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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 is all about reducing stigma and for debunking the myths that abound about breast cancer, I share with you her words and mine from February 4, 2012 . . . The Real Warrior in our House I didn’t know about a World Cancer Day. Until today, I’d known only about Breast Cancer…
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Friendship, Ireland, Irish culture, Irish Diaspora, Language matters, Phoenix Art Museum, Shel Silverstein, Social Media, Twitter, Writing
looking after Ireland . . . madeleine albright & me
The Voice by Shel Silverstein There is a voice inside of you, That whispers all day long, “I feel that this is right for me, I know that this is wrong.” No teacher, preacher, parent, friend Or wise man can decide What’s right for you– just listen to The voice that speaks inside. I’m finding that with age, it is easier for the outside voice to echo that voice that speaks inside. Like most people I imagine, I haven’t been bold enough to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about my own life and “what I really feel” about everything. Thus, I linger somewhere between the public and the…
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Being young, Coming of age, Death and dying, John Lennon, learning to drive, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, riding a bicycle, saying goodbye, Starting over, Time, widowed
wheels keep turning
He has been dead for 59 days, and we both miss him. He missed her 16th birthday and the first time she got behind the wheel of a car, his car. And she missed him. It was this past Christmas Day – her first without him – that my daughter took me for a drive. My father, a world away from his rural Derry home, had been teaching her to drive on what he still considers the wrong side of the road, reminding her to keep her hands at ten-to-two on the steering wheel and, most of all, to believe in herself.
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Awesome Women, Being young, Breaking Bad, Fireworks, Friendships, Grieving, James Gandolfini, Lou Reed, Love, Marriage, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, New Year, Northern Ireland Culture, Rites of passage, Robert Frost, saying goodbye, The Sopranos, Themes of childhood, Time, Writing
cups of kindness
“Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat.” Patti Smith How do I begin to put the stuff of the past twelve months in a box and tie it up in a big red bow? Just begin. Pluck out a memory and wrap it up. Move on to the next. Handle with care. It’s the perfect day for it, New Year‘s Eve, a day designated for wrapping things up, for reminiscing and resolving; for Auld Lang Syne and kissing strangers; for holding on and letting go. For loose ends. For fireworks. There was more to 2013 than its last forty-six days;…
