Moms Alive!

I miss my girlfriends.

Our family’s move to Northern California has been challenging, as most moves generally are. Now that the initial hubbub of fixing up our house (we installed new bamboo floors ourselves—crazy) and unpacking is over (mostly), we’re left with our routine. Routine is comforting and familiar, but there’s something missing. And that would be our friends.

Sure, my husband has met people through law school, and I’ve met other mothers though parent-toddler groups, but we just haven’t, you know, “bonded” with anyone yet. And because we haven’t felt close enough to anyone to speak of what we’ve gone through as a family (i.e., cancer), we have this feeling of being a bit closeted about who we truly are. More…

I want to share with you some photos from my head-shaving ceremony. It’s been two years since I lost my hair (and, yes, it has grown back), but I still look at these pictures and remember all the complex emotions surrounding this event. We rarely see images of bald women in our society, and this only enhances the stigma that we feel when we lose this signifier of our femininity. I want to get these pictures out of the shadows in honor of those of you who are just going through the experience of hair loss and for those of you who have come out the other side. Much love, my sisters!

Happy New Year! I can’t believe it’s already 2008. It’s been about a year since I launched Moms Alive! and a little more than two years since my cancer diagnosis. I’m so grateful to be here.

The holidays have become a reflective time for me and my husband. All the seasonal celebrations take on a double meaning for us. On one hand, there is the usual excitement of this time of year: the joys of eating good food, sipping hot apple cider, and reveling in the company of good friends and family. On the other hand, because I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s right before Christmas, all these little rituals also remind us of when we first stepped into this crazy cancer journey.

Two years ago on New Year’s Eve, we were celebrating a very different ritual. My husband, infant son, and good friends Elizabeth and Heidi had gathered for my head-shaving, which I felt fortunate to have been able to conduct on such an momentous day. We created a ceremony that reflected our understanding of my loss (of my beautiful long hair, of early motherhood as I had expected it to be, and of my preconceptions of myself as a healthy young woman) as well as my empowerment. You might think empowerment would be a strange thing to find during such a chaotic time, but even when our backs are up against the wall we have choices to make. For me, preemptively shaving my hair while I still had quite a bit left was liberating. I felt like I was taking action and making a choice to assume a warrior position—and look. Bald heads are fierce, after all, and they leave nothing to hide behind. More…