Hi Friends,  I've really needed to write and express and share.  I've been too in my head and I've been overwhelmed with balancing my life learning to trust and keep calm.  So where I'm at here and now is hopefully next to the last month of chemo infusions.  I'm about to 6 rounds again on my third fight, this time a slightly different therapy which is why I so luckily didn't lose my hair.  I'm not sure that I emotionally could have kept it together being bald again and that feeling of no life growing.  It feels terrible.  And hair in the follicle feels amazing.   It does make me  so so so so happy and it gives me so much hope having hair curly growing every day.  My new chemo drug Doxil is time released  (one of the only chemo drugs I'm told that does this) meaning I feel it throughout the 4 weeks after the infusion, and it accumulates.  It's hard expressing the metallic heaving feeling moving slowly throughout my body.  Each time (each day) is a tad bit different.  But it always feels like an alien in the body.  With Spring I'm ready to get things rolling, especially with the days of sunshine and flowers blooming.  But I'm at the end of this recurrence battle with my body feeling pretty worn out and exhausted and still more destruction coming.  My acupuncturist, who has helped tremendously, says this is the Hercules process of breaking down to get stronger, so this gives me super hope that I will be more vibrant than ever after all this.   And I'm really impressed how strong my body has held out.  I'm sure swimming, hikes, Gunner dog, yoga, good friends and food has been instrumental. 

Now I arrive at knowing I had better take things slow, reduce stress to prevent a healing crisis.  So I'm going slower, I am. It's scary though because I have always had to hustle to make a living as an artist, and I still do.  I blew it not having disability insurance so please if you are self-employed, GET IT!  I had more than a trifecta of events that threw me into survival mode.  I lost nearly all of my wholesale accounts from Covid that I grew over the last 25 years.  My sustainable income is in selling at art shows face to face with my customer.  Three times now I find myself forced to cancel juried shows and trust that money will come in.  I thought that I could shift my career (I have been in the process since 2018) as Heartizens.org creative director.  And I pushed to make this all happen with teen open mics, Sparkle Time, camps, art pop ups, and I'm exhausted.  Currently I am letting go of so many dreams and I'm starting to feel lighter and more hopeful, however it has been layers and layers of grief and learning grace for self judgement. Years of passionate work dedicated to the kids and my community that I thought would build and grow for the community with one last hard go beginning of this year... and it's not lifting.  So I take inventory and I put my life first.... for the first time.  Cancer you win.  I surrender to your message of slowing down and putting my oxygen mask on first.  I thought that dedicating myself to something bigger than me was the winning ticket and I was wrong, it's in taking care of myself where I will get all of me back. 

I fought the cancer hard believing I had succeeded at keeping it in remission and now after it's second recurrence I am diligently aware of the risks of it returning (more than 90%).  And my tumor blood count, CA125, is hanging out at 28/29 for the last month, and I need for it to lower.  I know it can be a 10 where I am clean.  It's not 100% reliable or ever 50%, everyone is different, for how the CA125 number can be saying... so I am so being tested in my head... to keep these fears, doubts, opinions, arguments that keep me spinning.  Mindfulness, when I fall out of it I get scared and lose all my confidence. Now tired and not getting confirmation that the chemo is working, it's really been a mind fuck (sorry it really is the right placement of this word), this game with cancer.  My personal internal wildfire.  Just 4 years ago I was building my nonprofit, the programing and support growing, feeling great (really at my best ever-gratefully a good place to start this journey), and making such amazing connections to launch my best life forward.... then the real distractions of Trump, the fires, Covid and road block cancer... for an aweful 3rd time.  I'm so over it.  I want to live.  I want to create.  I want to live my best life.  I can't work so hard, give and try so much,  I'm completely wasted at the end of the day trying to keep up.... the absurd amount of money I have to come up with just to survive here in California Wine Country, and I do have the cheapest rents.  But I keep canceling art shows, my main source of income.  I gave it a good hard shot at reviving my wholesale with a couple more tradeshows and a rep group that failed sadly.  I'm figuring it out though and I'm excited for a simple plan coming together.  Wine and Chime Events are picking up at the studio that brings me all the things I love about my art and community.  I need to take a break.  I'm exhausted.  My art show in Tempe AZ was amazing and was so loved up and supported but the financial flow was down for nearly all of us, so I have just enough to pay my bills and keep rolling.  I want and need some time to rest, like really rest and heal, nurture, write, nap, nest, and recover.  Wow this was a rant....  I'm just tired.  Tired of the allergic reactions, mouth sores, the steroids, the toxicity, the death, the struggle.  I'm finally at surrender and gratefully not collapse.   I just want you to understand me a little bit more.  It's a lot balancing this all. And there is so much more and I stop my woest-me.  I am not a victim here, and I do need support.  This is all way bigger than just me.   And I want to live a vibrant successful beautiful life and giving and nurturing. 

How you can support me:

Refer a store to my wholesale at www.jendala.com/wholesale

Make a chime at www.jendala.com or www.etsy.com/shop/jendala

Schedule a Wine and Chime or Celebration at my studio, https://jendala.com/EventSpace

Hire Shine to come to your event inspiring the creative process and making chimes, jen@jendala.com. 

And stay-tuned for a fun Shine-A-Thon Fundraiser to help me recover and get on my feet.