There once was a woman who woke up one morning,
looked in the mirror,
and noticed she had only three hairs on her head.
“Well,” she said, “I think I’ll braid my hair today.”
So she did and she had a wonderful day.
The next day she woke up,
looked in the mirror
and saw that she had only two hairs on her head.
“H-M-M,” she said,
“I think I’ll part my hair down the middle today.”
So she did and she had a grand day.
The next day she woke up,
looked in the mirror and noticed
that she had only one hair on her head.
“Well,” she said, “today I’m going
to wear my hair in a pony tail.”
So she did, and she had a fun, fun day.
The next day she woke up,
looked in the mirror and noticed
that there wasn’t a single hair on her head.
“YAY!” she exclaimed.
“I don’t have to fix my hair today!”
Attitude is everything.
Be kinder than necessary,
for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle .
Live simply,
Love generously,
Care deeply,
Speak kindly…
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…
It’s about learning to dance in the rain.
Seems to be raining, ladies, let’s go and dance!
ann
xx
Hi Ann
That’s GREAT!
It’s so true. it’s really important to keep pushing away the negative thoughts we may have and think of the good side of things. it’s like a battle, and it takes effort, but the rewards of choosing to think of our blessings are huge and must help us fight this horrible thing. Positive thoughts do help our body to recover, I’m sure.
That’s not to dismiss the very difficult situations some of us are facing. The whole experience can be one long nightmare for some of us, i do appreciate that and my heart goes out to those who don’t feel any hope.
I do pray everyone on here this year will do really well and we will astound the doctors with our 100% survival rate to old age! I believe in miracles.
Let’s dance in the rain together and change the statistics! Can you hear the music of heaven?
love,
Ann G.
what lovely sentiments …all i can state in my case is never lose your sence of humour !!! what ever gets thrown at you …
I don’'t think cancer is like a battle at all…I refuse, absolutely refuse to use battle metaphors…and I hate walking let alone dancing in the rain.
And I do feel hope…real hope is human, hope is different from ‘looking on the bright side’ or treasuring unrelaistic illusions. And finally I don’t want unsolicited prayers well intentioned as they may be.
Oh…and I can crack the bestest of cancer jokes.
best wishes to you all.
Jane
My mum was like you Jane. She refused to engage in or respond to the ‘battle’ cancer tried to entice her into, twice. She did not want to waste any of her time or energy even acknowledging it was there and she just carried on with her life, around all the hospital admissions and appointments of course.
I used to be, by my own admission, quite an intolerant person. But after a recent bad year (to say the least) I now look at people I meet in a different way. If the cashier at the supermarket doesn’t even manage a smile or a thank you, I think to myself ‘who knows what he or she may be going through in their life’.
Anns verses are great Good advice to us all…and funny!
I think just accepting your lot in life without keep asking why me and saying how unfair is how I have learned to be get through. I try to change the bits of life I think I can and don’t really give the bits I can’t change much thought. I don’t think happiness is a right and if you keep looking for it, you will never find it, because it won’t be there. Its the here and now. I find it very interesting how varied different peoples’ attitutude to having cancer is. You can see from these forums how some seem so positive even when very ill and some seem to let everything little thing get under their skin. Like Jane, I don’t believe in fighting or battles - that’s far too tiring. Go with the flow and yes, I am strange because I love walking in the rain (not dancing, though!).
I don’t ‘fight’ my cancer either but I’m also not one of these people who are negative. How do you ‘fight’ it?
For me, while I’m still relatively well, it’s about making the most of my current quality of life in whatever form it currently is and being aware that it’s not always going to be like this (and it hasn’t always been in the recent past).
It is about ‘hope’ as Jane says and not always about ‘positive thoughts’. I have always been a ‘positive’ person in the way that I get on with my life but unfortunately it hasn’t helped me to ‘recover’.
Pinkdove
good morning all
lovely poem…it is about attitude and while attitude cannot miraculously change the cancer in our bodies, it does change the way we look at our lives and how we approach it, no?
I fight (resist) taking midday naps, feeling sorry for myself on a habitual basis, being a victim.
I wonder if it isn’t semantics. We battle daily the cancer; it is invading our bodies and with all of our cells we fight it – whether we are conscious of it or not. We battle, fight, resist, put up a barrier, to the attitude of our being crippled and incapable of thinking. We fight, in the pure sense of the word, the BC together on this forum by sharing and dissipating the power of it by grouping together to share how to combat the side effects, by encouraging each other with laughter which is such good medicine.
