I don’t really know what to do with my feelings anymore unless I put them down on paper . . . which really means type them on my laptop, but somehow that doesn’t sound as good. I am a little over a week out from my last chemo. My body is still tired and my stomach is not right, but overall I am feeling pretty good physically. But mentally and emotionally? Not so good.

I am ANGRY. This anger does not really have anything to do with my cancer diagnosis; I am not angry about having cancer. But nevertheless, I am ANGRY.  Since being diagnosed my life has completely changed. As I start to become a new me – the “me” I was always meant to be – this anger has come to the surface. For me this journey is about more than just battling and surviving cancer. It is about living. It is about dealing with issues that have kept me from being whole. It is about my journey – my adventure of finding me.

I am grateful to all of you who have been so supportive of me dealing with my breast cancer. I hope that you will continue to follow the blog because I am still battling – I still have radiation and hormone therapy to go. I realize that some of the subjects I am dealing with now may not seem to have anything to do with breast cancer, but the cancer is what started me on this journey.

Why I am so angry? I have spent my whole life taking care of other people – rescuing, protecting, supporting – because that is the role I filled in my family. I am good at it, too. But along the way I lost myself, until finally there was no me. After all these years in that role, all I know how to do is take care of others. But you know what?? I am worth taking care of, too. I am tired of trying to please everyone and trying to make everything okay for everyone else.

It is time for me to figure out what I want and to start taking care of myself.

How did I learn to be a rescuer and a protector? Before I get into all of that, first I must tell you that I love my family. As an adult, I look back and understand; I forgive and I accept that we are all human. We are all broken and we all struggle. Parents are not given an instruction manual and they, like the rest of us, make mistakes. But my experiences as a child have shaped my life, and I have continued long into adulthood to play my childhood role. The merry-go-round keeps spinning, but now, finally, it is time for me to jump off. I am 52 years old. Don’t you think it’s time?

I think it was easier for me to be a rescuer and protector because that meant I could focus on someone else. I would try to take care of my older sister emotionally and my younger sister both physically and emotionally. And it seemed to me that I even became my mother’s emotional support. As long as I could focus on them it did not seem like my little world was so crazy. It was easier just to be a caretaker, a lesson I guess I learned from my dad.

As a child, I learned that being outside in nature with my animals was the way I could find peace. No craziness could reach me out there. So I spent hours sitting in the feed trough behind the barn playing with the goats, horses, and cows. In my fantasy world, everything was bright and good. I talked to my animals and they comforted me. I think that is why I am still so drawn to nature.

As I write this, I am sitting in the swing on my front porch. I can see a green heron hunting on the other side of the pond. As I watch him move quietly through the grasses, I hear frogs hitting the water to avoid becoming dinner. I catch a glimpse of a hummingbird as it darts by on the way to the trumpet vine on the old pine snag near the front porch.

This is when I know that nature is still taking care of me; bringing me out of myself and forcing me to see the beauty that is right at my front door. I feel the anger lifting. I feel that there is good in the world. I know that I will find my way on this journey. As I have said before, life is not easy. It gives us all challenges to work through.