Some people are shy about their age.  Not me!! I have been more than loud about my upcoming 50th birthday in October 2015.  There are so many reasons to be excited. I am grateful that I am alive. I'm blessed to be surviving cancer for 30 years as a relatively healthy and happy woman living in NYC.  My thoughts for creating this blog have been twisting around in my mind for several years, so rather than giving into more mental masturbation and torture, I think it's time to begin the posts.

Why would someone want to read about turning 50?  In this society, it's almost a given that one must be young, vital and thin. The emphasis on youth and beauty in this society is unhealthy.  After spending years trying to be a certain size and weight, I realize how much time I wasted hating my imperfect body rather than accepting my curves.  I am healthy, I tell myself; being super thin was never in the cards chosen for me.  My hope is that as I age into the next half century, I will be more accepting of my body which has certaily been a challenge in this lifetime.  This leads me to my next thought.

Living as a cancer survivor for the past 30 years has been on my mind.  Issues of loss, grief, acceptance and mortality are some of my favorite mental obsessions.   I feel a lot, ...  or as my therapist often told me during  20 years of psychotherapy, I feel intensely, which has been my blessing and my curse. At the age of 19, I was diagnosed with cancer -- Hodgkins' lymphoma.  My treatment included a spleenectomy and two rounds of massive radiation.  I experienced all kinds of horrible side effects like hair loss, nausea, weight loss, and fatigue during treatment, but the treatment bought me  30 years of living.  I have also experiened infertility and lingering long term damage from the radiaton treatment, which was a hell of a lot stronger in 1984, than it is now.   These are topics that will be addressed more fully in the blog posts to come.

I live daily as a sober human being.  I have not had a drink or drug in 21 years.  I owe my sobriety to friends who trudge along the same path with me.   More to come on this part of my life as well.  Once upon a time,  I needed lots of cigarettes, alcohol and pot to cope with my anger about having cancer.  Ironically, I needed the fear of a cancer relapse to steer me toward a sober lifestyle.

In short, I'm a happy albeit intense, sober cancer survivor who wants to blog about turning 50.  Let me get the posts started before the inner critic takes over.  I look forward to hearing from you.  My wish is to bring compassion, humor and attention through writing about the first half of my life.  The journey has been amazing so far.