiving.

Derek Thompson wrote a piece titled “The Secret Life of Grief” that helped me understand what I was experiencing:

“Having time to watch a loved one die is a gift that takes more than it gives.”
Thompson went on to explain what he meant:

“To suffer a loved one’s long death is not to experience a single traumatic blow, but to suffer a thousand little deaths, tiny pinpricks, each a shot of grief you hope will inoculate against the real thing.”

It’s called anticipatory grief. And, oh, how it helped me to be able to name my mess—to know that the uncertainty, the approaching freight train, the mesmerizing light are common among people watching a spouse, child, or parent fade a little more with each passing day.

I got to exchange one hard traumatic blow for those thousand tiny pinpricks of pain as I slowly leaned into the inevitable, as I surrendered what I couldn’t control to God and allowed Him to envelop me in His peace.

This thought from Nanea Hoffman:

“Sometimes grief is a friend you wish you didn’t know but that you have to spend time with because love brought them along to the party. And the party was worth it.”

The party was absolutely worth it.

For those who still have our most prized, irreplaceable loved ones with us, how might we best spend the time with them … while there is still time?

Marlys Johnson is a cancer widow, author, speaker & blogger. We first met her through her work coordinating St. Charles Medical Center’s Survivorship Program and her beloved husband, Gary – a CHN Support Volunteer for many years. Her passion for helping others navigate life’s challenges inspires us every day and we are delighted to share her insights.

To read more of Marlys’ work – and discover her love of all things outdoors – visit her blog Renew | Repurpose.

The post The pain before the pain appeared first on Cancer Hope Network.

I love that I was married to a tenacious man.

There was a day—with chemo still in his system and having lost a good deal of energy and weight—that Gary suggested we walk a three-mile loop of the Deschutes River trail as part of our Friday date night.
He said we could always find a bench to sit on and then turn back if he couldn’t go the distance.
But we walked the full three miles. Because he was that stubbornly tenacious.

Based on relevant research and years of observations of people under extreme stress, Drs. Douglas Strouse; George S. Everly, Jr. and Dennis McCormack, an early Navy SEAL who later became a psychologist, produced a list of shared characteristics in highly resilient people.
And tenacity—an uncommon perseverance, especially in the face of setbacks and discouragement—made the list.

Based on my experience as Gary’s caregiver, here are 5 reasons his uncommon perseverance mattered:

1. Tenacity supports quality of life.

There’s no science to prove that our cancer team—good nutrition, increased physical activity, a tenacious attitude, plugging into community, giving back, and our strong faith—extended Gary’s life from the projected two years to ten.

But certainly our cancer team was profoundly instrumental in providing good quality of life. Which was important to the patient as well as his caregiver.

2. It encourages healthy risk-taking.

Gary and I stepped out of our comfort zones by establishing a non-profit, writing for grant funding, and sharing at various venues across the country what we were doing to live well with terminal disease.
It took tenacity to dare imagine there would be an audience for our proactive message, and tenacity to complete the steps to get us there.
 

3. It produces a positive attitude.

My husband didn’t sit around bemoaning the fact that he was going to die of cancer, “that is, if I don’t get hit by a bus first” (his words, not mine).

His determination to remain proactive helped set the tone in our home. We didn’t have our heads buried in the sand; we knew that terminal meant … well, terminal.
But while we still had life, we were determined to live it.

4. It generates fun and memories.

Gary and I had more fun and created more memories in the cancer years than at any other season of our marriage. It’s because in the earlier years we were too frugal, and too busy saving for someday.
And then cancer knocked on our front door, and even though it insisted on accompanying us, we climbed to the tops of more mountains, and took more road trips, and established a standing Friday date night, and laughed uncontrollably, and explored more places across this great land than at any other time in our marriage.

5. It creates hope.

My husband, on a hormone therapy regimen that produced exhaustion, had every reason to sit back in an easy chair and watch other people lead extraordinary lives.
But he donned hiking boots, and cleats in snow and ice, and turned on the lights in the bill of his cap in the dark early morning hours, and hiked to the top of a small mountain in the middle of our hometown – two miles round trip, 500′ elevation gain. Every workday morning.

I don’t do 5:30am, but on weekends Gary and I discovered the trails in the nearby Cascade Range. And we became addicted to fresh mountain air, and the smell of pine needles on sunbaked dirt, and the sound of burbling creeks and roaring waterfalls, and the beauty of impossibly tall Oregon trees and startling wildflowers after snowmelt.

My husband’s persistence to live his remaining days well gave me so much hope that maybe he’d live longer than the experts projected.

Which turned out to be exactly the case.

With the completion of radiation and his decision for no more chemotherapy, Gary and I resumed our after-dinner walks through the neighborhood. More slowly than before chemo, but still …
One early evening we came across this flower growing out of the gutter. Which reminded me of my husband.

Hanging in there against all odds.
Surviving in limited resources.
Doing what it was created to do, even in less-than-desirable circumstances.
Yep. Gary.

One final thought …

Elon Musk leaves us with this to ponder:
“If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.”
Resolve. Persistence. Determination. Grit. Tenacity. It doesn’t matter so much what you call it; it matters that you cultivate it.
What if we could all live our lives that way – with or without cancer?

Marlys Johnson is a cancer widow, author, speaker & blogger. We first met her through her work coordinating St. Charles Medical Center’s Survivorship Program and her beloved husband, Gary – a CHN Support Volunteer for many years. Her passion for helping others navigate life’s challenges inspires us every day and we are delighted to share her insights.

To read more of Marlys’ work – and discover her love of all things outdoors – visit her blog Renew | Repurpose.

The post Why tenacity matters in the face of cancer appeared first on Cancer Hope Network.