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Aging, Arizona, Birthdays, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Death and dying, Diagnosis, Family, Fireworks, Irish culture, Irish mammies, John Hiatt, Loss, Love, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Muriel Rukeyser, New Year, Newgrange, No Country for Old Men, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, saying goodbye, Soundtracks of our Lives, Starting over, Ted Kooser, Themes of Childhood, Time
Ready to Turn ~ Winter Solstice 2015
Again, the sun will pause for its moment of solstice before changing direction to move northward. From the Latin, solstitium, the apparent standing still of the sun, the Winter Solstice is a turning point, something I look forward to each year. At Newgrange, a neolithic burial tomb even older than Stonehenge, outside Dublin, Ireland, they hold a lottery to decide who…
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Blogging, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Breast Reconstruction, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Diagnosis, Early Detection, Language of Cancer, Mammograms, Mastectomy, Pink Ribbon Culture, Pink Ribbons, Sexism, Shopping, Susan G Komen Foundation
a pink ribbon made a blogger out of me
It is October 2015 and we are in the throes of breast cancer awareness. Again. #NoBraDay confirms for me that it is still acceptable to sanitize and sexualize a deadly disease, to glamorize and trivialize it in ways that confound me. Once upon a time – if I’m honest – I probably would have participated in the latest breast cancer awareness…
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Awesome Women, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Diagnosis, Early Detection, Facebook, Family, Health, Language of Cancer, Mammograms, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Pink Ribbon Culture, Pink Ribbons, Social Media, Twitter, Wilfred Owen, World Cancer Day, Writing
world cancer day: a reprise
My breast cancer is not just about me as I discovered when my then fourteen year old daughter decided to break her silence about it. In her own way, on her Facebook wall, and on World Cancer Day 2012. Thus, on this day designated for speaking up and out, in 2014 focusing on Target 5 of the World Cancer Declaration which…
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Aging, Arizona, Birthdays, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Death and dying, Diagnosis, Family, Fireworks, Irish culture, Irish mammies, John Hiatt, Loss, Love, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Muriel Rukeyser, New Year, Newgrange, No Country for Old Men, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, saying goodbye, Soundtracks of our Lives, Starting over, Ted Kooser, Themes of Childhood, Time
my ‘slow turning’ ~ winter solstice 2013
It is a magic time, captured before clocks and calendars and compasses measured time and the distance between us, signifying the turn towards a new year. I’m not ready for it. I am not ready for days that stretch out even longer than each of the thirty-six that have passed since the day my husband died. Thirty-six. I cannot bring…
