We share a friend. Andrea and I met when we were 14. You live near her now, in the Tetons. She tells me you asked how my brain tumor got there. You and I have never physically met, just as I never met your sister whose brain tumor eventually led to her body's death. But my heart mourns your loss. I honor you as a woman and sister. So I'm here to answer your question. 

When my tumor was discovered through an MRI, the neurosurgeon assigned to my case told me, "It could have been growing for 10-20 years." 

I named her Fidela. Somehow, to me, she was my friend. As was Dr. Lewis Hou, whose Buddhist nature shone through his eyes and silently said, You can trust me to get that tumor out. 

So when he offered the options: 1) We can do nothing. 2) Neurosurgery. 3) Chemo. 4) Radiation... My response to him was, "Let's go in. Let's get it out." Though Fidela was my friend, she wasn't meant to stay inside my brain. 

"We don't know why it's there," said Dr. Hou. 

That was fine. I didn't need him or western medicine to know. I knew why Fidela came.

Right or wrong don't belong in this place. My story isn't "right" -- it's simply mine. In 2006 I did a workshop called It's All Made Up. Its lesson landed. We make up the story, the why, the reasons things happen in our lives. While science is useful, continuously, it disproves itself. Factual, material "realities" are consistently rewired, reworked, rewoven. Just like the human brain. 

Fidela was my body's latest and most effective attempt to get my attention. It was a piercing cry, a roar, a terrorized plead, a prayer from a body who knew she was worthy of being held by loving arms.  

I had a lifelong addiction to sugar and food. As a baby, my big feelings were met sometimes with EQ's tender, loving arms and gentle words. Other times, I was given sugar -- with no blame or judgment of my parents or others who would pass me "a treat" to soothe my cries -- I was given toxic and highly addictive pain killers called sugar. 

I knew this was causing problems, like being overweight most of my Life, but I didn't know that by the time I was in my mid-40s, I would start to greet paralysis. ​

From the instant she was conceived, my body was my best friend. Sure I had others -- human and divine -- but my body was unshakably devoted. Never, ever flinching in her masterful communication. We humans are given this -- being in a body can be awkward or awful sometimes, yet we are always given masterful communication from it. Complaining is senseless. 

Starting in 2015, my body tried five years of monthly Pain Level 10 migraines, to get my attention. I thought she was just asking for exercise, acupuncture and healthy eating. And maybe, if I had chosen to commit to that path of complete self-care, Fidela would have shrunk and disappeared. 

But I wasn't ready then. 

So after five years, the migraines stopped. They weren't working. My body knew she needed to get louder. So she starting to take away the things I loved most. 

I could no longer write legibly. I couldn't throw frisbee well. Highly skilled with both writing and frisbee, two of the great joys of my Life were now evaporating. I was in preschool again. 

So on February 16th, Dr. Hou led a team of eight through a 9-hour anesthetized surgery to remove Fidela from my brain. She was benign, and when my head was closed up with 52 titanium staples, she was smaller than a grain of rice. 

My tumor came to teach me a lesson I've been studying since birth: I am made of Love. 

Bodies that cough excessively might be trying to tell us to stop smoking cigarettes. Being obese might be a signal toward play, greater ease and lightness. When we've forgotten that we're made of Love, our bodies won't cease in their attempts to help us remember.

It's true for all of us, yet we forget. I believe that's why we came into these bodies. Yes, Life's amazing. Yes, bodies offer galactic joy and dancing makes my heart soar. Still, we are an expression of consciousness that believes we're separate from the divine, when actually the opposite is true. We ARE made of Love. We are here to remember. 

I've personally never resonated with "Fuck Cancer." To me, the body conveys Love so pristinely -- whether horrifically painful and scary or not -- that I can't use violent words to greet mine. Or anyone's. ​Fidela represented sheer devotion to my remembrance that I am Love. Whether my body died on February 16th in surgery, or stayed alive, I am meant to remember. 

It's now 9 months into this 2nd Life, as I call it. Near death has given me Second Life Eyes. 

I again feel like a toddler as far as your sister. I don't know what to say. No words will suffice. I am so, so sorry for the pain of your loss. I trust you remember her daily and somehow, some way, are finding a path of seeing and feeling her presence outside the physical form. Human mortality is so very sad. We're being shown that, asked to accept our mortality so we can live each day more fully, through the Covid/human immune system pandemic. And even though there is a Big Lesson here.. .it's still got a shit-ton of sadness in it. There's no escape from this truth. We live on a sad planet, as my Reiki Master said, so... guess what? 

