October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Actual Dance is, among many different things, about breast cancer. It is also about love. It is also about relationships. It is also about spirituality and what life really is. It is about a lot of things.
In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)
Day 28: The Magic of Words. How do I do it? If you have taken the journey with someone you love as breast cancer – or any disease – threatens to take their life, you know about those moments of internal terror. With an unexplained post-surgery lump on Susan’s chest, cancer in 10 of 17 lymph nodes tested, and “triple negative” chemistry of the cancer tissue, it became apparent to me that I had to prepare myself for what I had already sensed --- Susan like her mother was not going to survive. “No one was saying it, but if the lump was cancer, as we all expected it to be, Susan’s prognosis was grim.” I was scared. “I got nauseous at the prospect of taking Susan through her end of days.” I needed help. I was desperate to find someone who could help me discover “how am I going to be able to dance the last dance with Susan.” At first I thought it was going to be our Rabbi. Instead, it turned out to be the “psychiatrist I had seen every now and then for the past twenty years.” I told him about the imagery of the ball room, the orchestra and the dance and “how real it was to me,” hoping that he would give me medication to make it go away “and change the future by changing what was going on in my head. Instead he called it a metaphor and said it was beautiful.” His words had a dramatic effect on me. It was like magic. It had never occurred to me that the dance was “beautiful.” Immediately, I react and understand that “The Actual Dance will be the ultimate consummation of our love.”
Stat of the Day: Non-profit breast cancer charities raise about 2.4 billion dollars a year.
Task of the Day: Lend your voice for resources and research to end breast cancer. There is an organization, the National Breast Cancer Coalition, whose goal is to know how to end breast cancer by January 1, 2020. There are other organizations however NBCC is uniquely focused finding a cure and has set a goal of a specific date.
Resource of the Day: There are a lot of different organizations with missions to promote breast cancer awareness and to end it. The Charity Navigator provides a list and rates them by their effectiveness in getting money to programs rather than to fund raising.
In October in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness I will post a daily blog with a reflection about breast cancer. The reflections will stem from something in the play. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)
Day 28: The Magic of Words. How do I do it? If you have taken the journey with someone you love as breast cancer – or any disease – threatens to take their life, you know about those moments of internal terror. With an unexplained post-surgery lump on Susan’s chest, cancer in 10 of 17 lymph nodes tested, and “triple negative” chemistry of the cancer tissue, it became apparent to me that I had to prepare myself for what I had already sensed --- Susan like her mother was not going to survive. “No one was saying it, but if the lump was cancer, as we all expected it to be, Susan’s prognosis was grim.” I was scared. “I got nauseous at the prospect of taking Susan through her end of days.” I needed help. I was desperate to find someone who could help me discover “how am I going to be able to dance the last dance with Susan.” At first I thought it was going to be our Rabbi. Instead, it turned out to be the “psychiatrist I had seen every now and then for the past twenty years.” I told him about the imagery of the ball room, the orchestra and the dance and “how real it was to me,” hoping that he would give me medication to make it go away “and change the future by changing what was going on in my head. Instead he called it a metaphor and said it was beautiful.” His words had a dramatic effect on me. It was like magic. It had never occurred to me that the dance was “beautiful.” Immediately, I react and understand that “The Actual Dance will be the ultimate consummation of our love.”
Stat of the Day: Non-profit breast cancer charities raise about 2.4 billion dollars a year.
Task of the Day: Lend your voice for resources and research to end breast cancer. There is an organization, the National Breast Cancer Coalition, whose goal is to know how to end breast cancer by January 1, 2020. There are other organizations however NBCC is uniquely focused finding a cure and has set a goal of a specific date.
Resource of the Day: There are a lot of different organizations with missions to promote breast cancer awareness and to end it. The Charity Navigator provides a list and rates them by their effectiveness in getting money to programs rather than to fund raising.
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