Cancer Wants Love Too: on being loved, pickleball and the power of singing to God

Today my heart writes in celebration of Dahlia and Charles, two of my dearests, who both go goo-goo over pickleball and have come face to face with cancer. 

One of them greeted cancer a few years ago and moved through it with chemotherapy. He’s glowing on the other side, as alive and well as ever. And tomorrow is his birthday. The other was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer and goes in for surgery tomorrow. 

Big day ahead. My pen brought me here because I wish for all humans to be loved the way I feel loved by these two. 

Cue the 1993 country song, I wanna be loved like that by Shenandoah. I wailed that thing a thousand times in my college dorm room. ​

My life is inexplicably enhanced by the love of Charles. I wish everyone on Earth felt enough self worth to have a coach like him. I have written about this many times. He knows I am endlessly grateful. 

Dahlia's been a close friend for almost half of my life, and two weeks ago she called to tell me she had thyroid cancer. Brave and humbled, she asked for my support since I am thriving on the other side of a massive brain tumor. There was no time between her ask and my “yes” — 

Showing up for people with life threatening illness is a huge passion for me. Why?

Because with what I’ve been through, the empathy in me is twelve oceans deep. And because cancer wants to be loved, not demonized. What we fight, persists. What we love, heals. Healing occurs when we greet our body’s impeccable communication with Love — not hatred. We can only express hate for others, including “dis-ease”, in moments when we don’t love ourselves. 

And I wholeheartedly love me. That’s the job I was given! If you are radically loved by many people, it is because you are radically loved by yourself. And the more you allow yourself to be loved, the greater your capacity is to love others. 

Showing up for Dahlia has been a head-shakingly gorgeous experience. She receives me. She respects me. She listens to me. She responds to the thoughts that resonate with her, with effusive thanks. 

That is Love. 

That is me being well used. 

That feels like Home -- a place where I want to invest my attention, breath and soul. 

Loving each other is medicine. Plus it’s a mighty delight to watch her eyeballs zoink back and forth as she Marco Polos me courtside three days before surgery, watching her boyfriend play pickleball. ​

Cancer? Brain tumors? Buddha laughs for a reason. When we are afraid, we are being invited to widen our wings of trust. God’s got you, Dahlia. Love’s got you. You will be held through the night, held in the hospital waiting room, held on that surgical table. 

Love is. 

It’s medicine. It’s who we are. It’s always available and it’s always free. 

What I didn’t know when I wailed Love songs as a college student, was that the deepest part of me was always singing Love songs to God. That lesson struck during superfierce times in 2021, when I sang to recover from brain surgery followed by 92 days of horrific sciatic nerve pain including a severe muscle spasm that resisted heavy opiates and lasted nine hours. 

The human experience. Joy and pain. By the way, who came up with a word as fantastic as pickleball?

Singing with the divine in mind is one of the greatest forms of medicine, too. Added bonus? It’s been scientifically shown to slow down the aging process by regenerating telomeres. If you’re greeting cancer or another form of severe dis-ease, I highly recommend it. 

Here are a few tracks to sing ‘medicinally’ to the divine, however you see and name it. You can also imagine it’s God singing Love songs to you. Bonus points for being human hotsauce and singing Love songs while you play pickleball. I just might start callin' you Hot Picklesauce.

Just the Way You Are, Billy Joel
Baby, Come to Me, Patti Austin and James Ingram
Longer, Dan Fogelberg