a love letter to my body

dear dear body,

    this is a love letter for you.  i am eternally thankful for your awesome intelligence and love.

    some may question how a body with cancer is intelligent.  they might suggest that it has failed or betrayed me.  i know otherwise.  it is very likely that this thing we call “cancer” is your way of dealing with a larger problem, a larger imbalance created by some combination of internal and external environmental factors. that you were and are doing everything in your power to right an untenable situation.

    you’ve raised big questions in my life.  questions i needed to look at squarely in the eye.   further, i’d say, we as a society need to look at them as well.  all of the individual bodies in our country form one larger, inter-related body.  the statistics now are sobering - something like one out of every two people in the states will contend with cancer in his/her lifetime.  the larger society-body is riddled with cancer - that is most certainly something that our society must reckon with.

    why isn’t it true or possible that you created these tumors to act as organs of a kind, to help carry a burden too great for the organs i was born with..?  others besides myself have suggested this before me.  and why not, sensing that the burden was too great even for one new area to carry, you dispersed the weight, the work, to various parts of my body? - asking that the problem be carried, be supported, by a community of distinct areas in the body.  and simultaneously, perhaps, you were pointing to where the larger trouble may lie.  that you may speak a language something like that of dreams - in metaphors or striking imagery...

    i believe and trust implicitly your innate wisdom and finely calibrated intuition.  speak to me as you have.  i am listening with greater and greater sensitivity.  i am heeding and will heed your call, your cry of “enough!” or “stop!” or “get me support now.”   i am here, it is my mission to listen and hear as best i can your needs, your messages, your wisdom and act on it, to support you in all the ways i know how.  i’ve felt from the beginning that you know perfectly well how to heal me, but, right now, you need a great deal of support to do that.

    i love you.  unconditionally.
    as i know you love me.  unconditionally.
    your love is big and beautiful and extraordinarily supportive.  thank you, dear body.

much love,
your eternally grateful student,
wendy