April 25, 2016 - It is ok to visit


I really don’t sit around thinking about mastectomy all day. I really don’t though it may seem like it from some of these posts.  It’s been 3.5 years since my original mastectomy. Come on Sally, you say, move on! But six surgeries later, writing a blog, and then being surrounded by awesomeness in people and things, and also having friends going through a similar road, well, it sort of just comes up. Or other times, like now. I come across something and it puts me back into the moment.

“It’s ok to have a meltdown, just don’t unpack and live there.”  TobyMac

Hum. I mean ok, Toby, you sort of just opened up my mind here for a moment. You are actually saying it is OK to have a meltdown. You are giving us permission to be impacted and to feel.  Are you saying I don’t have to hold it all together and plant the smile on my face? Are you saying I don’t have to be “perfect Sally” and be the poster child for enduring chaos? You are….well you are going against a lot of what this societal life has taught me. And guess what? I love you for it!

When is the last time you allowed yourself to grieve? And when is the last time you let someone else know you were grieving? I don’t mean pass-me-a–tissue so I can dab the corner of my eye, but rather a get-out-of-the-way because Blubbering-Snotting-Sobbing-Sally needs not a moment, but rather a few hours, kind of grieve?.  Or when was the last time you were so angry that it propelled you forward into positive motion? Too often our angry drags us down into a place of negative outcomes. But when have you allowed yourself a therapeutic angry moment that produces forward motion for change? For can there not be healing that comes out of a few moments spent in Meltdown? We live in a society where we are constantly being measured against….well against absolutely everything. We are praised for holding our heads up high and conquering life. We have facebook pages celebrating our perfection and our ability to make life not only “easy”, but the envy of the faces looking in. We publish and post our story book days of our awesomeness all captured in one photo with all 2.5 kids (or cats!) smiling joyously under the perfectly aligned sunbeam, a husband refreshed from his most recent golf game, and ourselves plucked straight from the makeup table and designer closet  and now huddled together after family devotion earlier that morning posing in our “perfection”.  Don’t get me wrong, these things are great and surely those moments really do exists at times, and oh what a joy it is when that all comes together. But I would guess the majority of life is a little more down-to-earth trying to get little Charlie to sit still for just 3 seconds,  hoping husband Paul is relaxed enough to even want to be around us, all while trying to convince myself simply to get out of bed after an exhausted work week while juggling life at home. We inhabit a world expecting perfection and we subscribe to the theory that as long as you keep a smile on your face and positive thinking intact while presenting an “I can do it, and I can do it well!” mentality, well then you excel.

I have two childhood friends, who happen to be sisters, who unknowingly help keep my gut in check. Both excel at allowing their life online to be what it really is. A whole lot of joy and a whole lot of frustration all mixed into a 24 hour day. They have no qualms about positing a picture of disheveled hair, faces covered in flour as they try to squeeze in baking a cake needed for a school function  all while realizing they forgot Little Scotty an hour ago in the carpool line. They each give themselves permission to be real in a world of very real moments where we are expected to be everything someone else told us to be. Well, you know what? Real is something I really crave. And real is something that makes me love them more for being genuine. It’s also something that gives me permission to be disheveled Sally putting one foot in front of another.

So as I came across these words above tonight in my reading, I felt empowered to be real. I do this well in a lot of ways, but I’m also guilty of making sure I am setting the example of “get through life before life gets to you” mentality. I think back to days during mastectomy where it was really hard. I mean REALLY hard. And I wonder why I kept so many of those hidden. I wonder if there was this underlying expectation of myself to be “good at mastectomy”, “good at life”, “perfect without teetering”. Sure, I was transparent, maybe even more so than most, particularly as I did it on social media. But I painted only some of the story, a carefully selected some, not only to your eyes here but also to my inner circle of friends who walked beside me. By painting a half-baked perspective of my story, I also cultivated in you a half-baked expectation of what mastectomy could bring.  There are so many stories I have not told, some of which might have done some good by showing someone else it’s ok to grieve. It’s ok to not be ok. It’s ok to not have it all together.  It’s ok to hold your head high on the days you can, and hold your head down on the days you can’t. Even in turmoil, we feel the need to “live up to” everyone else no matter what life throws our way. Well, I for one am tired of living a life of comparisons. I want to live in an environment where it is ok to simply be where you are. The good, the bad, the meltdown. For this is where God can truly shine. There is where He equips you and others to bring yourself back up.  

I’m not saying we need to cover the world and our social media pages or personal conversations  with our struggles, I’m saying we need to give ourselves permission to be ok or when needed, to not be ok. We need to be ok to post a picture of chaos and to open our “perfect lives” to the imperfect world it really is. We see courageous battles played out at every turn celebrating heads held high, but we rarely see the real candid heart-retching moments we hide underneath.  We need to learn to embrace and celebrating enduring ( and then triumphing) over the hard moments. We must find people in our life who can go through the trenches with us, work to remove the stigma of imperfection, and create an environment to be exactly what we are, where we are, and how we are when going through this life. Give yourself and those in your inner circle permission to have the meltdown, and then let the inner circle of friends do what God created them to do… help pick us back up. It’s time to get real! It’s time to not be perfect. It’s time to be whatever you need to be while navigating your journey. Just remember, you don’t have to unpack and live there, but know it is ok to visit there while you heal.





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