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9/11, Belfast, Boston Marathon 2013, Damian Gorman, Facebook, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, television, The Troubles, The Troubles
boston . . . without warning
Until September 11th, I had taken for granted the sense of security I felt as a woman who had traded in Northern Ireland for America. Foolishly, I had too quickly dropped my guard, almost forgetting anything can happen. I grew complacent and smug, confident that – unlike her mother – my American daughter would never have to look twice at an unattended shopping bag that had been simply forgotten by someone in a hurry, or that she would never find herself standing stock still with her arms over her head to be searched before proceeding through airport security, or wonder while poring over international headlines, how a complete stranger could hate…
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Blogging, Guest Post, Health, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Northern Ireland, Social Media, television, Themes of Childhood, Themes of childhood, Type 1 Diabetes, Writing
swap shop in the blogosphere
In the mid-1970s, I was a bored teenager, convinced there was nothing to do on a Saturday morning in Antrim. But if the recent activity on the Olde Antrim Photos Facebook page is anything to go by, we had the kind of extended childhood we hope for our own children. If the weather was fine, we played rounders and football, and we built forts with great mounds of cut grass on the field between our house and Lough Neagh. We jumped off the roof of the maisonette garages into the barley field and played hide and go seek until we were called in for our dinner. If we stayed inside…
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Amputation, Awesome Women, Breast Cancer Treatment, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Damian Gorman, Feminism, Fiftieth Birthday, Guest Post, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Language matters, Lois Hjemlstad, Marge Piercy, Mastectomy, Memoir, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Teaching, Ted Kooser, Writing
Amputation by any other name . . .
This post includes a 1930 video of the Radical Amputation of A Left Breast. Viewer Discretion Advised. I discovered the elegance of Lois Hjelmstad‘s poetry and prose in March 2012. Tentatively broaching the subject of my return to work, having undergone a mastectomy just 47 days earlier, I wrote in Resuming Old Ways of the final pre-operative surgical procedure – the administration of the nuclear medicine for a sentinel node biopsy to be performed the next day at some point between the removal and reconstruction of my right breast. The pre-op procedure had been conveniently reduced to a specious “X” next to “Nuclear medicine” on the Surgery Scheduling Information sheet in my Cancer 101 notebook that is always…
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Fiftieth Birthday, Hair, Health Activist Writer's Challenge 2013, Memoir, Memoir, Memory, Northern Ireland Culture, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of childhood, Themes of Childhood, Writing
’emotion recollected in tranquility’ . . . sort of
I find writing neither quick nor easy. So elusive are the ideas and then the words to attach to them, I may as well be divining for water. Although I signed up for this 30 day Writer’s Challenge voluntarily, it feels a bit like cruel and unusual punishment some days. Like today. It is Day 13 of the Health Activist Writers Monthly Challenge, ten o’clock on a Saturday night when I should be watching a movie or reading a blog by someone else who can come up with a first sentence. I have produced nothing. I’m supposed to be writing a haiku or an acrostic or some other collection of lines about…
