Yes, You Can

Hi Dear Ones,

Good news: fifteen down, five to go.

Chemo, that is.

Thank you for pulling with me every step of the way.

I couldn’t do it with you.

Last week, I spent the day with an in-it-for-the-long-haul friend. When I swung back my door, there she stood, in the fresh snow with a bouquet of flowers. Turns out she personally selected each one and arranged them too.

Tears.

Joy.

She’s weathered the death of her parents and a few close friends. Some of her most precious dreams too. Her friendship is real, tangible, present. Like the flowers she loves. She knows how to breathe courage into shaky hearts.

“Belinda, I just can’t imagine how this all feels.” Her kind eyes darted to my ready box of tissues. “The loss. The longing.”

Cancer has a funny way of making you more honest. Filters get wobblier. Subtle words are harder to retrieve. Maybe it’s the long slog of infusions. The Epsom-salt soaks for slowing the falling-off of fingernails, toenails. The picture of myself taken six months ago that I no longer recognize.

I looked up, dead serious, my eyes holding hers. “Yes, you can.”

So many people are looking for an age-old something. Call it empathy. Call it love. The real-deal kind, not the airy stuff. That real something has been tattered and bruised over time, often misunderstood and even dismissed. That something allows us to understand what we’re feeling. It listens and learns, is gentle but takes risks, and is kind even when it speaks the truth. It allows us to experience joy and sorrow for a friend. It is a gateway, a portal into understanding who we are.

She took my hand. Said she was here for it all. The pain and the joy. The Fear and courage. Death and life. “I love you,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

To love someone, we must connect with something in ourselves that knows, at least in part, what they are feeling. Those are the rules. Sometimes love is a sacrifice for the sake of someone else. It involves calling up your own pain to understand.

This lesson came full circle this weekend in the form of a handmade card from Rwanda, addressed to me in my African name:

Dear Bwiza,

I can feel our Sisters, mothers and daughters, reaching, sharing their hope, their song, their tears, their life and faith with you. May you know the fullness of the love, light and breath they send you…May you feel our presence and our prayers for you with all our love today.

My African sisters taught me how to hold pain and joy for the sake of a friend. They are holding that same space for me now.

Tears.

Joy.

It is a powerful thing to realize we are stronger and more resilient than we think. It’s even more powerful to love others through hard times. "An act of love, a voluntary taking on some of the pain in the world,” said Dorothy Day, “increases the courage and love and hope of all."

Dear ones, may you go into your day, your week, your life knowing you have this gift, ready to use now. The strong and gentle power that turns fear into strength, death into life, despair into hope.