Samhain and Preparing for Winter - April 2021

 "Winter is coming"

    ~Stark et al.

Welcome

Kia ora whānau. I planned the episode themes months ago, before I knew what my life would look like in 2021. April's theme is fitting, as the month had a sense of foreboding and oncoming chill - the seasonal shift towards winter and my internal shift towards anger and anxiety.

Early April brought a phone call from my oncologist to say that the Oncotype testing had come back with a high-risk score, requiring the full 6 months of chemo. This was not the news I wanted, and to be frank, I was extremely pissed off.

Whereas March had a lightness and playfulness, April felt like I was being dragged headlong into a dark tunnel. I was still doing all the same activities as in March, but now they felt rather hollow and joyless.

Craft

The chemo news brought with it a desire to make hats. Many hats. I finally received my delivery of yarn and pom poms from B Knits and set about making Lotus Flower Beanies. It's glorious yarn made by Malabrigo and makes for a soft, squishy, quick knit. Each kit of two skeins and two pom-poms makes two hats, with the reversed colour pattern; but for my second colourway kit I'm opting to make one slouchy hat rather than two beanies as I'll get more wear out of it.

Lotus Flower Beanies

I also made a hat without a pattern, which I'm really proud of, and might write it up and post on Ravelry later. I've got a load of yarn that needs using up so will work my way through my stash and my saved patterns over the winter. I found it very hard to concentrate in the first week of chemo so might have to stick to easy patterns, but it'll be great to clear my stash and make way for a new jumper project.

"Gravel Road" hat

The new cabin is a wonderful space for office work and sewing. I was home alone over Easter and got 5 projects cut out and ready to go. It's been so good to have pre-cut projects that I can pick up and put down as desired - AND - the cabin has metal walls so I've made the most of that with magnetic hooks to hang everything up on!

A room of one's own

Being able to walk away from a project for a few hours or a day without having to pack everything up has made sewing more of a possibility for me, which I appreciate. I've not made massive progress, as I was focussing on paid work and chemo prep during the month, but I've finished a few little projects and am halfway through a skirt. Chemo-brain has meant I'm struggling to understand instructions and think in 3d, but hopefully that's more of a week-one type thing and I'll be able to do more than just hand-fell seams in weeks 2 and 3.

Once again jewellery has been ignored, but that's ok, I'll pick it up again another time. Chemo has affected my vision - I'm normally far-sighted but currently am struggling with distance vision. I usually wear glasses for close-up work, which I still need, but it's not as blurry close-up as usual. Very weird. Regardless, I don't have the vision or wherewith-all for jewellery at the moment.

Season

Winter is coming, and I intend to be ready. We've done pretty well, the wood is as stored as it can be, the gutters are cleared, and the 8 billion leaves currently on the lawn will eventually make their way to the garden beds as mulch. We purchased a new heater and it's a bit of a beast, and is doing a far better job than the fairly ancient and tiny one we had struggling away in the corner. It's been too warm for a fire yet, but I'm looking forward to our first one.

Boots (on the left) and Socks having a think about their options

A lovely wee highlight of the month was the release of Boots McDuck into a sanctuary with his (Boots, as it turns out, is a boy duck) mate Socks McDuck / Mrs Boots. Dear wee Boots is a sensitive soul and took a full 45 minutes to jump into the water, then another 15 minutes to reunite with his spouse - but eventually the deed was done and he even had two (adorably wobbly) attempts at flying. I wanted him to run to me and jump on my lap so I could abscond with him, but in the end the best thing happened and he's a free duck with ducky company. Go well, darling boy.

FINALLY in the water and reunited

The weather has been glorious, which made everything feel a bit better, but honestly the two weeks leading up to my first infusion were incredibly stressful. The neighbours between us and the road have decided to subdivide and plan to put NINE houses next to us, and chose not to speak to us about it beforehand, leaving me to find out only when massive heavy machinery rocked up and started ripping out all the trees. I felt this estruction as actual physical pain in my chest and it made an difficult time so much worse.

We have planted a few more trees along our boundary and I've been launching seeds over the fence in a small act of rebellion and an attempt at some diversity now the land has gone from habitat for birds and bugs to a flat wasteland. I know there is a housing shortage and I'm trying not to get too NIMBY about it all but to not speak to neighbours first is such a disappointing act of assholery. But after some effort I've been able to move on and turn my attention away from the devastation, and hopefully friends will buy the houses and we can finally get started on our "commune"!

Go forth and multiply!

Late April saw me mark Samhain with time spent thinking about my ancestors - ones I knew and ones I never met - which always trips me out that there's a line of people stretching all the way back to before we were people. That by a series of good decisions and dumb luck my predecessors were able to avoid predators, avoid battle-wounds, and avoid disease long enough to whelp the next generation. And on and on and on all the way from "Mitochondrial Eve" to little ole me. Absolute mind-fuck. Unfortunately my line dies with me, but happily I have cousins who are doing the hard yards raising the next batch!

