Lately

the wildfires of 2024

Like a jolt, the urge to write hit me today.

I had a sudden and not ignorable need to write about the four months of 2024 wildfires that show no sign of dying down. It’s all been so ablaze that I have no full grasp on the chronology of the winter that stubbornly never gave way to spring. And now, summer is rearing its head and I am not ready, like someone tore pages from my calendar when I wasn’t looking. So here we go, unravelling through writing always pays. I think.

From January 4th, to April 4th, I rode the unpredictable force of grief from the loss of my Dad, demolished the downstairs of my house, fled to Majorca, returned readily to work and waited for the grip to soften. I felt it happen, the loosening. Days where I noticed the sun shone, days where I didn’t feel like crying, space between the waves to breathe in.

If you follow me on Instagram you will know the next plot twist. I wouldn’t have chosen it for myself as a character. I’d have thought it too unlikely, asking too much of the reader to believe. But, a breast cancer diagnosis is where the story went next, in spite of editor protests. What I expected to be a routine follow up appointment caught me off guard and oh, I have been there before in different contexts. Consultation room heavy blows.

This is now cancer, not infertility. Not IVF that didn’t work. Not pregnancies that didn’t stick around. Not desperately life threatening pregnancy complications. Not the diagnosis of someone I love - but a diagnosis of mine. And the actual plot twist is.. that I am weirdly OK with it. It’s caught early. It is now, we hope, removed from me. I am healing. I am in a two week wait to see if we got it all, if it has gone a wandering through lymphs and - I know how to play this game.

My cancer was estimated to be four months old. I can’t get my head around that yet.

I wondered today (as I sat on a park bench and cherry blossom fell into my lap) if my easeful acceptance of this latest happening is testament to ‘doing the work’. I haven’t felt especially anxious. The waiting hasn’t been that unbearable. I danced into my surgery room with my nurse and felt amazed to see my Dad as they injected the anaesthesia. People are asking me if I’m really alright. And I am. I am alive. I spent years learning about anxiety to support others. I understand her. I feel intensely proud of that.

I don’t really want to write about cancer. I don’t identify with it at all. I have no family history of breast cancer, I am the fittest I have ever been in my life. It also isn’t choosy. And I refuse to be ashamed of it. But I am the infertility poster girl, I don’t consent to being on another poster.

So here is the direction of travel. I will take the medicine, mend up and carry on doing what I do - supporting people who are trying to conceive. The crossovers are fascinating really. It’s the same gig in a different country.

In the field of my work and writing, this is the plan.

Whilst I am not going to be working 1:1 for much of the summer, I do want to be present when I can, writing what I can and doing what feels possible (and exciting). First up as summer does descend, I will be releasing The Balm - my four week course on tending to anxiety through somatic movement and understanding. I loved that course so much and want it to leave here in a new home to nourish and soothe you; an anxiety antidote if you will. I have time now to step fully into Substack and that feels like a balm in itself.

I still intend to hold my June exhibition of the Fertility Writers Society and this will be the first live thing I do, when the time is right.

I will still be running on behalf of the trying to conceive community in my Green Heart runs.

I will still be.

H