How My Brain Tumor Got Into My Head

Dear Teton Char,

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. 

My brain had been wired by mine and others' choices,
​to outsource peace. ​

​All through adolescence, into college and as I became a mother, I turned to the pleasure of ice cream and other sugar-laden foods to soothe my insides. Instead of feeling the pain of my "negative" or tough emotions, I turned to pleasure for my eyes, tongue and palate. 

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. 

That got my attention. I wanted to live with my daughter. I wasn't ready to die. 

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? 

We are here to find joy, to play, to laugh, as our friend Andrea and I have been doing wildly since we were 14. We are here to lean into Light, as much as we possibly can. You know this. ​

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!)