Category Archives: Spirituality

More Than Transactional

Posted in Personal Growth, Spirituality by
Photo is of a small stone chapel surrounded by trees mostly without leaves and one tree with yellow leaves. It is autumn. There are orange leaves covering the ground.
Photo by L. Laguna

This is the second anniversary of my mastectomy. I wrote about the day of that surgery on my anniversary last year in the post aptly titled My Anniversary. My life’s journey has had no shortage of excitement for better or for worse. I wrote about this in Funding for Myself, Mixed Messages, and Neighbors. I also have spoken about this in my Unfiltered Snapshot podcast episodes Tsundoku, Dancing on My Own, and Bubble Girl. On this second anniversary of my mastectomy, I am acknowledging my desire to move forward with a life that is more than transactional.

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Living Like a Bubble Girl

Posted in Global Issues, Health and Wellness, Personal Growth, Social Connection and Relationships, Spirituality by
Photo is of blue abstract spheres.
Photo from Flickr

Yesterday I recorded the podcast episode Bubble Girl. That is because living in this pandemic has me feeling like a bubble girl. I am not surprised by this; I am simply processing what it means to live in this stage of the pandemic.

We are past the creation of vaccines and boosters. A month ago, medical experts started sharing Why you should upgrade your mask as the Omicron variant spreads. According to the AP News headline, the White House soft-launches COVID-19 test request website.

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Neighbors

Posted in Global Issues, Health and Wellness, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Social Connection and Relationships, Spirituality by
Photo is of a beach with a blue and cloudy sky with the sun and peach tones in the background.
Photo by L. Laguna

I am no stranger to talking about love. Throughout the years, I have written about it in I Fall in Love, When Love Is Not Enough for Justice, Let People Love You: Community Care Knows No Boundaries, My Anniversary, and more. As you can tell from my posts, I discuss love in a number of contexts.

However, I live in a society where people tend to talk about love through very limited and specific contexts. If I say love, people often think about romance and passion first. If it is not the love of a partner or spouse, they think about love within a family context like the relationship between a parent and child, between siblings, or between a person and any number of people in their extended family.

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My Anniversary

Posted in Global Issues, Health and Wellness, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Social Connection and Relationships, Spirituality by
Photo is of purple flowers.
Photo from Flickr

The following text is a post I shared with friends. Originally, it included a photo of me at the hospital, waiting for my mastectomy. In the photo, I was lying in a bed reclined back at about a 45 degree angle. My body was snugly tucked under white sheets, and my head was propped on a matching pillow. A light blue bouffant cap contained my thick, long dark brown-black hair. I wrote it this morning to reflect on the anniversary of my mastectomy. It goes like this:

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Letter to the Future: Inauguration Week

Posted in Global Issues, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Spirituality by
Photo is of an American flag hanging in front of a house.
Photo from Flickr

Today is MLK Day. It is two days before Inauguration Day. CBS News is reporting that there are Small protests held at heavily guarded state Capitols as Inauguration Week begins.

The day after the inauguration, I am scheduled to present at a conference.

There is no shortage of excitement this week.

I am writing this post on MLK Day, but I purposely am scheduling to publish it a couple days after Inauguration Day. I want to see if the concerns I have today come to fruition this week.

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What Is Your Guiding Light?

Posted in Global Issues, Health and Wellness, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Spirituality by
Photo from Flickr

On and off since my breast cancer diagnosis, I have not been sleeping well. When I went on leave to focus on my recovery from surgery, I had more time to focus on making sleep and other basic self-care habits a priority.

After my leave ended, I started radiation and returned to work within a day of each other. Again I had to learn new sleeping patterns as my daily schedule had drastically changed within only a couple days.

Then my radiation ended, and I had to readjust my daily work schedule and relearn new sleeping patterns. It is as if my body does not know how much to rest because it does not know what to expect.

My body sure was jolted by recent stories of Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and most recently Rayshard Brooks.

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Lunch with Lindsay: Supporting Black Lives Matter and Practicing Self-Care

Posted in Global Issues, Health and Wellness, Lunch with Lindsay, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Social Connection and Relationships, Spirituality by

Is it just me, or did last week feel pretty long?

Actually, if you are like many people in my social circles who have been heavily engaged in the active work of racial justice, the last few decades have felt extremely long.

I both am encouraged to see more people fighting for racial justice—especially Black lives—in ways I have not seen in my lifetime, and I also am frustrated that this journey to progress is both so long and mentally and emotionally taxing for those involved. This is why when I saw the NPR Code Switch piece titled A Decade of Watching Black People Die, I thought to myself, “A decade? JUST a decade?” I decided not to listen to it.

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Lunch with Lindsay: Talking Protests, Race, LGBTQ Issues, Cancer, Mental Health, Spirituality, and More

Posted in Global Issues, Health and Wellness, Lunch with Lindsay, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Social Connection and Relationships, Spirituality by

We did it again. My friend Becky and I created another Lunch with Lindsay video yesterday since our Monday lunch got interrupted with the installation of my AC by the maintenance man.

I specifically wanted to have a talk in which I compared my thoughts and experiences with cancer to those with racism. While that was a part of the dialogue, you will find out in the video that a text I received right before we were about to record our video ended up shifting my attention to other aspects of current protests against racial injustice. (If you want to learn more about what I originally wanted to discuss, read If Racism Were a Cancer.)

In our very organic and unscripted conversation, we grappled with protests, race, LGBTQ issues, cancer, mental health, spirituality, military, and more. If you watch the whole video above, you can observe how my friend and I truly give our unedited perspectives.

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Lunch with Lindsay: Processing Racial Injustice in the US During a Pandemic

Posted in Global Issues, Health and Wellness, Lunch with Lindsay, Personal Growth, Professional Development, Social Connection and Relationships, Spirituality by

If you’re like me, you have been enduring a wide range of thoughts and emotions for the past week.

George Floyd.

Breonna Taylor.

Tony McDade.

Ahmaud Arbery.

The incident with Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper.

I don’t even need to write in full sentences. Many of you know most, if not all, of the names I listed.

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How Close Does Pain Need to Be to Impact Your Spirituality?

Posted in Global Issues, Health and Wellness, Personal Growth, Social Connection and Relationships, Spirituality by

Last week I had a couple conversations with friends who were contemplating the impact that the pandemic was having on their spirituality.

Photo from Flickr

That’s not surprising. Whether someone is enduring a personal or global crisis, it’s not unheard of to have spiritual questions in the process. I should know. I’ve been through a wide array of thoughts, emotions, and questions since I started Saying Goodbye to My Body (As I Know It) with my breast cancer diagnosis. Over the past few months, I’ve replayed the chain of events that led to my diagnosis. Upon receiving antiquated and unhealthy advice that society gives breast cancer patients and survivors, I’ve managed hurt and anger while seeking both community care and self-care. As I’ve confronted the largest medical bills of my life, I’ve rethought the way gift giving and generosity are perceived in society. All of this mental processing is just what I call January.

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