You live and play in one of the most breathtaking places on Mother Earth's lap. You're a friend of Andrea, one of the most playful souls I've ever met. In the 32 years I have known her, she has never failed to embody respect for her physical temple -- through what she eats, how she moves and the laughter she treats like church. 

I write to you today, dear Char, like this letter is a hug. Not just for you, but for your sister, for Andrea, for her daughter Piia and my daughter Helena. This is a letter for Womanhood -- to keep rising into the bliss and splendor of being in a body. While we're here, heck, let's make the most of it. 

Love,
Jessica
​(Andrea calls me Dork Dong because... she can SEE, and she's hilarious!) 

My goal is to raise $1,975 through GofundMe by the end of the day today, November 16th. Today marks nine months from  brain surgery and near death, and my launch goal honors that I was born on International Women's Day (March 8th) in International Women's Year (1975). Funds will cover some of my time launching this project. 

Ready for chills all over your body? Here's a 2.5-minute film on why this matter, from Bioneers' Everywoman's Leadership.

​And what does it look like when women own our power?

Mothers hold... so much.

​I see it, I'm stunned by it, I try to grasp why mothers' work is so undervalued and... 

How the heck could it be so hard for us mamas to articulate the "all" of what we do, and hold? and...

I'm left speechless. 

But I'll find words soon. Because it's a really, really big important deal. 

Stay tuned. 

And if you're a devoted mama? I see you. I see all that you hold. You are doing the great work. Thank you. 

Recently in a greeting card mailed to me by a wise and long-time friend, she wrote that I “more singularly identify with being a mother” than any other mama friend she has. My initial inner response was, Oh great, am I weird in yet one more way in life? Does that mean she thinks I’m boring now? Have I gotten lost in the dance of mothering, and given up on my other passions?

Within moments, my little self-doubt voices dissipated. Her words then struck me as a powerful invoking of reflection about the last five years of my life.

Let me call myself out, to begin. Curiosity is powerful in relationships and I have not yet asked this dear friend what she meant by “singularly identified”. Letter writing is a slow exchange, more spacious than talking or texts, and my next letter to her will include a question seeking to understand what she expressed from her bold, loving heart.

According to standard definitions, I could interpret what she said as this: I am more remarkably, extraordinarily, and exceptionally identify as a mother than any other mama friend she has. Sounds like a big, kind compliment, right?

My friend’s bold way of showing me love in her letter left me with a feeling of pride about how I mother. Her words felt like a spotlight on a stage where I am dancing the awkward, passionate, indescribably rewarding dance of being a mama. So that is what I will respond to here, as I know many of you reading this have your own way of shining in your very own mothering stage.

On the surface being a mother is all about playgrounds, naps, tantrums, cuddling  and a giving-up of self.

Right beneath it, there appears a mountaintop presenting to a mother some of  the richest and most fertile personal expansion terrain available in life.

It has been said our children are our greatest teachers. To actually experience this in life can be fascinating, blissful and grueling at times. We can pay money for meditation retreats and gurus, yet our children offer astounding spiritual lessons for free on a daily basis. Children are the original gurus.

And I’m up for that. My religion is Love. In this life I want to shed all my layers of fear and bloom open to what Spirit, what Love, has to offer. Bring it on, little guru.
So it isn’t surprising that life hasn’t let me detract substantial attention from this opportunity in order to “make” other things happen, since my child was born. While I’ve tried to create a stable income flow, I’ve instead seen a path dotted with seemingly random creative output, unstable income and no clear sign of what’s to come. When we are trying to force something to happen, it is a pretty clear sign that it’s not meant to happen right now. It’s just not time.

In a way, motherhood has swallowed me whole. I have allowed it, though, feeling the briefness of this sacred encounter. Years fly. My guru won’t live with me forever.

My top priority is being the mother I am meant to be. It appears the priority is my child, but equally the priority is me giving her the all she deserves… Me welcoming the extraordinary and unmatched opportunity of being spiritually stretched and widened, that she presents to me. It is about me being the fullest version of myself that I can be, expanded by the presence of a being who I love as much as, dare I say, God. Or so it feels that way.

To the friend whose handwritten words led me to this helpful self-reflection, I extend my deep thanks. You see me from a perspective I value. However clumsy and grumpy I may sometimes be, I like who I am as a mother and as silly ol’, perfectly imperfect me.

My family had been in Sweden for more than 12 months and we were heading home to California in two weeks. Though I knew we’d back in my familiar native land soon, I still stood on Swedish soil 5,200 miles away. Winter’s long, dark days had not been easy.