Perhaps it depends on who and what we are surrounded with? Do we have supportive families to whom we can let down our guard (and scarves) or must we be the gladiator in this alone? Do we have help with our appointments, or must we steel ourselves for each day in order to get through it??? I think it might make a difference. In the later cases, you cannot allow yourself to let your guard down lest you crumble entirely in sadness.
We have a very popular tv preacher here in the US who throws out a theory (it is NOT theology) of being cheerful, positive, being in God’s favor. He panders to the generation seeking all of the materialistic things in life, and getting them through this type of connection with God (as though in all the universe that is the thing God is for…getting them a good parking spot, or that new promotion at work). It is just very upsetting that folks would go for that…but perhaps it is the only way that some people can cope. Perhaps they have hit rock bottom and this simple message helps to lift them out and think in a different way. Who am I to judge this man and his message? He may be a beam of light to some. And who are we to judge those who hang on by having positive thoughts…that choose to crowd out the negative and horrible reality by choosing to be proactive and positive in the light of a deadly disease.
Just a few thoughts…
Emily
xxx
Hi,
I too thought that this was beautiful…i will certainly dance in the rain with you xx Deb xx
Hi Ann
Am lovin’ this one and it’s really easy to remember it too, what with only having the three hairs to play with from the start!
x
Emily, I think you have a point about the semantics of cancer. The imagery is of an internal war with the invader being fought by the good guys. And simply the word “fight” makes me feel worn out. I think also there is a fear that is we stop being positive, bad things will happen. This is simply not true. I think its cathartic to feel anger, despair and fear from time to time and not to feel concerned when you do. Being positive all the time is very tiring but I do believe in the power of positive thought, so even when I am at my lowest, I know this will pass.
I am also loathe to use metaphors of battle and fighting especially when each appointment seems to lead to the discovery of something else to contend with (hence like I’m repeatedly losing on the battlefront). I don’t feel like a Samurai when my arse is getting well and truly spanked and I haven’t got the appropriate weapons or know how to use them. I need a new Thesaurus as I haven’t found anything to describe this in a way that suits my perception. I don’t like all the survivor, patient, victim, vixen stuff or talk of journeys and bravery. Has anyone got anything less victimy? In fact, I don’t like labelling myself, period. I don’t want to be defined by this, but by the same token I feel that I am different.
Re: positivity - I read somewhere that striving to be positive can be counterproductive. When treatment doesn’t work as planned, or things get worse, it can make us feel like failures and believe that we somehow contributed to that outcome by not being positive enough. As Jane says, hope is far more realistic…
x
Just for fun…how about a few definitions…words tend to get corrupted over time, we lend our own meanings to them and they morph just like everything else over time.
hope
O.E. hopian “wish, expect, look forward (to something),” of unknown origin, a general Low Ger. word (cf. O.Fris. hopia, M.L.G., M.Du. hopen; M.H.G. hoffen “to hope” was borrowed from Low Ger. Some suggest a connection with hop (v.) on the notion of “leaping in expectation.”
American Heritage Dictionary – HOPE
v. hoped, hop•ing, hopes
v. intr.
To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.
- Archaic To have confidence; trust.
v. tr.
To look forward to with confidence or expectation: We hope that our children will be successful.
- To expect and desire. See Synonyms at expect.
n.
- A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.
- Something that is hoped for or desired: Success is our hope.
- One that is a source of or reason for hope: the team’s only hope for victory.
- often Hope Christianity The theological virtue defined as the desire and search for a future good, difficult but not impossible to attain with God’s help.
- Archaic Trust; confidence.
[Middle English hopen, from Old English hopian.]
I agree with every word you’ve written ripley. I care passionately about how metaphors used to talk about cancer can actually for many of us be counter productive. I love Susan Sontag’s book: Illness as Metaphor, first published in 1978, but as true today I think as when she wrote it. She says: ‘My point is that illness is NOT a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness-and the healthiest way of being ill-is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking’.
I too want a new thesaurus to describe cancer. In the meantime words and phrases I use are: ‘I have cancer’ or I am living with cancer’. I talk about the ‘experience of cancer’ rather than the dreaded ‘journey’ (I think life is a journey and cancer just one of many not good things encoutered during life). I don’t use cancer victim or survivor though I don’t mind medics calling me a cancer patient (patient is after all preferable to customer!). I am having treatment…nice and simple. I am not brave. I am just doing my best, and my best is not to be compared to anyone else’s ‘best’ but what feels right for me.
Cancer has not made me a better (or a worse) person though I daresay that like other nasty things which happen in life it has brought out both my worst traits and my best.
