La Dolce Vita

Last week marked the 32nd chemo infusion I’ve had in the last 14 months. It was also the last infusion of a trial I’ve been enrolled in since September. I have one more surgery (a reconstruction) and a milestone birthday fast approaching, but this present moment is noteworthy. Yesterday, I went for my annual mammo on the breast that wasn’t surgically removed, and thankfully, it’s clear. Though I expected it would be (in part because this song was on repeat in my mind), the relief I feel is enormous.

To mark the last infusion, my college friends came to town last week, and we tore it up. Hillary called yesterday and said, “I thought I would fly up and help you convalesce and instead, you wore me out.” I wore myself out, really. As I could have predicted, my mood was so high that I kept going and going and going, until I fell into a Rip van Winkle sleep that it took a whole day to emerge from.

These friends had been there for the first infusion, back at the start of treatment, in December 2024, so our gathering felt especially poignant. Back then, the road ahead felt uncertain and scary. I was operating on fumes. Despite the overall anxieties, we laughed, a lot.

That was true for this weekend also. Years ago, I met up with Hillary in Italy when I was traveling with an ex boyfriend, and she was there for a wedding. She and I were struggling to remember our favorite sandwich place in Florence, where we had studied abroad. The ex joked, “It’s like hanging out with two concussion patients.” He was right, and we were only in our thirties then. As Hillary noted when we were walking around the MFA on Friday, looking for the restrooms and somehow missing a gigantic sign, we would be the worst Amazing Race team.

That we would laugh a lot together did not surprise me. What did surprise me was that I only teared up twice, including once when I was alone in the car and waiting for Hillary to get some bakery treats for the nurses. I thought of how grateful I am for the team that took care of me here (especially my favorite nurse, whose quiet, steady “mom” energy was exactly what I needed). And when a photo popped up of two of my late aunts smiling, my mind naturally went to my team on the other side (deceased loved ones). They have come through for me at key moments in what has been, at times, a scary road, one that was compounded by familial estrangements. In spirit, these deceased loved ones made their presence known, reminding me that we are never, ever alone. Even when it feels like it. As comforting as I find those thoughts, some of my tears were wishing they were actually here-here to join in the party, to smile with, to give a celebratory hug and high-five.

Then, later that day, at the wahoo-it’s-actually-over dinner, something happened that made me feel like, Oh, right; actually, they are here. Or at least one, my uncle Charlie.

*Before I tell that story, it feels apropos to underscore the obvious, i.e. how little we actually know about the grand mystery that is life. We can hold our ideas and read our books, but the closer we gets to comprehending this vast cosmos—whether because we’re reckoning with mortality, ours and/or others’—the one thing that becomes crystal clear is how small we are. And with that awareness comes how little we know. From the right vantage, under the right light, that’s pure exhilaration.

Time and time again, humility is the only answer. As someone who channels for others, I am often surprised by what comes through. That’s a good sign. Thanks to years of practice and observation, I trust myself as a channel, which also means staying mindful of my own biases. What I appreciate most is the constant reminder that what we know is but a teeny-tiny sliver of what is possible to be known. When we think from a widened perspective, we can’t help but embrace our humility. And if we are truly humble, which can be hard to live and breathe on a day to day level, nonviolence is a no-brainer.

Prior to the events exploding in Minneapolis over the weekend, I’d been thinking a lot about gaslighting, specifically in terms of how to respond to it. It’s a topic that is personally important, as dealing with it contributed to the chronic stress that contributed to my health condition.

I used to think handling it and preserving relationships was as simple as gently naming the behavior, which, in retrospect, is very idealistic (and also very Aquarian, though it should be noted that “gentle” is not exactly an Aquarian trait and so this took a whole lot of work on my part).

Growing up in the household I did, that kind of blatant manipulation is not something I can accept without consequences. And now that those consequences feel potentially life-threatening, it is even more important to me to figure out, yet the answer is still fuzzy sometimes. There are still situations where a certain acceptance that others are living in an alternate reality feels like the most pragmatic option. That maybe my singular perspective could be widened to include that which we (or I) don’t yet know.

Though we can’t know everything, it’s reasonable to draw a link between gaslighting on a personal level and gaslighting on the societal level. So that is what I was noodling over on my many hours of road time over this last month. What has been a personal conundrum for me is also a conundrum for the world. Does “solving” gaslighting on the personal level help us on the collective level, and/or vice versa? Anyone, any ideas?

