Facing Fears

Today, the word "fear" has been on my brain. I found out my wonderful Grandmother has a large lump that has appeared out of nowhere in her breast. Anything that goes on with my Grandmother always makes me anxious. Back during the dissertation, she broke her leg, and it broke my heart to see her in pain. She recovered well from that, but while I was in Gorgeous City, she started falling again so she moved in with Mom not too long after Dr. J and I got married.

Since then, she'd been doing really well. One of the great things about her being in Hometown with Mom is that she's active at a senior center and receives much more hands on health care (for example, we discovered that part of her falling episodes was due to the fact that her previous doctor had her on multiple medications for the same thing that she didn't need). So given her much more regular care, it was shocking to learn that she has this lump. Given her age, they won't do a biopsy, they'll just take it out. Based on his experience, the doctor is pretty sure it is malignant. Mom is taking it one day at a time. I'm praying that Grandmother will be as strong and resilient as always. But of course, I'm afraid. My great-grandmother died when I was in high school in her 90s, shortly after having a large sudden growth in her body as well.

I have been confronting the fear of losing one or both of my grandmothers since we moved out here to River City. When it comes to especially my grandmothers, I don't like being this far away. I know that I have wonderful relationships with them and if something happens, I won't have any regrets, but on days like this, it doesn't make the fear much smaller.

Somewhere in my mind, I immediately thought about fear and writing when I started reading the first few lines of B*'s post on resistance to writing. I didn't really need to read the rest of the article or her post to quickly identify my resistance in writing to be based in multiple fears. I fear I'll disappoint everyone if I don't write. I fear I won't come up with anything else creative or original to write. I fear I did all of my good writing during the dissertation. I fear that since I haven't done any significant writing since I started teaching and got married, that I won't be able to do any significant writing. I fear the words on the screen never accurately reflect what I'm thinking in my mind.

I've been much more aware of these fears this summer than ever before. Maybe it's the quiet of being home alone while Dr. J is teaching. Maybe it's the focus on writing given that I'm not teaching. Maybe it's the occasional moments I spend staring at a blank screen, sympathizing ever so slightly with "the professor" character on Treme. But whatever it is, it is important to face these fears and write through them; I'm slowly learning how to do that.

In the words of B*:

But I also believe that insight cannot be manufactured from nothing, so I am motivated to continue to read a lot and get writing out, and get writing out, and get writing out, and hope that at some point perspiration can lead to inspiration. It just might. Or it might not, but at least I am trying.