A lot of women who get diagnosed with breast cancer put on their warrior boots and collect their warrior friends to fight the fight and I honor them for their journeys. But that was not how my journey was going down.
I work in the healthcare profession. Helping people make good health decisions and habits to rehabilitate or maintain their health, is a passion of mine and I have made it my career for 30 plus years.
My Mother loved maple trees and Dad loved his oaks! Dad planted acorns along the prairie path and Mom painted maple trees in watercolors. Dad is buried next to a Burr Oak and Mom next to an Autumn Blaze Maple. Very fitting! My love for trees and our family love for the Arboretum continued into my own marriage and my now husband proposed to me 22 years ago in the Spruce Plot.
Five years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I am a lover not a fighter, so my journey was not only filled with the support and love of family and friends...but of my trees!!! My beautiful trees we planted in our yard. Maples, oaks, bald cypress and a host of others. I felt that my journey was that of a beautiful strong tree! Well rooted (family, friends, spirit) and resilient to storms (cancer) a tree may lose a limb (breast) or leaves (hair) but spring always brings hope and repair and renewal! It was during my darkest nights of chemotherapy that I listened to the harsh winter winds and ice snapping the limbs off of my Maple outside my bedroom window and I wept for both of us!!!!
My trees got me through the breast cancer back then and now I call them back to help me get through Ovarian cancer.
Where would we all be without these beautiful magnificent pillars of strength? Keeping us warm, cool...giving us oxygen and cleaning our water and air?
This time when I finish treatment we are heading for a trip out West so I can sit under the Redwoods. Sit and be grateful for life. Just sit in the silence. Sit in gratitude of trees!!!!!
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