Space, my final frontier.
My journey on the cancer seas.
Shall I tell you a secret? We all love those don’t we. Well, my best kept secret is that I love being in my own space. Always have. Granted that there is a moment when it all becomes too much and I crave the company of others, but mostly I love the inner clarity that it gives me. Before my diagnosis I used to laugh with clients coming around from my shiatsu treatments, their look of groggy awe was greeted by my comment ‘deep space nine session there.’ I'm not certain that many of them knew that I was giving a nod to my sci fi obsession, but it went deeper than that for me. I literally connect with space when I am doing body work. Crazy in some ways and yet. The truth is that we are spinning after a dying sun across an unknown universe and I find that sense of space utterly wonderous. So why not connect us all into that?
One thing this passage spent in recuperation through breast cancer has given me is the elegance of time and solitude, more space to become. And I reckon we all need more of that. The recent journey of round 4 chemo has been with the drug docetaxel and though the agonising body aches and bone deep fatigue has utterly floored me, I have really appreciated my time in the boughs of the energy of Yew from where the drug comes. Trees by their nature are spacious. Their growth is slow and measured, often spanning centuries, far longer than we will ever know. We are but butterflies who live for a day in their consciousness. What an intense medicine to be imbibing.
I spend a lot of time in a Yew grove these days, I call it a cathedral, because of the intense sense of reverence I get when I am in there. There were tiny finger nail size toads around on the ground after the rains this week when I entered. I crouched and watched them leap across the dank earth. I was struck by the urgency within them to get somewhere. Likely driven by survival and a need to procreate. Not so different from our base instincts then. Life is always living itself, inside us and outside, all the time. Yet it is often only in the pause that we can find respite, renewal and grace. I placed my head against the ancient bough of one of the Yews and had an image of a time long from now when they finally had a moment to reflect upon this human who sought their shelter. In my mind’s eye I laughed as I heard them say only one word about me: ‘lovely’. So humbled and so held to be here in this space, in my space, on our beloved planet out in space.
Isn’t it truly amazing?