Jane
Lastly, Positive, Positiveness, Positivity –
American Heritage Dictionary –
[Middle English, having a specified quality, from Old French positif, from Latin positÄ«vus, formally laid down, from positus, past participle of pÅnere, to place; see apo- in Indo-European roots.]
pos•i•tive (pÅz’Ä-tÄv)
adj.
- Characterized by or displaying certainty, acceptance, or affirmation: a positive answer; positive criticism.
- Measured or moving forward or in a direction of increase or progress.
- Explicitly or openly expressed or laid down: a positive demand.
- Admitting of no doubt; irrefutable: positive proof.
-
a. Very sure; confident: I’m positive he’s right. See Synonyms at sure.
b. Overconfident; dogmatic.
c. Of or relating to positivism.
d. Of or relating to laws imposed by human authority rather than by nature or reason alone: “the glaring discrepancy between American positive law and natural rights” (David Brion Davis).
e. Of or relating to religion based on revelation rather than on nature or reason alone.
f. Relating to or designating a quantity greater than zero.
g. Relating to or designating the sign (+).
h. Relating to or designating a quantity, number, angle, or direction opposite to another designated as negative.
6. Formally or arbitrarily determined; prescribed.
7. Concerned with practical rather than theoretical matters.
8. Composed of or characterized by the presence of particular qualities or attributes; real.
9. Philosophy
a. Of or relating to positivism.
b. Of or relating to laws imposed by human authority rather than by nature or reason alone: “the glaring discrepancy between American positive law and natural rights” (David Brion Davis).
c. Of or relating to religion based on revelation rather than on nature or reason alone.
d. Relating to or designating a quantity greater than zero.
e. Relating to or designating the sign (+).
f. Relating to or designating a quantity, number, angle, or direction opposite to another designated as negative.
10. Informal Utter; absolute: a positive darling.
11. Mathematics
a. Relating to or designating a quantity greater than zero.
b. Relating to or designating the sign (+).
c. Relating to or designating a quantity, number, angle, or direction opposite to another designated as negative.
12. Physics Relating to or designating an electric charge of a sign opposite to that of an electron.
13. Medicine Indicating the presence of a particular disease, condition, or organism: a positive test for pregnancy.
14. Biology Indicating or characterized by response or motion toward the source of a stimulus, such as light: positive tropism.
15. Having the areas of light and dark in their original and normal relationship, as in a photographic print made from a negative.
16. Grammar Of, relating to, or being the simple uncompared degree of an adjective or adverb, as opposed to either the comparative or superlative.
17. Driven by or generating power directly through intermediate machine parts having little or no play: positive drive.
I do like this poem. A friend e-mailed it to be when I was losing my hair with a warning in the subject box - only open if it’s a good day.
I am a person who looks on the bright side but I acknowledge the possible outcomes. Although I tend to say ‘I’m being treated for cancer’ since as far as I’m concerned once the mastectomy removed the tumor and the chemo cleaned up the lymph nodes, I don’t have cancer. Although radiotherapy is just a final mop up.
Not sure though if my life is more simple since having BC,
take care all
Jane, thanks for mentioning Susan Sontag and that great quotation. I’m taking a break from cancer lit at the mo and reading fiction instead as I have had information overload and also my concentration is poor at the mo, but I would definitely like to read it at a later date.
I really laughed at the thought of a medic referring to a patient as a customer. I think I prefer phrases like “living with cancer” or “being treated for cancer” as they are factual and the use of verbs in these phrases makes them seem less passive to me than descriptions of “survivors” or “victims.”
Hi Ann,
Thanks for the poem, I loved it. X
Liz
Hi Ann and Everyone
I love this poem, not too deep but says it all.
One of the first things my BCN told me is the “being positive” thing is a myth, no one is always positive all the time and I could be in a bad mood every day if I wanted and I would still get better. My cancer was diagnosed very early and as such it never actually made me ill, the treatment did but not the cancer. I don’t want to be a victim of it and we have had many laughs in the last year. I have discovered that you can have hours of family fun with a bald head [a fair amount of adult fun too but thats for another thread!]. Sunday mornings my daughter would come and get into bed with me and “lend” me some of her beautiful long blond hair by draping it over my head.
At my most recent appt it was pointed out that the right boob is now bigger than the left boob due to the radiotherapy, I hadn’t noticed till he told me but it is. Reported this to hubby later in the evening, his response “did you have radiotherapy on your arse as well then”. No one else could have got away with this but thats the way its been, we’ve just got on with it and now its over, some things are different but lots of the things are just as they ever were. Maybe I’ll have to do it all again one day, maybe I wont but I’m not about to let that fact consume me. The sun could shine more often but I’ll dance in the rain I dont mind.
AJxxx