Saturday, June 24, 2017

Announcing... The Next Phase

I don't know where to start writing this post. I suppose admitting that is a start. The thing is, I don't write about happy events. I (either unconsciously or consciously) omit from them from this blog. I'm not sure how to reflect on them, learn from them, and grow from them. And those are the three things this blog is about.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Resolution Reflections: Why I Said No to Fertility Preservation

I remember exactly what I was wearing at my first appointment with my oncologist over six years ago. It was late August and I had introduced long pants into my weekly rotation to accommodate the unseasonably cool weather. I paired my newly acquired (and newly fashionable) ripped, boyfriend jeans with my pale, salmon-coloured, large-knit, short-sleeved sweater. The wide neck of the sweater fell loosely over my bony shoulders and my jeans showed no signs of my typically curvy hips. I had no clue that my weight loss had a sinister source.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Resolution Reflections: Blogging the Unbloggable

I don't know where to put all these thoughts and feelings so I'm writing them here. Isn't that funny? I have a blog dedicated to writing down and sharing all my innermost hopes and fears. I've written about my journey with mindfulness, the effects of cancer treatment, my travels, my family, friends... I've even already written on the topic that is currently occupying my brain space (#8 Start a Family and On Gratitude Part 1 and Part 2). And yet... I feel uncomfortable meeting this issue head-on by writing about it here, the safe place where I've given myself permission to be open and vulnerable.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

5 Cancer Symptoms and Why I Ignored Them

It's been five years since I finished treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And I still look back on the months before my diagnosis and wonder why the heck I didn't take my symptoms more seriously. Then again, it's worth wondering why nobody - not my partner, family, colleagues, friends, family doctor, or emergency room physicians - acknowledged the severity of my symptoms.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Resolutions Reflections: On Gratitude (Part II)


Last week I wrote, with anger and frustration, about how I am "close to zero percent" grateful for my cancer experience. But there's another side to that story. A side that defends my initial post where I expressed thanks for my cancer journey.

Saturday, April 16, 2016

Resolution Reflections: On Gratitude (Part I)

It's been close to five years since I started writing this blog. I am a very different person now than I was when I began my post-cancer journey. I look back on a lot of what I wrote with mixed reactions. Pride that I've come so far. Disgust that I wrote so naively.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Resolution Reflections: On Living for 98 Years

My Oma died two months ago tomorrow. Her passing, as most do, gave me a chance to look back on all the years she had lived and the great achievements of her life. She survived Nazi-occupied Holland during the second World War. She hid young boys from the Germans and would go months without seeing her husband who fought the Germans in secret with the Dutch resistance. She volunteered in the nursing home that later cared for her. She buried three Johns - her husband, an infant son, and an adult son - my father.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

110: Get a Master's Degree

You might be wondering where I’ve been. My last post was almost a year ago. Before then, I posted sporadically – every three to six months – for at least a year. I provided no clues about my absence or the future of 100 Resolutions.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

On Topic: I Don't Want to Be a Cancer Survivor Any More

Originally posted to The Huffington Post.

Nobody at the party I went to last weekend knew I had cancer. Not the deceptively attractive host, who's equally attractive girlfriend was out for the night with her, I'm assuming, equally attractive girlfriends. Not his friend, who was in town visiting from down under. Whose hip tattoos dripped from beneath the sleeves of his perfectly taut t-shirt. And not their friend, who asked me ever so cautiously whether I had a boyfriend. Yes. I smiled, flattered. I did.