“When will your treatment be finished?” I still get this question a lot from friends and family.
For the past few years, the answer has not changed much. My guess is that people forget my answer so they keep asking. I understand the curiosity.
Photo by L. Laguna
Here is the answer:
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I have been away from my blog to focus on self-care. Do you see this photo above? That was me focusing on self-care nine years ago in the form of dancing and smiling at a friend’s birthday party. It is a blurry photo, but I am glad I did not delete it like I do with most blurry pictures. The details might not all be clear, but the joy in this photo is evident. This is definitely not a posed portrait. The birthday girl is not in this picture, but there is another old friend dancing behind me in this photo. I was looking through photos from this birthday a few months ago because I was reminiscing about this old friend. Unfortunately, he passed away. If it was not an intentional suicide, the few details I was given about his passing lead me to suspect it was an accidental self-inflicted death. Why? I knew from many conversations with him that he had a lifelong history of trauma, mental health issues triggered by the trauma, and suicide attempts.
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It has been a long time since I have been on this blog post. I have been managing many responsibilities and practicing self-care as much as possible.
This is a photo of me from today. I also am sharing screenshots of an email that I wrote to Karen S. Lynch, the CEO of CVS Health. If you are someone who needs or wants to hear the email, I am also providing the link to the latest episode of my podcast for Unfiltered Snapshot. It is also titled My CVS Customer Experience.
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On February 24, 2022, I celebrated the two-year anniversary of my mastectomy in the post More Than Transactional. It was only after this post that I found out that Russia had invaded Ukraine. NPR posted Photos: The sobering cost of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. The New York Times has live updates on the Russia-Ukraine War.
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This is the second anniversary of my mastectomy. I wrote about the day of that surgery on my anniversary last year in the post aptly titled My Anniversary. My life’s journey has had no shortage of excitement for better or for worse. I wrote about this in Funding for Myself, Mixed Messages, and Neighbors. I also have spoken about this in my Unfiltered Snapshot podcast episodes Tsundoku, Dancing on My Own, and Bubble Girl. On this second anniversary of my mastectomy, I am acknowledging my desire to move forward with a life that is more than transactional.
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This morning I recorded the podcast episode Dancing on My Own. (You can also find the stream of my latest episodes on the newly added Podcast webpage for Unfiltered Snapshot.) What started off as a conversation about dancing transitioned to one about women and the she-cession.
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Yesterday I recorded the podcast episode Bubble Girl. That is because living in this pandemic has me feeling like a bubble girl. I am not surprised by this; I am simply processing what it means to live in this stage of the pandemic.
We are past the creation of vaccines and boosters. A month ago, medical experts started sharing Why you should upgrade your mask as the Omicron variant spreads. According to the AP News headline, the White House soft-launches COVID-19 test request website.
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I am no stranger to talking about love. Throughout the years, I have written about it in I Fall in Love, When Love Is Not Enough for Justice, Let People Love You: Community Care Knows No Boundaries, My Anniversary, and more. As you can tell from my posts, I discuss love in a number of contexts.
However, I live in a society where people tend to talk about love through very limited and specific contexts. If I say love, people often think about romance and passion first. If it is not the love of a partner or spouse, they think about love within a family context like the relationship between a parent and child, between siblings, or between a person and any number of people in their extended family.
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This morning I recorded the latest episode of the Unfiltered Snapshot podcast Honoring MLK: A Day Off or On? This upcoming Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In the week leading up to this holiday, I have reflected on how I have seen MLK Day being acknowledged in my current life, in my binge watching of TV shows, and in the early years of my career with two AmeriCorps programs. I invite you to listen to this episode as I examine the different ways that people choose to honor MLK on this special day.
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The New Year brings renewed interest in keeping up with hobbies. For me, this means recording new episodes of my podcast Unfiltered Snapshot on Anchor. You can find the podcast on multiple platforms, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. My first three episodes of the year are up. I invite you to listen to Something New (S3, E1), It’s Our Anniversary (S3, E2), and Let It Snow (S3, E3) if you have not already.
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Unfiltered Snapshot 