THE POWER OF UNFAMILIAR

Not everything in you will make the journey.

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This was where our childhood summits occurred. The brick stoop outside of Mary’s house held the weightiness of everything wondrous and woeful in the life of two nine-year-old little girls. That day, we scooched our bodies so that our bare legs nearly touched and we examined our toes.

“How did you get crayon on your leg?”
Mary spat on her finger and vigorously rubbed the bend of my knee where the squiggle line appeared.

That unremovable squiggle line.
Evidence of a little being already marked by a grand mère’s legacy,
the bold veins like a blueprint of the woman I would grow into in this image—
or more accurately, the one I was created to be.

We are us from the beginning.

In some ways I take great comfort in knowing the little girl with the long, blond pigtails was always me. There are prophecies there, if I study them up close—
~ the same smile, although not as eager
~ the same legs, only longer now
~ the same brown eyes, long waist, same squiggle vein.

Still, I marvel often at the woman who is undeniably a creature of change—
her hunger for new landscapes,
her need to constantly create.

Truth: We take with us ourselves.
Through each adventure.
Every encounter.

We are the knowable, assurable constant when everything around us shifts.

Just before undergoing this last round of treatment,
I dangle my legs off the blanket-wrapped table
and quietly take stock of who and where I am.
Too many visits to rooms like this one.
Too many lacking the kind of identity that creates remembrance.
I remember very few.

This morning I notice something familiar bathed in dappled morning sunlight.
A squiggle line just to the right of my knee.
A reminder of quiet constancy folded into the necessity of change.

Constancy is the illusion.
Thirty trillion cells attest.
They are busy—sloughing, dying, remaking.
Ten thousand small farewells every second.
Ten thousand tiny births.

This is the story of the me that remains while everything changes.
Or maybe it’s the story of letting go.

The body is the teacher, releasing what is no longer living, making space for what brings life.
Ideas.
Beliefs.
Relationships.
Sometimes surprising parts of us uproot.

Still, there are cells that carry with us for a lifetime, housed in the head and heart:
The deep-seated loves.
The memories that have become our marrow.
The fierce, unshakable knowing of who we are at the core.

We are written with both instructions—
to remain, and to change.
Child and woman.
Old and new.
Memory and emergence.
All in the same skin.

We are meant for preservation and renewal,
to live in the holy braid of both—
letting the unfamiliar do its work
until it too feels like home.

Not everything in us makes the journey.
Some things must depart.
And the holy work is this:
to let the body and the soul shed what cannot stay,
while fiercely guarding the parts that must.

Like the cells that keep watch in the quiet chambers of the heart for a lifetime.
Like the memories that stand unshaken in the folds of the mind.
Like an unassuming squiggle line reminding me of who I am.

NOTES:
science and soul

The human body contains roughly 30 trillion cells — each one a listener.

Every day, about 330 billion cells are replaced: skin, blood, gut lining — all quietly turning over in the background. In a few short months, much of you is remade.

But some cells remain with you for the long haul — through every diagnosis, every procedure, every whispered prayer.
Neurons in your brain that carry your memories and way of thinking, will likely be with you until your last day. Many of your heart cells will beat for decades without replacement. These long-lived cells are the keepers of your essential self: what you remember, what you love, what you believe to be true.

Cancer teaches you quickly that not everything in you will make the journey. Some cells have to go — they’re sick, damaged, no longer able to serve the life you want. Still, there are parts of you that must remain untouched if you’re going to keep living as you. It is a strange, holy work: letting the body shed what cannot stay, while fiercely holding onto what must.

Science calls it cellular turnover. I call it permission. Permission to release the old without losing the core. Permission to believe that the essential me is worth carrying forward.

And this is why it matters — with chronic illness, you cannot afford to forget who you are. The cells that stay are listening. They take their cues from the words you repeat to yourself, the truth you speak over and over, even in the dark. If I tell them I am defeated, they will carry that. If I tell them I am resilient, this is what they will be.

Every day, my body writes new chapters in the language of cells. And I get to choose, again and again, the story they tell.

Image: Most often we’re discussing something serious. On this day my doctor, Marcela Dominguez and I played like school girl friends. A reminder that the fun-loving girl in me is still in there, somewhere. A mandate for my body to take it easy for a little while. This was just one scene from a month-long stay in Orange County, California…twenty-eight targeted Hyperthermia treatments paired with high dose vitamin c. We’ll know in a few weeks if our efforts are rewarded. For now, we continue to be grateful for every little thing.