I Don’t Want This… And Yet, Here I Am

I’ve been sitting with whether to share this.

Part of me wants to be strong. Composed. “Empowered.”
The woman who teaches. The woman who leads. The woman who holds others.

But today… I am not that woman.

Today, I am scared.

I’ve recently been diagnosed with endometrial cancer.

Even writing those words feels surreal. Heavy. Like they don’t quite belong to me… and yet, they do.

And what I’m noticing most right now isn’t just the physical reality of this diagnosis—
it’s how deeply I need love.

Real love.
Quiet love.
The kind of love that doesn’t try to fix me or teach me or silver-line this.

Just… love.

The Parts of Me That Are Rising

There is a part of me that wants to be grace.

To be like Mother Earth.
Open. Forgiving. Soft. Wise.

And then there are the waves.

The anger.
The rage.
The grief that feels ancient and cellular.

And I remind myself that Mother Earth doesn't just create life, sometimes her wildfires burn everything to the ground to start over. To start again. Life. Death. The circle of it all.

The thing is, I have done so much healing.

I have sat with my wounds.
My Mother Wound.
My Sister wound.
The betrayals.
The silence.

The moments where people — my aunties and cousins — didn’t “choose sides”…
when I was a child who needed protecting.

I used to try to make sense of it by thinking:
this is how people look away.

How they stay quiet.
How they don’t get involved.

And what lives inside me now is the echo of that silence.

My Body… My Story

I have tried to make peace with my body.

To love her.
To reclaim her.

To heal what was taken from me.

To process the rage at the men who violated me.
To breathe through it.
To release it.
To transform it.

And now…

Now I am here.

With a diagnosis that lands in the very center of my womanhood.

I’ve been listening to Eve Ensler’s words…
when she calls this kind of cancer “the rape cancer.”

And something in me jolts.

Because I feel the truth of it in my body.

And I hate that truth.

I hate that once again,
my body—the most intimate, sacred part of me—

will be medicalized.

Examined.
Opened.
Touched.
Cut.

I hate that I will lie there,
feet in stirrups,
being entered again—
even if this time it is called “treatment.”

I Don’t Want This

I don’t want this cancer.

I don’t want this surgery.

I don’t want to go through this.

I don’t want to be brave about it.
I don’t want to be inspiring about it.
I don’t want to turn this into a lesson.

I just…

don’t want it.

And yet—

here I am.

And on top it, I've have pneumonia for nearly 4 weeks, that I can't seem to shake. I feel tired. I'm so damn tired. Sigh.

Let Me Be Held

If you’ve been in my world for a while,
you know I am often the one holding others.

And I love that part of me.

But right now…

I need to be held too.

Not with advice.
Not with stories.
Not with what I should do or try or think.

Just…

love.

Kindness.
Presence.

A soft place to land.

The Truth I’m Standing In

There is a deeper truth moving through me, even now.

That I am still here.

That I still want to live.

That somewhere beneath the fear and anger,
there is still a woman who loves deeply,
who believes in healing,
who believes in something more.

But today…

I am letting all of it exist.

The love.
The rage.
The fear.
The tenderness.

All of me.

Thank You

If you’re reading this,
if you’re feeling me,
if you’re simply placing a hand on your heart in my direction—

thank you.

That means everything to me.

With love,
Crystal