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BC Action, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Breast cancer walks, Culture of breast cancer, Early Detection, Mammograms, Mastectomy, Pink Ribbons, Pinkwashing, Profiting from breast cancer, Susan G Komen Foundation
the five people I met in cancer country . . .
Opening the in-flight menu on my trip back from Denver this past Sunday, I was reminded that Breast Cancer (industry) Awareness Month is in full swing. Again. So again, I am reminding my friends to remind their friends to think before they pink. With all that’s happened over the past year, I have chosen not to dwell so much on being diagnosed with cancer, living with cancer, or even expecting to die from cancer. Having said that, the paralyzing fear of it progressing certainly knew how to make an entrance a couple of weeks ago. But in the early days following diagnosis, cancer hung from every sentence. Anchored down in unfamiliar waters, I would have lost my way back…
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booby-trapped this October?
This will be my only post about breast cancer awareness month. I’m aware.
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Act Two, After death of a spouse, Arizona, Being a Widow, Belfast, Blog Awards Ireland 2014, Death of parent, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Dr. Mary McAleese, Fatherless daughters, First birthday without him, George Moore, Irish culture, Irish Diaspora, Joseph O'Connor, Language of Cancer, McClelland Irish Library, Memoir, Milestones, Northern Ireland, Phoenix, Rites of passage, saying goodbye, The Canon of Expectation, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Themes of childhood
neither here nor there: a note from the irish diaspora (& widowhood)
The immigrant’s heart marches to the beat of two quite different drums, one from the old homeland and the other from the new. The immigrant has to bridge these two worlds, living comfortably in the new and bringing the best of his or her ancient identity and heritage to bear on life in an adopted homeland. — FORMER IRISH PRESIDENT MARY MCALEESE Continuing to pay tribute to the Irish Diaspora, President of Ireland, Mary McAleese visited Phoenix, Arizona in December 2008. Moving through the crowd gathered at the Irish Cultural Center, she greeted many of us personally, even obliging me with a photograph when I told her where I was from.…
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Aging, bombing, Children of The Troubles, Death and dying, Gerry Adams, Ian Paisley, IRA, Irish Diaspora, Martin McGuinness, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Peace, Rituals, Seamus Heaney, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, UVF
Remembering Ian Paisley & Dreams Deferred
I suppose if you live long enough, almost nine decades, all is eventually forgiven. At least that’s what the obituaries for Rev. Ian Paisley suggest. Like many of us, I was raised to observe the “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” credo, to speak no ill of the dead, but in the days since Ian Paisley’s passing, I have grown increasingly vexed over the glowing online obituaries, the over-the-top eulogizing of a man, who from the year of my birth until the year I left Northern Ireland, railed against the Catholic church, spewing hate and bigotry – brilliantly – and inciting countless followers to violence. I did not know Ian Paisley as a father and…
