Return, As It Were

Living with cancer is unpredictable. Living with cancer means that a lot happens to you, around you, and inside your body, it’s not often good, and yes, you lose a lot. You lose some abilities, you lose some time, you lose some brainpower.

I’m not going to intentionally fill in any gaps here since January 2017. I’m just starting again, as much as I’m able. We’ll see how it goes.

​I just finished reading the newest book by one of my favorite authors: Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. These lines from the fifteenth suggestion seem apt for this space here:

“Teach her about difference. Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her not to attach value to difference. And the reason for this is not to be fair or to be nice, but merely to be human and practical. Because difference is the reality of our world…

She must know and understand that people walk different paths in the world, and that as long as those paths do no harm to others, they are valid paths that she must respect. Teach her that we do not know--we cannot know--everything about life…

Teach her never to universalize her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her own standards are for her alone, and not for other people. This is the only necessary form of humility: the realization that difference is normal.”