A Moment Like This One
Originally published July 22, 2022 by @Manuscripts on Medium 
Captured the day after my cancer diagnosis
A Tall Order
I’m sitting in my backyard on a warm summer afternoon with my laptop and a glass of iced water. Wilson, my 6-year-old doggie, is resting in the shade of our Japanese Maple, and the wind chimes that remind me of my beloved father are gently singing in the breeze.
Wait, have I written those sentences before? I reach into the recent past and remember a moment like this one.
Last summer, I set up a writing space in this backyard in the late heat of August. I sat down to start the epilogue of my recently published memoir, Still Breathing: My Journey with Love, Loss, and Reinvention.
I’d already submitted 40,000 words to my developmental editor, whom I met through the Creator Institute, and we were pretty sure that my “first” draft was almost complete. I just needed to wrap up the three years since my dad died, and my rainbow — Moxie, grew from a toddler into an articulate preschooler. All in a couple thousand words!
It felt like a tall order, but I was up for it. I allowed myself to articulate exactly where I was at that moment (the backyard). Then I recalled that morning when Moxie crawled into bed and woke me up. The words flowed from my mind to the keyboard, and as my heart opened to the process, the story aligned.
My epilogue felt like an intricate puzzle coming together. I pulled stories written over the years from folders I’d organized in a writing application called Schrivener. One by one, relevant memories revealed themselves. I understood more about my daughters and the mystical connection they share as sisters in spirit.
A Journey Begins
As I found pieces of the story, the picture became clear. Everything I’d done to heal, recover, and transform from the loss of my firstborn daughter, Poppy, had a direct impact on my life at that moment and the well-being of my living child.
For those unfamiliar with my story, Poppy, my firstborn daughter, was stillborn at full term in October 2015. We were in labor when we found out her heartbeat was gone. Our loss was devastating. My husband Eli and I were newlyweds and bereaved parents at the same time. It was a cruel fate to accept, but I found ways to make meaning from my loss by writing about it.
The first night we were home from the hospital, after expressing milk from my swollen breasts, I picked up a journal my mother sent me, and I wrote a love letter to myself and my dead child. My words were raw, honest, and beautiful, straight from a wounded heart who, at that moment, had no idea where life was taking me.
That first journal entry is where my memoir’s journey began — an empty nursery at 3:30 am, alone with my thoughts, paper, and a pen.
Six and a half years later, I’m a published author and mom to an incredible four-year-old. My path to healing was long and winding, and although I’d hoped I was “done” with trauma and loss, I am now dealing with another type of loss.
On Friday, March 18, 2022, I was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic breast cancer. That Monday, I’d had my first-ever mammogram to explain a rock-hard lump I felt in my left breast in early February.
I discovered the lump while Moxie and I were reading bedtime stories. “Was that there yesterday?” I thought to myself as I palpated the lump with my fingers. I tried to focus on the book we were reading, but my mind was already a thousand miles away.
After Moxie fell asleep, I opened Otter.ai on my phone to capture immediate thoughts of my worst fear. The C-word.
We Are Just Getting Started
I’d learned about Otter.ai last summer while I was a member of the Creator Institute writing program, and recording my thoughts out loud had become second nature. One of my favorite aspects of the Creator Institute is the ethos to “write your first book like a second-time author.”
That evening I made a recording on Otter.ai that may, like that first journal entry written in Poppy’s nursery, serve as inspiration for my next memoir.
This is the transcription of the voice memo I recorded that night:
“It is Friday, February 4, and I was reading stories with Moxie in her room. As I often do when I’m laying there on my side with her, I rested my right arm on my left breast and felt a huge lump. It was a little bit startling, but I kept reading. And as I’m sure any woman does, I thought the worst at that moment.
I finished reading the story, then I sat up and pulled up my shirt, and Moxie said, “Mommy, what’s wrong?”
I responded, “I’m just feeling something unusual in my breast.”
And she says, “Does it hurt?”
I said, “It’s a little tender, but not really.”
And she said, “Can I give your boobies some kisses?” And I said, “Yes, you can.”
She kissed me tenderly, and after tucking her in, I went and took a shower.
Thinking back on that hot shower and the whirlwind of diagnostic tests, I can only offer myself compassion. It reminds me of the shower I took in the hospital a few hours after Poppy was stillborn. That shower drained away the first of a million tears for everything I’d lost and all the sadness yet to come.
We’ve all been there — taking a shower to end all showers. The shower you never wanted to leave because the world outside felt like too much. And yet, we did. We got out. We dried off. We got dressed and dabbed our tears. We found ways to face our fears, move through the pain, and find our voices.
I will capture such moments in words as long as I’m living. I will reach into my heart and remember. For me. For you. For everyone, because I am a writer. And my book is a testament to it.