Then the bus pulled up across the rural road. In the farmland quiet, I heard the front door open and began to watch feet step down onto the roadside gravel. Her black clogs emerged, and with them her gait, which I knew, having walked many miles with her in life. When she reached the back of the bus and turned toward the house where I stood, her face beamed in its born-smiling way and she began to cross the road.  

Emptiness filled my body. I felt as if all the strain of winter’s icy grit and gravel suddenly blew out of me with the cool summer wind.

Was this really happening? Was one of my soul sisters from the past 15 years actually walking towards me? My eyes could see her, yet it was almost hard to believe this was actually happening. Weeks from home, and yet… right here, Serra.

We hugged. There were tears. I didn’t want to let go. Touch is essential for healthy newborns and though we pretend it’s not, it is also essential for healthy adults.

We talked, we ate, we watched our children play together with the usual sense of awe and fortune we feel when it comes to our children. Into the night, we talked more.

Sleep had its restorative way with me, and in the morning I awoke ready to release some of the big feelings that had built up over winter.

Tea mug in hand, I sat on a bar stool at the kitchen counter and Serra sat next to me. Could I really touch her? Was one of my best friends really right next to me, like, in hugging distance? I reached out to hug her, and then the sobbing began. On her shoulder, sobbing, tears all being emptied from many 18-hour days of darkness and more than enough slips on the icy sidewalk. Sobbing out my longing for home. Home had come to get me. ​

In all my years of looking toward the light we’re made of — which is Love — it has been clear that along a way, I’ve often devalued the body. The physical part, the form. Eh, that’s not who we are, so… Not consciously devaluing the body, but using this lofty spiritual lens to escape from the fact that I am having a human experience, an embodied one — when the truth is, the body matters.

On this day it wasn’t the conversation or the companionship that moved me to sob on her shoulder. It wasn’t her friendship; that was always mine. Through winter I hadn’t felt abandoned by Spirit, as if my friends didn’t love me anymore. None of that intangible stuff was lost.

It was the touch piece. The physical being-with. Her skin, her teeth, her warmth of presence. Her hands brought me home, though we still stood far from our California shores. Her strong, open arms welcomed me back to the feeling of being held — which we all need.   

And so, for being the Home that came to get me, Serra, thank you. You wrote to me in Sweden. We talked when time zone coordination made it happen. You showed up for me. Yet in person, something else showed up that mattered. After every big adventure there awaits a set of arms that offers release and return. After the biggest adventure of my life so far, these arms were yours.

​

So once I got over the reaction I would have had 20 years ago: Whaaaaaat? Ohhhh this hurts, ouch, she's right, I really need to get more exercise or stop eating sugar or... which took about three seconds to move through me, I simply said what seemed true and loving: "My legs are just the right size for me."

Frankly I almost couldn't believe what I'd said. Was that really me talking, saying words of self-acceptance about my body? Who was this matter-of-fact-I'm-fine woman that I'd become?

Let me answer that question. This woman is a woman who has experienced so much culturally and self-inflicted criticism, yes mostly self inflicted, about my body that I refused to ever, no I have not ever, said one negative word about my body around my daughter. I don't talk about women's bodies as if they are to be criticized. Spending 30-something years in the pain of that world was enough. 

This is a woman who birthed a girl child, for whom I want as little of that kind of pain as humanly possible. Magazine ads and peer chatter will be enough for her to pick up on society's sick perspectives about the female body. I will not be contributing to that. 

We all get to choose our parenting style. We all get to choose what we say to our children. So many of us want our children to be free of the wounds we lived through in our own childhood. 

Will we teach our daughters to focus on their bodies' strength, on how they feel?

Will we teach our sons to respect girls' bodies, by respecting our own in front of them?

As for me, the best I can do is let the outrageously big love I feel for my daughter escalate my own process of accepting that I am fine. 

I am just fine, just the way I am, whether it's summertime and my skin is glowing, or a long dark winter where I'm pale as a pigeon plucking snow from the curb. At age 14 I had magazine covers plastered on my walls because I thought supermodels were it, and I wanted to be like them. Now, things are different. Age has freed me up. Something like that. 

Yes I know full self acceptance is a tall order. Yet I know it is worth wanting. 
​
Thank you, child, for calling forth my wiser self. May you always know your legs are just the right size for you, too. May you have no idea how many thousands of hours I've spent criticizing my own body, and especially my legs, until someday by the fire while we're camping, it feels like time to tell you that story. Dear child, may your life show you a way that is glorious galaxies beyond the wisdom of mine.