Something else I'm grateful for: the guys who step up to the plate.
In my family, that would be The Quiet Husband and 27-year-old Gregarious Son. My husband doesn't say much, but he takes care of almost everything, without fanfare or expectation. My son does say much, but he's become a pretty good listener where breast cancer is concerned, and has been a big help to me in sorting out options.
Online, I think immediately of Mike Farely and Stratoz. I'm not sure that this is the most comfortable sequence of posts for them to read, so I want them to know how welcome their comments are. In my household, we have a whole new vocabulary and comfort level in speaking of body parts (or lack thereof), but I realize that those things aren't universal.
Among friends, there's that group of Jesuits who've been attending to my spiritual life in various ways over the years. When I first got started in spiritual direction, some of my friends asked: Why a man? A Catholic priest? What can I say? These guys are just spectacular human beings. I will admit that during the first year, when I was making the Spiritual Exercises, there were a few things I left out that I might have shared with a woman director ~ I wasn't sure about elaborating on certain details with a 75-year-old priest. But I have long since abandoned any such apprehensiveness. I just consider them spiritual fathers and brothers and converse with them accordingly.
And then there are the surprises. Last week I called the woman who runs the local Suicide Prevention support group and got her husband instead. Turns out that he is the first cousin of a prominent columnist in town who has written extensively about breast cancer, as both she and her daughter and other women in their family carry the BRCA1 gene. For him personally, that means that breast cancer is a possibility and that prostate cancer is almost a given ~ and, of course, that he has all those aunts and cousins who have had either breast cancer or prophylactic mastectomies.
Fixed!
ReplyDeleteSometimes men can be the perfect counterbalance for too much estrogen...
Glad to hear the Comments section has recovered. I was beginning to think I was going to have to embark upon Metanoia II, which sounded way too ambitious.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Robin! So often I have felt lame and awkward, commenting. It's really good to know that my few comments have helped rather than hindered. You know, it's not that the posts themselves have been any more difficult to read than anyone else's account of difficult times (and with my background I don't do squeamish...) more that I have felt a little like an alligator in a herb garden: rather inappropriate, and full of potentially painful angles. Bless you, Robin, always - you are in my prayers.
ReplyDeleteand I go to the Jesuits, to meet with a woman ;') but I surely dig the homilies by the Jesuits. I would rather not read these posts, but I guess you would rather not be writing them.
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