When a woman turns forty she is rewarded with the pleasure of starting a wonderful ritual. Each year, on a very special day, she gets to dress in a highly attractive gown and have her breasts smashed between radiographic plates to look for cancerous growths. It's called a mammogram, and despite the fancy name, it is not a spa treatment. I actually find it to be yet another glaring offense in women's health care. I just know it could be better in terms of both comfort and efficacy. But as women, we tolerate. The world relies on us for that...
I am now forty-two and just recently received an upgrade in my breast evaluation experience. Last week they found a lump. I was referred for a fine needle aspiration biopsy- also not a spa treatment. In this procedure they take a long needle and jab it through the tissue of the breast multiple times as a means of trying to puncture the lump and remove the goop to figure out what it is. Unfortunately the five injections of local anesthesia they give you beforehand do not set the stage very well...
The good news is, I am just fine. The test results were all clear and there was nothing more than grotesquely beautiful bruising. I am very grateful for my continued health. I did, however, share the waiting room with many women who were not fine. I don't know if they had cancer or not, but I do know that they were all exhausted and seriously wondering whether they are actually ok. I have a feeling that many of us may be wondering if we are ok right now, men and women alike...
The long dark tunnel of winter is ahead, and we are wrestling with more qualms than ever. We have been trying to engage in the world as it once was, but deep inside we know that it will never be the same. We are contorting ourselves with attempts to conjure an answer, a sense of safety, a next step that actually makes sense. All we can reasonably do is take it one day at a time as the great seismic shifts happening in the world continue to unearth the very foundations of who we think we are...
What are you prepared to let go of in this process? What would you like to make more space for in your life? Is the future you waiting for the past you to release your grip so that you can actually evolve in the present moment? What awaits you on the other side of this threshold? I can hear us all breathing; collectively pausing at the precipice...
Be brave and gentle,
Valarie
Step out on the edge of your perspective to meet the moment as it is with this embodied practice: The Precipice.
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