At the beginning of the year I wished for 2020 vision in all ways possible. I wished for us to be clear-headed and clear-hearted; clear in our words and actions; clear about our needs and priorities; clear about who we love and what we must do to protect our children for many generations to come;…

My fears have nothing to do with running out of toilet paper, the solution to which seems obvious; it fits nicely into the analogy of “deal with your own shit.” I’m not afraid of being “sheltered in place.” I’ve been practicing social distancing as a preference for many years. That’s why I’ve lived in tiny…

I’m a silver lining kinda gal, even if it’s only a sliver. If you have been following my journey with brain cancer, you know that about me. You will know that I’ve wrapped a black belt around my tumor and that I refer to it as sensei glioblastoma, and that I am on the hunt…

A few years ago, I drowned a very large rat in a trashcan of runoff from the roof. We had caught it in the garage where it had been happily chewing through grain bags and enlarging the small opening under the garage doors to make coming and going easier. The garage was its palace, a…

Sometime during this long cold winter, Lisa, my Yaqui traveler friend, called me up and asked, “well, are the bees gone?” She was referring to the distinct image/sensation I had during a couple pipe ceremonies last fall that the tumor was an agitated beehive, and that the smoke from the pipe was lulling them, calming…

I am sitting in an orientation meeting for an exercise program, the joint research project of the local cancer center and the university to determine—I’m not sure what: whether exercise improves our ability to survive cancer? Whether it improves the side effects from cancer like muscle loss, loss of appetite, depression? I am thinking that…

We were minding our own businesson a backroad cruisewhen the wheel began a thumpin’…Don’t you hate bad newswhen your life’s already bumpin’?It ain’t anything you’d choose.We got the flat tire blues.No, this ain’t no ruse—We got the flat tire blues. So we dug out the jack and the pitiful spare;the only thing easy was at…

I am lying on Tanner’s table, needles in my abdomen and lower legs,heat, and this poem, percolating up like a Yellowstone mud pot. Tanner’s hands,not ethereal airy hands, not hands of fire and electricity, not hands of waterbut hands of clay are cradling my cranium, upcurled fingers easing my skulloff its axis where it has…

I don’t need your fears—of suffering, of dying, of the big C,of me being gone and leaving you alone—splattered on me like an uncovered sneeze. I don’t need to feel the quicksand of your anxietysucking the ground from beneath my feet, or elbowing me asideas you push the timing and agenda of your own pressing…

(to be read in that infuriatingly serene and unapproachable voice) If you have brain cancer, please press 1. If you are having a seizure, please press 2 and then throw your phone across the room. (from a distance) Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line for further options. If your hair is…