It’s been a month since my diagnosis, the moon has waned and waxed. It has been a difficult, heart wrenching, terrifying month in some ways. Yet it has also been a wonder-filled month.

I’ve been trying to be with whatever emotion comes up, that day, that hour, that minute. Rumi’s The Guest House poem has been rolling round in my head – it’s always resonated, but now feels like sage advice.

There’s been much grief, plenty of fear of course, but also excitement, determination, hope, comfort, wonder, joy. Being more present with what’s here has made me see how, even in the darkest of days, it isn’t all bleak. There are flickers of light, no matter how fleeting.

I’ve begun observing the way these emotions sit in my body, that is trickier for me. Grief, fear and excitement can feel very similar. Somedays I really can’t tell what emotion it is, from a bodily sensation. That may well be my lack of embodiment skill, given my coping strategy for the lifelong run of operations and treatment for Gorlin’s Syndrome. It’s always been easier to ignore my body than be present within it. Don’t talk to my body for 50 plus years and of course it’s going to take a while to learn its language.

But now I’m feeling the feels, as well as knowing the emotions. It is rich. It is challenging. It’s fascinating.

The initial terrors have passed, leaving behind a baseline of disquiet, uncertainty and low level fear.

The grief still hits me in waves, but the frequency and intensity has lessened. It catches me out at the strangest of times and the strangest of triggers. I cried and cried for my sofas, yes, my sofas! That one day I’ll not be around them, they won’t be my sofas…it is farcical, yet the pain is real.

And building slowly, is a steely determination to make the most of this time, to do something, to mean something.

But the most marvelous noticing is the joy. The joy of a raven cronking overhead, the joy of laughing with friends till I can’t catch my breath, the joy of my cat purring, the joy of sunlight through the clouds. A thousand joys, each to treasure.

So, over to Rumi….

“Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond”