Stef's Freedom Writing

Its a cloudy Monday and nearing noon already. North is just beginning to rouse. On Saturday night I journaled on the computer into the early hours of morning. I did it because I was compelled to, as an outlet for all I've been thinking and feeling.

All day Saturday I pushed away the voice encouraging me to reach out to friends or family for support. I felt on the edge of something I could not describe and was afraid to acknowledge. So I gardened instead. And then that night I wrote... and wrote and wrote.

Before I stopped and finally went to bed at nearly 3am, the voice to share my world got louder and I quickly sent my entry to my dear friend Jenny. I did not write it to share or to post on the blog and when I was done and falling asleep, I wondered if I should. But it was so personal and loooong....

Last night Jenny called me and with much emotion in her voice, said that yes, it was very personal and of course it was totally up to me, but she believed that in some way my posting it might help people. She gently encouraged me to share, because it was real and important. And when we share our selves and what we have gone through or are going through, it often reaches just the right person, even if to simply remind that person they are not alone.

So with a little apprehension and a reminder that no one is EXPECTED to read this nearly five page "Chapter" of my life, you are welcome to. Who knows, perhaps it is really the beginning of that book! How wonderful it would be if it really were the start of our shared dream realized...

Anyway, I put it out there and let it go and do so with much love for all those who care for us.

Thank you.
Namaste',
Stef

Silence surrounds. It’s late, nearly 11:30 on a Saturday night. I just stood outside in the front yard with Barnie for awhile. The air outside is still and a perfect temperature, and it was quiet except for a few passing cars. But strong gusts of thoughts and emotions whipped through and around me, my own personal cyclone in the stillness of an otherwise quiet night.

North and I just watched a movie called, “The Freedom Writers.” It was so difficult to watch in the beginning with all the violence, but it turned out to be so worth it. Inspiring is an understatement to say the least.

Here it is a warm spring night in South Orange County, California. I live in San Clemente, the cutest little town this side of the 5. The film was based on a true story of a teacher at Wilson High School in Long Beach, less than an hour up the freeway. The teacher lived in Newport Beach. Close. Right here in my own backyard in this quaint little town, just a few blocks north of here, there is regular gang stuff going on. Late one night a few months ago I yelled at and scared off a very gang-looking guy attempting to break in to North’s car! The cop I called told me it is pretty common. So I know that dangerous people and energy is potentially everywhere. I also know how blessed I truly am. I mean I can step outside my door at 11 pm and not worry if I am going to get shot. Although I lost a close friend to random violence, I still can not fully relate to what these kids go through. They lose numerous friends and often they are shot right in front of them! They live each day not knowing if it will be their last. It’s hard to imagine living with that kind of fear every day. Of course, a little over a year ago I could not imagine living with this different kind of fear every day. No way. My moments of terror at what my husband, and myself, are going though with his experience of cancer, are real and they hurt – deep and bad sometimes. But no matter how bad anyone has it – no matter how terrifying or painful, difficult, lonely, heartbreaking, ill, embarrassing, poor, abused or grief stricken, usually we can hear a story of another human being who has gone through what seems like worse. Like the book the teacher gave her students to read that really changed their lives, “The Diary of Anne Frank.” They were in high school and none of them knew anything about the holocaust! They had never heard of it! What atrocities and horrors millions of humans have been through, and not survived. And there are countless stories of those who have survived the seemingly un-survivable, and lived to tell about it… What amazing and resilient creatures we are. Amazing.

And still I stand out there on my quiet balmy beachside street and I feel the winds of what is happening in my personal world. These winds blow hard and there is no controlling it. It grabs me and feels more like a rude yank. And I feel it… in my body – my throat, my chest and my stomach. And I cry. My eyes burn and my breath feels tight and I just wonder. What is all of this? What do I do and where are we all going? Me, North, gang kids, Zach, my young nephews… what will be for each of us and what will be in this world, on this earth?

Sometimes my sadness at watching my beloved in such pain and fog from chemo wraps around me and I can’t shake it off. It’s an ache that is hard to describe. Like part of my heart is cracking and splitting but I’ve got to somehow manage it. All the while it’s oozing all this thick energy of grief mixed in with trying to hold on to hope. It helps to see the good things all around me, like all the beautiful flowers that I planted today and how lovely and bursting with color and life my front door and porch is. But even with the blooms and the beauty, even in the realization it could certainly be worse… I feel that sharp sting of what being alive sometimes feels like. Pain – Joy. Freedom – Bondage. Hope – Despair. Peace – Fear. Love – Hate. Life – Death… The Yin and the Yang.

In many ways it seems so obvious that much love, wisdom and purpose has come from all of this. Between the miraculous way we have been loved and supported, the dinners and gifts and fund-raisers… it’s been amazing. But when he coughs so raucously and grimaces at the yet-unexplainable pain in his chest area, I simply can not feel the “good” tip the scales of how much it truly SUCKS! The last scans showed a 50% decrease in the size of the tumors. The first good news we’ve had in a year and we all celebrated. But since the chemo treatment that followed that news, and especially this most recent round on Tuesday (he gets it every three weeks), his discomfort level has been high and consistent. Besides the pain, the fatigue and the increasingly out-of-it state after chemo, the hardest part is that we don’t know what is causing this pain. Is it a pulled muscle as we originally thought? It’s moved around and gone on too long for that! The EKG last week showed nothing and we have not heard a thing from any doctors about the x-rays. Is it another side effect and if so, what? Our shared greatest fear is that its tumor growth. But how can that be if they were all shrinking just a short while ago?

Today, for the first time, he literally stayed in bed all day. I got him to the couch this evening to feed him dinner only to have him eat half of what I served and fall asleep again. But I woke him and he miraculously stayed awake for the whole movie. I chose this particular inspirational movie about writing with him in mind, knowing how passionate he is about the power of writing and how much he loves doing it and longs to do it more. I was so grateful it grabbed his attention and distracted us both from the strange place he’s been in lately.

He try’s to lighten it all up for my sake, and I appreciate it. I think I handle it pretty good most of the time. He thinks I am fretting more than I think I am. I tell him I am ok and that he will be too and I offer to get him anything he needs and smile back. But maybe my face shows a different story. It’s always been a flaw in my bullshit ability that my expressions belie what I am really feeling rather than what I am trying to feel. Shit. Great word that – shit. Not sure why but as a writer and someone who uses this quirky language of ours, that multi-dimensional word fits the bill like no other can sometimes. Shit, SHIT, SHIT!

It feels good to write, to sit here with myself with no agenda other than to express myself. I wish so that my beloved would do more of this too. Both of us; we LOVE to write, explore things and to touch people. Please God, please don’t let North go out from his body this time around without the full realization and experience of “being on his mountain top.” Me either. I remember when Marianne (Williamson) passionately told North he was already there – he had reached his mountaintop and to prove it just look around at me and at Zach and all the people who love him, and just accept it. I know we have both been at that mountaintop of “enough-ness” in so many ways but it seems difficult to stay there. And yet we, North especially, feel strongly that there is more to do, to contribute, express, give and serve. So if that is so and meant to be then help us to see beyond the fuzz of medical cycles and every-day mundane to-do lists!! Help us to take action in the real world of our hearts desires, despite the discomfort and uncertainty! Like this. Just sitting here directing some of my energy into writing what I feel, it helps somehow. Just like those kids and their journals. What we think and feel and say and write - it makes a difference, even if only to ourselves. And I know my beloved longs to feel he’s made a difference, a positive impact, and to leave a legacy. I wish so that he could REALLY see and accept all the good that just being who he is has already done. Even just for me. And he does recognize it at times. The expression on his face as he stares at me with so much love and appreciation… it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

And still, he wants to do more. He longs to write books together and have gatherings and more opportunities to help others. I do too. So I put my intention out that we are… open to it – to accept and receive help and synchronicities in any form from anywhere to make our shared dreams more of a reality. I especially open up to a “higher” realm of support and invite in Divine inspiration in the form of miracles of insight, multi-dimensional healing, fresh energy, plenty of resources (to pay all the bills and then some) and intuitive direction. And most of all, I open up to a real willingness to stop being so stubborn and easily distracted from what calls to us and what is most important.

What is most Important? Great question. Is it feeling a sense of accomplishment or success in fulfilling our “purpose?” That’s important, absolutely. But what is our purpose? Is it totally individual or do we all share a common one on some level? Or both? To me a BIG part of my souls purpose that I can easily recognize is about really actually experiencing unconditional love. Yes, I know it is a catchy new age phrase and spiritual seekers aspiration… but if I had to guess at the most important “bonus” or result of being in my own personal position, it would be that. Or as close as I have ever gotten to it anyway.

Loving and caring for someone experiencing what North is going through is so hard. It is painful and agonizing and heart wrenching and frustrating beyond belief. Feeling powerless to alter the course or remove the pain from someone you love is a real bitch. No question it’s got to be one of the most unattractive situations people could imagine being in. And I hear I haven’t seen the worst of it. And that’s the catcher for the difficulty of my position; that the ache I feel definitely increases to the agony level when I IMAGINE what might or could be in the way of his suffering. My imagination… I’ve always been told I have a big one. And it has a field day when I hear or read stories of other people who’ve gone through having cancer; its treatments and the experience of the disease being the means of the end of that person’s physical life.

Dear god… how can I pray for help to not go there in my thoughts, to stop from imagining North passing from this disease, when the potentiality of it stares me in the face every day? Do I go into denial? Do I say to myself, “thank you, nasty scary thoughts, for sharing, but there is another possibility.”? I know that there are all kinds of possibilities, of course. He may go. He may stay. We all go someday! So do I rigorously maintain my hope and optimism that he will get better, even when I feel sadness and fear when I look at his skinny legs and bent over body as he shuffles around in a painful fog? Or do I occasionally allow myself to admit, as I am now, that sometimes it all feels like just too damn much and I hate it with a passion! I think a balance is called for here. Hope and thoughts and imaginings of happy possibilities and years of more shared experiences with North. And honest acknowledgement that at times I crumble inside when I wonder how long he will be with me and, the hardest part, imagining what on earth I would do without him; how I would survive, or breathe, or want to.

People say I am strong. Can I be stronger? Is it strength of character, self-discipline, faith? Or is it a mixture of all those - or something else all together, that allows a person to be authentically positive or even peacefully accepting of “what is”, even in my position, or even more so, in North’s? I often wonder what it would be like to be him. What kinds of thoughts would I be having and how would they feel if I was in his position? Facing one’s own mortality; what a trip. I think he is phenomenal. And he is real and scared, loving, grateful, frustrated, brave and all kinds of things, depending on the moment. As for me, I want to be present and to honestly be able to look at my sweetheart when he is worried about my worry, and tell him I am OK, if only to ease his emotional suffering over mine. Co-dependant? I don’t care! My motivation to find solid footing in something like a new level of personal &/or spiritual power, so as to hold up and even shine in my life exactly as it is, is definitely motivated by the miraculous man I married. AND it is motivated by a selfish desire to feel and live and appreciate my life, to make the absolute most of a difficult situation, and to be great… to be real and loving and honest and strong too, whatever that means.

The bottom line is… I love North McKinnon with all my heart and soul. In its infinite nature, my Spirit blends and shares with his. And we KNOW how much love there is between us. Thank God. Thank God and thank LIFE for that sweet awareness. And for allowing us to have the opportunity to feel and express and share the true love we have. Because we do, we speak it and show it in wonderful ways without reservation. And for that, I am glad.

Tomorrow, April 29^th, 2007 (Well, I guess that would be TODAY actually), is the anniversary of our very first kiss. On this day in 2002, five years ago, I was in the throes of packing to move into my studio in Modjeska Canyon, and out of the town-home we shared as room-mates for the previous 9 months. I was also involved in a Landmark Education course and had a really neat project to do where we asked people who knew us to answer a few poignant questions about how they really saw us. I decided to “interview” my roommate. After all, we had gotten to know each other pretty well, mostly by standing in the kitchen talking over coffee in the morning. (Usually with morning breath and bed heads. THIS is how I knew I had a good catch once the idea occurred to me. He got to know the morning me and still wanted to date!) So I asked him the questions and he answered them with the courageous honesty I have so come to admire and appreciate in him. Raw and unlaced with any padding of what he may have thought I wanted to hear. Just honest feedback and most of it positive. He thought very highly of me; saw me as kind and intelligent and honest. But I was not the greatest dog-nanny roommate as he had originally hoped. Since I never before had a room-mate, he had a perspective of me no one exactly had before. And we had become friends, having seen each other through some difficult transitioning times ranging from relationship woes to the heartbreaking loss of both our dogs. So on that night five years ago we talked and shared and then we hugged... and kept hugging… and to this day he still insists it was me who suggested we try a kiss. Ah! Drives me crazy! It was SO him that suggested it! Anyway, apparently I agreed and the rest is… history, as they say.

Whew… I’m growing increasingly sleepy now and my arms are aching from holding them to this key pad for so long. It’s almost 2am. Time for bed. But I am feeling “better” now. Today a little voice in my head kept saying to call a friend for support as I swam in my own haze of sadness and confusion, and I didn’t do it. I know so many wonderful people who would open their hearts and ears to just be with me in this. But, for whatever weird reason, I just took myself outside to my plants and then here to the computer. But it’s all out there now... all my thoughts and feelings about where I am in this life, in this moment, on this still night, on a quiet street, without a trace of wind.

Stef Swink-McKinnon