When I was in college my close friend Maureen introduced me to the singer Joni Mitchell. I immediately fell in love with her melodic, and at times discordant, voice. She was a woman speaking her truth in her own way, and she really spoke to my hippie heart.

One of my particular favorite Joni songs is Both Sides Now. I personally love the version she recorded later in life, which has this beautiful melancholy and reflective tone. It’s a song that has always resonated with me, but has taken on new meaning for me with age as well as during this cancer journey.

If you haven’t heard the song, it goes like this:

Roes and floes of angel hair
and ice cream castles in the air
And feather canons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I don't really know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way

But now it's another show
You leave 'em laughing as they go
and if you don't care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's loves illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Tears and  fears and feeling proud
To say, "I love you" right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

Joni’s sentiment in these lyrics rings so true for me. As I child I grew up with little to worry about and with a very innocent and idealistic view of life and love. Like many, as I have gotten older there have been more struggles and challenges – crippling anxiety, infertility, post partem depression, the loss of loved ones, family discord, and now, cancer. It can be easy to let reality and pessimism to take over… to become jaded.

Many of you have inquired how chemoradiation is going. So far, I am a little tired and have a bit of nausea/digestive woes from the combination of chemo pills and radiation therapy. But the radiation treatments themselves are simple and painless, and the staff is really nice. However, I do have to admit that walking into that cancer center every day and then going to work and coming home to care for two little boys is a lot. There are little moments where “my sun feels blocked”.

By no means am I denying my true feelings or my reality, but I also know that keeping in mind “life’s illusions” and staying positive is my personal way of remaining sane and finding my way back to health. On these days that are hard, I am not even going so far as to take one day at a time. I am taking one minute, one task at a time. I am celebrating the small wins (like being halfway through radiation after tomorrow). I am taking the breaks I need, but I am also putting one foot in front of the other and keeping a smile on my face. I am hanging on the words of people who are telling me that I am doing a good job.

So going back to the illusions of life and love… maybe they are not illusions after all. We live in a time where we are being led to believe that humankind is going in the toilet. But these last few months would say otherwise to me. One beautiful deed in my honor has bred another. I have been shown that what good you put into the Universe, you often get back. I have seen ONE person inspire another, who then inspires another… I am inspired and thinking about what more I can do to give back once I am well. These are the dreams and schemes and circus crowds that continue to envelope me. You have no idea how living in the midst of this is making cancer almost something I wouldn’t trade.

With that in mind, as you turn in tonight, I leave you with Joni in her own voice…

XO- Mary