My 100th Blog: Moving On

Thirty years ago, I watched the six-part PBS series, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, and was profoundly changed. Appointing my intuitive heart as chairwoman of my internal “board,” I moved my rational head to director of support. I become a test case for bliss.

At first bliss was elusive. As many of us do at least once in our lives, I’d tried so hard for so long to be what others wanted me to be, that I no longer knew what I loved. Slowly, however, I became conscious of yearning for water. I was living in California—I could reach the Pacific Ocean in less than an hour—but salt water didn’t do it.

I wanted Lake Michigan, that sweet, approachable inland sea, with its beachy dune fragrance of sassafras, cedar, and pine. Lake Michigan dominated my happiest youthful moments: family vacations at rented cottages, high school beach parties and bonfires, hours at the end of the Grand Haven pier sprayed by crashing surf.

Knowing specifically what one wants is a gift not to be ignored. I moved. For ten years I watched Lake Michigan daily, near Saugatuck and on Beaver Island. I learned to paint. One fall and winter, renting a cottage  unusually close to the shore, I painted 160 tiny, card-sized watercolors, and published the best of them as two posters: Lake Effects I and II.  I’ve sold 3,500 of of those posters and they’re almost gone.

I never got to do Lake Effects III: the summer poster.  I moved to Bay City and for seven years I’ve been living happily on a friendly street corner in town. But since my diagnosis with breast cancer, I’ve been leaning toward water like a witching wand. I can feel it physically, desire revving to bliss, refusing to be ignored.

So in a few days, I will drive my little Subaru over the exquisite green and cream Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula, where, at a new window looking south on Lake Michigan, and over eight weeks of summer, I plan to do little more than play and paint Lake Effects III.
 
This is my 100th blog for this HealthCentral.com page. I’ve been writing here about my life after breast cancer twice a week for more than a year. It’s enough. Now I am giving myself the gift of focus, of bliss without distraction. As a survivor, I am acutely aware of time. This is my time. My inner child is beside herself with glee.

What fun it’s been, sharing my life in this column! Thank you so much for listening. I’m moving on, but I’m not finished blogging:  I’ll continue writing about my life as artist, writer, Jungian, traveler, breast cancer survivor, and spiritual adventurer, but at my own convenience and on my own website, where my breast cancer blog began.

Mary B is on the go—check in now and then and catch up!