The vessel Gallieo at Fort Mason If I close my eyes really, really hard, I won't notice that big ugly monster at the foot of my bed.
Even when it comes to make believe, even when it is an impossible nightmare, this wishful thinking does little more than increase your fear.
The current news on mammograms, breast self exam, and pap smears, has a chilling promise of sponsored ignorance, avoidance and ultimately death for many women. Women's health care, has been hard fought for, and we are far from done. The topics of breast cancer and cervical cancer are those that generations of women could never even name, the stigma was so great. In years past, women may have had breasts, but they sure didn't talk about them, not to mention admit to any defect in them. In recent years it has been as if a light has gone on. Now, these studies, threaten a retreat, the effects of which are already being seen.
I heard the other day of a woman who had breast cancer discovered in a mammogram. This 40 year old woman had a surgery scheduled to remove this cancer. She cancelled the surgery after the panels recommendation, saying " they aren't reliable anyway."
When given a chance of believing she has cancer, or putting her head in the sand, this woman is choosing the sand. I KNOW she will not be the only one.
When I woke up yesterday I had a choice. We each do every day we live. We choose how we are going to live that day. You can choose to live with your eyes wide open, embracing every day. You will find in doing this you will have moments of fear and sadness that are profound. But you also will have moments that had been lost in the haze of avoidance filled with love, and quiet beauty you had been missing. In running away from the truth in life you are running away from life itself.
Open your eyes...keep them wide open. Live like you never lived before.
You can't do this in hiding. You can't open your eyes in the sand.
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