Especially Heather

Heather, like WhyMommy, has cancer. Heather is blogging about it, too.

Fear not, ye who are cynical readers. The Garden is not going to be spotlighting only blogs maintained by folks with cancer.

However, after stumbling upon Heather’s blog, we felt it definitely deserved to be in the spotlight even though it follows our focus on WhyMommy’s battle.

Heather explains that she was diagnosed in April 2007 with a brain tumor: Anaplastic Oligoastrocytoma (mixed tumor. Surgeons removed 99.9% of the growth and she is presently undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. Two surgeons told her that the tumor was inoperable. But in testament yet again to the power of the Internet and the communities established in cyberspace, her readers raised more than $14,000 so that she could travel to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota where a top neurosurgeon not only provided a different response, but operated immediately.

What led us to write about Heather is the fact that she is upbeat, hopeful and enthusiastic about life in the face of all that she has endured thus far. And she has endured a lot.

You see, Heather’s daughter, Emma Grace, is a five-year-old who is not only autistic, but was born with congestive heart failure. At the age of five months, little Emma Grace underwent a heart transplant.

So Heather has a lot to live for.

In addition to Emma Grace, she also has two older children, Easton and Elijah.

Heather is doing what many of us imagine we would do were we to be diagnosed with a potentially terminal illness. Taking stock of her life. It is posts like this recent (August 29) entry, Cancer and Forgiveness, that really jumped out at us as we perused her site:

Now, I take a look back at my past and wonder. I wonder if I had known then that I had cancer, would I do anything different. Was I the friend that I should have been, the wife, the mother, the daughter? When people looked at my life, did they think good things, or bad. Did I bring a smile to their face or a scowl to their hearts.

I would love to tell you that the answer was super positive, and that I hadn’t hurt anyone in my life. But that would be false. I am human, after all. I have done my fair share of hurting people, and I feel horrible when thinking about the people whose lives I have touched in a negative way.

Then I started thinking about people who I have been hurt by. Ouch. That one stings a bit more. Cancer has changed my view of myself. I no longer look at myself as “entitled”. I am owed nothing. This life is what God destined it to be for me, and nothing more. When I think of people in my past who have hurt me or who I feel have done me wrong, I smile. I know they didn’t mean to, and even if they did, it isn’t worth hanging onto anymore. I can make a conscience choice to live in the past and be angry and bitter, or I can choose the road less traveled and look towards whatever the future holds for me, forgiveness and all.

When Heather first started blogging (entries date back to June 2006), she wrote about all the things mothers typically blog about: Dealing with her kids, trying to mother them to the best of her ability, sneaking away for a bubble bath and a good read, her new hairdo, attempting to be a good friend and wife, her desire to make sense of her life . . . and, of course, the trial that no family should have to endure: The devastating illness of a child. She always wrote about her youngest daughter with unconditional, undying love and devotion, sharing her frustrations and anger along the way, too, in an open and honest way.

But with all that she has been through, her writing has evolved. She shares with her readers what she has learned from the “CanSer Schmancer” she has stared down and defeated, if not physically (yet), then surely psychologically:

It isn’t about the cancer, it isn’t about what it has the ability to do to our bodies, it isn’t about the treatments or the part of us it takes away . . . it’s about the journey. It’s about rediscovering the parts of yourself that you never ever knew or dreamed existed, and giving them room to grow and room to take flight. It’s about seeing life through cancer’s eyes and being better because of it, being more whole and more alive despite it.

It’s about living.

Sure there are going to be days that we feel like a Mac truck just bulldozed over us. There are going to be days when you look in the mirror and think “Who is that person, and what did she do with my hair?” But there are going to be days that we are fully alive and energized too, it’s part of the journey. It’s part of life. But it’s not the only part.

It’s not the defining part.

I am still a mother. I am still a wife. I am still a daughter. I am still a daughter of the King. I am still the same Heather that I was before I found out that I had cancer, just a ~~little more~~ a lot more mature and a heck of a lot less naive. I still have the same heart, the same dreams, the same desires. I am still me, cancer can’t take that away.

It only made me stronger.

We could keep quoting Heather, but instead, why don’t you stop by for a visit? We guarantee that you will come away feeling blessed and enriched by spending a few moments with her. Let her know that the Gardener sent you.