Health

I had foolishly gotten it into my head that the Oncotype testing was going to give me a free pass to avoid chemotherapy, but obviously I was wrong about that. Bugger. As often happens with cancer, I had spent a few tortuous weeks waiting for results and then everything moved extremely fast.

I booked an appointment to get a pixie cut, which was almost instantly bumped in favour of a heart scan. I've never been in one of the big scanners so it was a bit of a treat for me, as I enjoy nerding out over this stuff. This was a pretty chill machine, none of the loud banging of other scanners, and I was only in it for 15-20 mins or so. Also, it was called CAMMY SPARKLES! The scan was done to make sure my heart is strong enough for chemotherapy, which, happily, it is.

My biggest struggle in April was with mental health, and looking back I'm amazed I didn't have a total melt-down. I have wonderful support, of course, plus a really excellent counsellor and I'm so grateful for all of it. It always surprises me how big things are often ok and it's things I don't expect to struggle with that really get to me. I became INTENSELY irritated by people telling me how nice my short hair looked, which is a strange thing to get angry about. I read somewhere that we sometimes choose anger over fear as anger is easier to control, and that resonated with me in the aftermath of Angry April. It's easier to get impotently mad at people being nice to me than to think through all the what-ifs of cancer and chemo. It's not great for the innocent bystanders, of course, but hopefully I haven't burned any bridges this month.

The anxiety of the unknowns of chemotherapy was crushing for me and my partner. I've alluded to my love of planning and spreadsheets here before, and it can be really hard for me to not know what to expect. Surgery is tough but its recovery is relatively predictable. Chemo has a set of known and common side-effects but nobody knows how an individual will respond. I think the fact this is a six-MONTH treatment made it harder too - it feels like much more of a grind than a six-week surgery recovery. Was I going to be really unwell? Will it hurt? Will my partner be able to work or will I need lots of care? Will I be able to work? We have good support, but six months is a long time - will it just be us dragging ourselves along by our fingernails in a few months time? Will we be ok for money? Will this damage my heart or other bits? When will building start next door? Is it all going to be too much for my partner? for me? On and on and round and round it went.

My saving grace was probably my running, as that's the fastest way for me to turn off the hamster wheel whirring endlessly in my brain. I finished the C25K the morning of my first infusion, which was a great achievement, but it was the regular runs through April that brought me back to a level where I could work through my fears and put strategies in place to deal with it all. Not that I managed that 100% - my oncologist took one look at me and gave me an anti-anxiety pill! My face is an open book and the stress was obviously etched on there plainly for all to see.

I'm pleased to report that the first week of chemotherapy, while not great, was ok and now we have an idea of how I respond, what I need, and how my partner can balance my needs with the needs of his job. It looks like weeks 2 and 3 of the cycle will be much easier, and I'll be able to work a little bit too. I made a conscious effort to stop thinking about the building work next door (as nothing will happen for many months) and I've built a strong meditation practice. Having the caravan as a place to meditate has been a godsend - meditating in a one-room cottage isn't great for either the meditator or the other cottage-dweller! But here's me jumping ahead to May, when this is supposed to be all about April.

The first infusion was in late April, and rounded off a month of stress and anxiety. With a bit of distance I can see how valuable it was for me to own my anger and grumpiness; I expended very little effort on trying to hide those emotions. This probably made me difficult to be around but it was important for me to do. I've spent my whole adult life masking my anger and frantically people-pleasing and I'm pretty over it all now. I far prefer feeling joyful of course, but I'm not shying away from the "shadow" emotions any longer, as that is where my strength and power originates. Hiding them saps my energy and doesn't give the people around me the opportunity to really know who I truly am and what I truly care about.

And, finally...

It can be hard to support someone who isn't at all happy with their lot, and I was making things doubly difficult by not wanting to be "cheered up", but also needing those around me to not fall into the hole with me. That is extremely difficult to navigate and I tip my hat to all of you who are currently in that position. Particularly "my" people. Thank you, thank you, I'm sorry, thank you.

As we head into winter here in the southern hemisphere I find myself looking forward to wet days and fireside afternoons. Autumn is my favourite season but winter has so many joys. I wish we had snow here, but I'll have to make do with sideways rain!

References

Samhain

Also known as Halloween, this is the time of the last harvest and preparation for winter. In the northern hemisphere it is celebrated in late October, which is their autumn-time - and we also celebrate Halloween here in October, but obviously the seasons are wrong and pumpkins and autumn leaves are visible here in April - June.

It is a time to think about our friends and family who are no longer with us, and to think about the fruits of our labours throughout the year - what worked, what didn't, and what can we do differently next season?

Mitochondrial Eve

The mitochondria are the parts of cells that create energy, and their genetic material comes from the mother only - so there is a clear line back to "Mitochondrial Eve" as the biological mother of all humans. Mitochondrial Eve is thought to have lived in Africa over 2.5 million years ago, and is a real example of how us humans are essentially all related.

Shadow work

The inquiry, understanding, and acceptance of our full range of human emotions, not just the pleasant ones. Rather than engaging in "toxic positivity", exploring the very real and very human experiences of anger, shame, jealousy etc. in order to live and act with integrity.