Four days from now I will begin chemotherapy for the second time.

It feels like I am stepping from land to water. I will either walk across it, swim through it or sink.

Maybe everything . . .

how do you write about something like this?

Love and kindness surround me and yet I have this odd knowing my life has found it’s way to somewhere I cannot define and I want to wake up from this dream and find myself to be me again.

But I am me, and now I am me deeper inside me . . .

I have always lived inside my hopeful normal . . .

Somehow all of this strangeness is different. It might be self sorriness and self defeat or simply acceptance, but I am inside these feelings and watching from these edges of land and water where I find the most peace.

I am not comfortable with what is ahead. I guess this is quite expected, especially knowing somewhat how it works. Remembering just one step at a t i m e . . .

After my recent surgery I counted the days going upwards to my wellness, now I am counting downwards to what is about to begin.

I want to make a map of my body.

The drawing above is part of an upcoming show for the Women’s Center. I will post more about it when the announcement comes out.

It is part of a series I did called “When leaving mother” a very powerful time in my life.

And this is a little deer I have been working on. The deer walk behind my studio windows. We have tried to shoo them, startle them and even sing at them.

They ate an entire rhododendron last winter leaving only one wee bud to bloom at the very top. We pruned it into a tall shape in hopes that they would leave it alone. We realize they might rise onto their back legs to rip and nibble what is left.

So I decided to make these little characters and move them from being destructive intruders to being part of life here with us, even if it takes a rhodie and a needle and thread . . .

xo