Reconstruct This...

I am delighted at having met this group of women writers who make me laugh and think and feel. I feel blessed and honored to be in their company. Thank you, Sherry, Katie, Jen, Bella, Jena, Hedgie, Deena, Jacqueline, Dee, Rachel, Church and anyone else who's crossed my literary path these past four months. I'd like to end the year with an email written by my Community Breast Health Project writing group leader, Karen Jandorf, to a group of her friends, which--luckily--included me. Like Karen, this message is full of love, meaning and grace. And as I read it, I felt an upwelling of joy that I simply had to express before the year ended, at having met Karen and having met you. Abundant peace and love, Jill Dear Friends,   For a number of reasons which interest me, friendships seem to be harder to sustain, connection harder to maintain. I suspect that all human contact is suffering from the stresses of our times. “Catching up” seems almost impossible. Accumulated experiences seem...

"The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you." ~Kendall Hailey, The Day I Became an Autodidact (Confession: I found this quote this morning on Quote Garden. I had to Google Kendall Hailey . And I had no idea what the word autodidact meant until I located it on dictionary.com.) I met Ocho on Match.com. Many of you probably have never had a Match date, so let me describe for you a few that I experienced: Tom smelled myseriously of Clorox bleach and wore a fanny pack. I might have been able to handle the fumes (hey, it's a turn-on that a guy can clean his house, right?), but the strain of imagining what was in the fanny pack (Handi-wipes? Anti-bacterial gel? Latex gloves?) was more than I could bear. Bob , who was as tall as a 4th grader, over the course of two hours and a plate of fettucine alfredo asked me 20 times if I was bothered by the fact that he was so short. Answ...

I’ve just completed Day Three of abstaining from self-derogatory comments. How’s it going for me? Let me just say that it’s the self-esteem equivalent of Everest without oxygen. (And I say that with a lot of self love, as usual.) The 31-day plan came about one night at the end of November while driving home from work. As usual, I called Sam. We kvetched about the usual stuff—including the guys in our lives—during which time I told Sam about a conversation I’d recently had with Ocho: [Scene: Ocho and I are walking my border collie, Marge, back from the beach.] Me: “I am one more day closer to being super cute.” Ocho: “?” Me: “With each new day, I am 24 hours closer to being skinnier and having longer hair.” Ocho: “Hm,” Me: “And then you’ll tell me I’m pretty again.” Ocho: [making eye contact] “I tell you you’re pretty all the time.” Me: “No you don’t.” Ocho: “Yes, I do. You’re just too fucking stupid to remember it (big smile).” “That’s a great line,” said Sam, quickly adding that I abs...

What gets my goat? My hair. But since you all are sick to death of self-absorbed stories about my hair, I have decided to move on. Besides, this morning I cracked the code on styling exceptionally frizzy hair and transformed my Don King fro into a cute Hillary Clinton bob. Typically, looking like Hill is not a good thing, but it is a radical improvement over looking like Don. Even better news: Knowing how to do my hair is going to free me up--emotionally, spiritually, physically--and allow me to explore exciting new topics. Old topic: my hair. New topic: my boobs, whoo hoo! I know, it sounds like a tired, old topic, even when packaged so smartly, but continue reading because you’ll see that I’ve got a whole new groove. A whole new boob groove. Honest. Quick boob update: I had my reconstruction in July of this year. It was deeply disappointing and threw me into a total funk for about four months. Until today. This morning, I made an appointment to see Dr. Loren Eskenazi, the San Franci...

My new sister-in-law, like my mom, is big on thank you notes. When I was in Florence three years ago, I bought her some hand-made thank you notes at a quaint, little stationery store called Il Papiro. (After receiving them, she immediately wrote me a thank you note for the thank you notes.) My mom is also big on thank you notes. In fact, she’s huge on thank you notes. When I was a teenager, I used to tease her: “If they made you’re welcome cards, I’m sure you’d send those, too. She’s been scouring stationery shops for a box of those ever since. After my mastectomy and during chemo, I kept a detailed journal of the kind and generous things people did for me. I wanted to remember who had cooked us lasagne, who had sent us gerber daisies, who had brought me a bag of Kiehl’s bath products, who had simply called or stopped in front of my driveway to say I’m thinking about you . I also kept the journal to make sure that I knew who had sent what so I could send thank you notes. I know of th...

It's not about the bike...it's about the hair. But you already know that, as I go on endlessly (and some would say annoyingly) about it. In the event that you live farther than 75 miles of my house--and therefore cannot hear me every morning at 6:30a.m., sobbing and spewing profanities in front of the mirror as I wield a giant round brush, a 2000-horse power blow dryer, a pricy flat iron and four different hair potions in a harried rush to get my chemo curls (only kind of) under control before racing out the door to work--here’s a hair update: It absolutely defies the laws of gravity. Most people don’t believe me when I tell them my hair grew back in a fro. Ergo, the faux-finish fro foto. I’m not quite ready to debut the fro without the help of Apple’s Photo Booth effects. And Ocho was kind enough to join in the foto fun. I don’t have a good transition for this, as it has nothing to do with my hair, but I rode my mountain bike up Mount Montara with Ocho today. The bike trail is...

I don’t do two posts in a weekend—NaBloPoMo, or no. I simply don’t have the time. But as a pot of lentil soup, one of chicken vegetable and another of butternut squash (ask me for the recipe from “The Savory Way,” by Greens chef Deborah Madison) simmers on the stove, I’ve been thinking about a quote I read on Jacqueline Skagg’s Rebel 1 in 8 blog: "I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect...for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence." —Audre Lorde, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" Along those lines, I read an article in Newsweek three, four months ago. It was by a guy who had cancer. The cover was white, and on it floated an image of a giant Lance Armstrong yellow rubber bracelet. The story, like the cover photo, was powerful in its clarity a...