After the most recent murder, my mind started fixing on a book I read five years ago, Grieving While Black. It’s one of those rare books one can read again (and again) to engage with all its layers of meaning. There are lots of reasons this book feels essential, but in the current moment (which includes the limitations of chemo brain), the part that keeps coming to mind is how a universal fear of loss (universal because impermanence is a given, we will all one day die, for example) that is not made conscious can lead to horrible societal ills, including the drive to assert power, domination, and control over others.

One way out of gaslighting? Call a spade a spade, as long as it takes.

*Sometimes, uncanny signs and synchronicities feel like a sneak peek into the invisible web of connections that are always there, the links that will perhaps one day be revealed.

One of my favorite-ever stories about signs from the other side involves my cousin Alice’s dog, who is a blind Husky. Before her husband, Michael, passed away, my cousin asked him what he would come back to her as, and he said, “Something blue.” She assumed he meant a bird.

Together, Alice and Michael rescued senior huskies. One of their two dogs, Iggy, died a few months before Michael, and his sister, Lulu, died four month later, shortly before what would have been Alice and Michael’s 30th wedding anniversary. Alice was not ready to even think about getting another dog, until the day of their wedding anniversary, when we went to lunch and saw a ridiculously cute little dog (who I now follow on Instagram, though I can’t remember his handle).

On the way home, Alice started wondering if she should look at getting another rescue. (The dog was that cute.) Shortly after, she showed me a listing of a dog named Blue, a blind Husky puppy. Without thinking, I said, “That’s your dog.” Alice was not sure about taking on a Husky puppy and especially not a blind Husky puppy. “Really?” she asked. “Yes,” I said, in part because the certainty had come through so clearly. “No question.” I really hoped I wasn’t wrong because truth be told, Blue, with his bandana and head cocked to the side, looked kind of nuts in that photo.

The foster taking care of him posted a listing on Facebook, but no one could take him. It didn’t take long for Alice to say, “OK, I’ll reach out.” That was almost four and a half years ago, and Blue, who is beyond special, is definitely her dog. True to that initial impression, he can sometimes be a little nuts. When there’s a full moon, Alice knows because he starts getting very playful. When my brother gave me a screaming stuffed goat to mark the end of five and a half weeks of radiation, Blue stole it. I really wanted that goat—it spoke to my love of the primal scream—but when I tried to take it back, Blue was not having it. If I am with him on a full moon, forget about it. I’m not sure who needs the four-mile walks more, him or me.

The funny part, and the reason I’m sharing this story to begin with, is that for the first few weeks with Blue, Alice kept trying to think of a name that would be connected to Michael. Nothing felt right, though. Finally, one day, she called and said, '“OK, so I just remembered something…” and it was that Michael had told her he would come back as “something Blue.” Duh.

In this situation and others, you have to wonder how many times our other-side friends are looking at our inability to make the most obvious connections and saying, “We keep trying to show you!”

I wonder about this a lot. I wonder if this applies to us on collective as well as personal levels. It’s worth the wonder. Especially when so little makes sense, there has to be something we’re missing.

*So last week, on the last infusion day, my cousin Mary Ann picked a restaurant in Beacon Hill, only realizing once she got there that it was not the place she had in mind. But it was the right place, and that she realized only when she sat at the table, before the rest of us got there, and looked up to see that our table was facing this illustration of a blue heron.

Shortly after Charlie passed in 2024, a family friend told Mary Ann that she and her husband were in Maine when a blue heron landed and looked at them for a long moment of stillness. This family friend felt that the blue heron was a visit from Charlie’s spirit.

Over the summer, this same family friend was diagnosed with the same type of breast cancer I was diagnosed with. As much as I didn’t love the reason we were connecting, talking to her has always felt calming. She has a soothing, grounded presence. That the blue heron symbolism came through her gave it added meaning.

The blue heron started to show up in various unexpected places, in a book passage, on photographs and cards. Late last year, when I shared an idea with Mary Ann and she suggested I start a podcast, she thought it fitting to name the LLC Blue Heron Studios. So I did.

After what was a very emotional day—she did a lot of heavy lifting to help me across this arduous finish line—it had to have been especially sweet to look up and see this artwork, a wink-nod from her dad if there ever was one. She had picked the exact right restaurant after all. When I arrived with Hillary, I was amazed. And yet not at all surprised.

There’s a lot we miss, no doubt—the names that escape us, the gigantic restroom sign we look past in a museum, the solutions that are probably obvious, the infinite number of connections scattered all around us, mundane and sacred alike. Yet often, what we do see and appreciate can be more than enough, opening doors into more humility, more wonder, and hopefully more connectedness. Here’s hoping.