Let things fall apart.

Writing has been a lifeline for me through many things. It has given me an outlet to process and vent, so to speak, but also to feel validated and understood. It has been a way of connecting through fear and isolation, and also a way to share life’s most precious moments so that they don’t feel…wasted.

Like they wouldn’t matter if they were just for me.

I’ve recognized a deeper truth since stepping back from my blog and constantly sharing my assessments of life – I have a deep seated, universal human fear of being alone.

Sometimes I write for this reason – if I can ensure that someone understands my experience, sees me, then I’m not isolated in this life. Someone gets me, so I’m here. I’m seen. I’m real. I matter.

And yet, life continues to hand me opportunities to refine my perspective.

Yesterday we had “the call” I have been both preparing for and dreading. Scan results. I knew what I could be in for, but it is still impossible to prepare for things like this. Violet’s cancer has spread, a lot, and we now have to take action. It is action I have been wanting so desperately to avoid, and it carries meaning I have so incessantly tried to mold into anything and everything but this.

We are now making plans for treatment. It will likely begin soon – next week – and will mean an entirely different ending to a summer then any of us wanted. We will be doing the impossible dance of coordinating logistics, managing emotions amid priorities and performances, keeping the chaos in between the lines.

For me, this time, I am both armed with an intricate toolkit of strategies to keep myself and my family afloat, and also aware of one hard truth that has never been more significant: at the end of the day, we are alone in this life – no one is coming to save us, and no one will ever really understand our experience.

But, if anything, I am finally finding some peace with this. In this, there is strength. There is stability, because it puts everything ultimately in our hands.

Not outcomes, of course. Not conditions. Because those are not ours to hold ultimate responsibility for. And this is serving me right now, this knowing.

For the past few months, I have tried to hold everything all together with good intentions and positive thinking and creativity. If I could just make this change and do that better, maybe I can save her. Maybe I can save us all from going back into the trenches. If I can just be better, everything will be better.

I have carried this weight through my life like a blue whale on my shoulders. And recently, the weight of that responsibility has almost done me in.

We were trying different things, focusing on health and trying to iron out all of the “kinks” in our life, believing that if we just tweaked it enough, miracles would happen. Faith can move mountains. Healing comes from the intentions of the heart.

But what I now get more than ever before is that surrender, in the end, is where the power lies. Faith isn’t pushing hard and trying to make something stick, it’s letting things be and trusting that things are in good “hands”. It’s letting everything fall apart knowing that sometimes it has to. You can’t rebuild something that is still clinging tight to its old, stubborn scaffolding.

I could be considered one of those people that leans toward toxic positivity at times. I fear hard, ugly, painful things in life, and reworking ideas constantly in my mind to reframe and redefine them so I can avoid the darkness is a strategy I occasionally use to a pathological point. And yet, it serves me well if I can balance it with honest intention and awareness. I understand life’s ultimate paradox – you can’t have light without the darkness. No awareness of it would exist, or even definition. They arise together in equal form – yin and yang, this and that.

And also, the harder you thrash against the current of things, the more you stay stuck and the larger the problem becomes. Letting go of the oars is the only real way to get down the river and end up where you want to go.

I’ve remembered and forgotten this so many times. But that, I suppose, is what life is, in the end. A remembering and a forgetting.

I’m so scared, and this time, I’m willing to say it out loud. I’m willing to look the darkness right in the eye and let it be what it is. I’m willing to face this, and I know, despite the unbelievable love and support I have behind me and have all the way through, I must do much of this alone. It is a mother’s journey that can’t be quantified or defined in any relatable way to anything else, I think. Way too many complexities, nuances, layers of meaning and significance. Too many moving parts to explain or identify.

I don’t want to be alone, and I know that in so many ways, I’m not. Love connects us all, and I have always been so incredibly fortunate in my life for those connections I have. But there is a quiet inner strength, a wisdom and a knowing that only I have access to and that I need to rely on. The ultimate “self-empowerment” is in trusting that and trusting that it’s enough.

There’s a balance, I know, in everything. And I am learning day by day to embrace that balance and the contradictions of life. But more than anything, right now I am learning to let things fall apart. Let them be exactly as they are and not carry the weight of needing them to change or feeling responsible for the way they do. I am remembering where my actual sphere of control is, and it’s not outward. It’s within.

I am grateful to every single person that will read this and care, that will feel that resonance of love and connection and will want the best outcomes for us and Violet. I will, and always will be, acutely aware of how lucky we are. And also, I am sad and angry and afraid. And its ok, because that’s life, and without that dark side of it, there is no light to embrace, either.