breast cancer – Page 13 – Lemon Drop Pie

After being away from my daughters at a blogging conference for a whole day and missing their bedtimes, my little girls gave me more than the usual hugs and kisses the next morning. And that, my friends, was the best part of Bloggy Boot Camp Chicago.

What I mean by that statement, of course, is that time away from my family is a good thing. Being away from my daughters and husband for the day recharged my batteries as a mother and wife. Being in a room full of women who had the same passion as I do about blogging was invigorating.

It was also terrifying.

Let me explain. The hostesses, Tiffany and Francesca, were awesome. They were so friendly and personable. After being a part of SITS, a blogging support community, for so long, it was great to meet them in person.

The speakers were all experts in their field. As they spoke, I felt as though we were all instant friends. Questions were fielded in such a thoughtful way and no question was ignored or tossed aside.

The terrifying part came in between the sessions, when we were to “talk among ourselves.”

And I don’t even mean the time I found myself sitting at the same table as The Empress and became completely and utterly tongue-tied. I don’t know if the other women sitting at the table felt the same as I did, but we were the quietest table in a room full of women chatting away!

Awkward.

No, that’s not the moment.

It was the moment when someone first asked me what my blog was about.

I want my blog to stick out; to be a blog that is memorable. Promoting my blog was one of the reasons I was there, after all. But I hadn’t really thought about what I would tell people about my blog.

I took a deep breath and I blurted it out: I write about being a mother after having breast cancer.

Here on Lemon Drop Pie, I write about breast cancer frequently and without hesitation. Having a space to write about being a breast cancer survivor was one of the reasons I started this blog.

Talking about breast cancer in real life, however, is much different for me. It’s not a topic I bring up often. In fact, I hardly ever talk about having breast cancer. When I do talk about it, my heart starts to beat faster and I need to stop my voice from trembling. Even after 15 years, it’s still difficult to talk about.

If I want to be a advocate for young breast cancer survivors, I need to get used to talking about breast cancer as well as writing about my experiences.

Each time I told another person about my blog, the subject matter became just a little bit easier to talk about.

It was an unexpected accomplishment; a goal I didn’t set out to accomplish and yet did.

Amazing!

I learned so much about blogging, social media and design at Bloggy Boot Camp Chicago! Hopefully you will see some changes on Lemon Drop Pie showing off some of what I learned. If there is a Boot Camp coming to your area and blogging is your passion, I highly recommend attending!

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Growing up, I was in a combined classroom which consisted of two grades. The teacher would teach a lesson to my class, and then while we were doing our work, go over to the other class to teach their lesson. This was not an educational fad, but a necessity. Our parochial school was very small and the class sizes were not big enough to have one teacher per grade level.

So while the other class was having their lesson, I would finish my work (and sometimes get into trouble by talking to a classmate) and pull a book out of my desk.

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to read.

Sometimes sticking my nose in a book became a way to hide from the rest of my life.

Eighth grade was tough. My family had just moved to the Chicago suburbs the year before. Seventh grade hadn’t been too bad; I made friends and felt pretty good about the school I went too. It was another parochial school–I was in with the same room with the same classmates all day long.

Eighth grade was not kind. Some of friends I had made the year before graduated and a couple of my friends moved away. A group of “friends” started to ignore me. The other girls in the class already had their group established, and while I wasn’t ignored, I wasn’t exactly welcomed.

Every day after school, I ran home and pounded the stairs up to my room to hide in a book.

The characters in a book didn’t ignore me. They didn’t tease me or tell me I wore the wrong clothes or didn’t wear enough make-up.

Fortunately, that feeling of being left out didn’t last. High school was good and college was even better. I still loved to read, but I didn’t need to hide myself in a book as much as I did during that one year.

And then, along came another year when I really needed a place to hide.

I needed to hide from the poison dripping into my veins; from the old lady across the room attached to IVs; from the cold that seeped into my bones in the middle of summer. From the anxious looks my parents gave me when they thought I wasn’t looking.

And so I opened my book.

The words blurred in front of my eyes. I couldn’t bring the print into focus. I took off my glasses, used for distance, and wondering if they needed a good cleaning. I looked at my book again, and the page swam before me. My glasses were not smeared. The chemotherapy dripping into my blood was making me too sick to read.

I closed my book and closed my eyes. Nowhere left to hide.