My New Alliance Revisited & Hopes for 2016

As the new year begins, I want to say thanks for the warm welcome back to the blogging world.  Re-entry has certainly been easier than the initial launch in 2010 when I didn’t know anyone and for that, I’m grateful.

Back then, I wrote an end-of-year post praising social media’s ability to bring breast cancer survivors together.  Other than using Facebook to connect with friends and family, I hadn’t delved into any other applications and had no idea what waited for me once I began sending blog posts into our cyber universe.  Recently, and maybe it’s because I started blogging again so close to New Year’s, I’ve been thinking a lot about those days, new beginnings, old friends and new ones.
  

I’m not sure why a turn of a calendar page brings old memories or new ideas or even the motivation for change.  I suppose any old day would do, but there’s something about a brand new year stretching out before me.  Fresh, uncluttered of cancer and its fallout.  Just waiting there, wide open with room for amazing possibilities.  Unpleasant things have yet to mar the clean, crisp pages of the days ahead and I so hope it stays that way.  Then I can wonder…

What’s to come?   Will I travel to a far off land?

What new adventures and challenges will the two boys I send off to school everyday, embrace? 

Will doctors’ appointments go my way? 

What will cancer researchers discover this year?

As I stand on the edge of 2016 I probably have the same hopes as most people. Hope that nothing scary finds my family and friends, just good things and if not good, well, than at least not bad. The status quo is just fine in some respects, but, as anyone told she has breast cancer knows…these are things I can’t control.

Some things I hope for are within my control…I choose how it plays out.

I hope to update Bringing Up Goliath by moving it to WordPress.  A bit of an intimidating prospect, so I’ll take all the advice I can get on that.

I hope to write more, learn more about grammar and punctuation.  Many days, I feel my writing skills are firmly planted back in 8th grade.  Forgive me for that.

I hope to advocate more.  All these years after my mother was first diagnosed in 1983 and still more than 40,000 women die of breast cancer every year, with over 230,000 diagnosed in 2015.  WTF?  Where’s the cure?  Despite the sea of pink, the message is still lost. The answers still elude us.

Here’s another big one:  Exercise!  There, I said it.

 
My goal is to sweat everyday (mostly) (sort of).  My goal is to be fit and not focus on weight, though losing 15 or 20 pounds might be nice, too.  Hey, exercise is always more fun with friends!  Who’s with me?

As I wrote, in that 2010 post, I’m thankful social media lit the way and introduced me to others that understood a breast cancer life.  Breast cancer separates us in some ways from our former lives and those that were by our side then may not understand, may not want hear it all again, or may actually no longer stand by us.  Maybe they’ll never understand how difficult it is to dream of an unbridled future when you’ve heard those words.

So, thank you for reading, sharing, standing by.  For being on my side, my alliance, then and now.
  
Here’s a link to that old post, My New Alliance, if you’d like to read it.  The words hold true.

Happy New Year!  May your blank pages fill up with wondrous things.  And don’t forget to let me know if you want in on that exercise thing…xoxo

What are the hopes you control in 2016?

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