So as long as everything stays as it has been, I will be finishing chemo in May! That does not mean that this journey is over as I have 10 years of monitoring and many months of detoxing all of these meds from my system and figuring out who I am now, but shoot, a lack of toxins going into my body making me feel awful and starting to move forward sounds so so so so good!  Whew, what a long sentence.

Additionally, I have moved away from Danville and back in with my parents to finish treatment. Thankfully for awhile I only have to be in clinic every four weeks and have been able to do most of my treatments from home. Since last August I have spent more time at my parents' house than in my apartment, so I decided to just make it temporarily official and end my Danville lease. As I look toward finishing chemo and going off of disability, I am trying to figure out what this next part of my life looks like. Danville has been a place of being sick and healing, and I will forever be appreciative to the people, the place, and the apartment that held me through such a tough and tumultuous time, but I think for now what comes next needs to be in a new place. (Although visits will happen). Also, living alone can be really hard, especially when you go through big moments of exhaustion and depression. Cooking for myself, cleaning, caring for my cat, doing just all of those everyday things can be near impossible, which is another reason I've spent so much time with my parents. When you don't have the burden of all of those things, when you split it up, everything seems more doable. So I'm back in Hopkinsville at my parents' house for now.

With looking to the future in mind, I have agreed to be the site coordinator in Nashville for the non-profit Be the Neighbor this summer. While in Fort Worth in 2020 I worked with Allison Lanza who had begun the service learning program Connect Fort Worth and Connect Ministries. This past year, she has merged with Mary Lu Johnston and Reach Beyond Missions to create Be the Neighbor. The organization focuses on bringing groups to do service work in a variety of locations across the country with topics ranging from Housing and Homelessness to Immigration and Refugee Welcoming to Creation Care and more. One of the big goals of these trips is an educational piece which empowers those who attend to not let their work stop at the end of the week but to consider how they can take what they have learned throughout the week and bring it back home in actionable ways. I am so honored and delighted to be working with Be the Neighbor for the summer as I leave chemo behind and head toward something new. I just led my first week at the beginning of March with a group from from Timberlake Christian Church in Lawrenceburg, VA as we worked in Bowling Green, KY.  We spent the week working on housing with Habitat particularly for those affected by the 2021 tornadoes. It was great to see this program in full swing and made me excited for this summer! 

At the end of that trip, I also had a trip (me and all of that clumsiness that chemo encourages--I mean I'm not the most coordinated but I'm going to blame the chemo shakes for this one). Apparently from the side it looked like I face-planted, but my elbow must have caught me on the way down because I cracked it and have been in a sling the past few weeks letting that heal. Thankfully it's quite minor, but I would injure myself just as that light at the end of my chemo tunnel is shining brighter. Can't let life get dull, right?

Finally, I was interviewed for my friend's podcast. I met Alanna in college when I was the Phi Mu New Member Educator for her pledge class --which is one of the highlights of my life. Alanna has always had such a beautiful joy and excitement about her and she brings that with her to her podcast I've Been Thinking  where she practices uplifting a variety of stories including mine and how my diagnosis has shaped my identity and how I think about my identity. I had a ton of fun just chatting with her for an hour, so here is that link if you'd like to listen. 

If you can't tell, since January I've been a bit busy, let art fall a bit to the side, and am now learning new ways of taking care of myself. I'm still questioning and figuring out how to pull all of these pieces of me into something less fractured as these past years have made me feel. There is so much hope ahead, and I can feel the energy of that radiating inside of me (alongside a lot of fear). Fear of recurrence, fear of what my body will be once all of these drugs are out of my system, fear of being forever changed and what that might really mean. 

It's a lot. And it is tiresome. But I'm finding joy for the first time in a long time and I'm very content with that.