Hello!
It's been a couple of days and I apologize for the lack of communication! I have been more than a little distracted lately as we have been taking precautions for an approaching/passing tropical threat to our East!
The picture attached to this blog post is of the expected course this system should be taking... a "gentle graze" against our eastern coast of Florida (I am located on the West coast where the little circle is - Pinellas county).
Funny enough, tomorrow (or...today, depending on when I publish this post) is my husband's birthday! 10/7! Guess my husband's name!
Go on. Guess.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen! Matthew!
Guess who's been having fun with that tidbit of information? *Evil grin*
ALSO!
We had tickets to a show for his birthday and it has since been postponed... which we are disappointed about BUT it would have made me miss our Gulfport's Art Walk this Friday (tomorrow night) and now as long as the storm clears enough for the Art Walk to continue, I will be open for it! YAY!
So, be sure to come and support your local artists and vendors in Gulfport this Friday! Come hang out with me for awhile!
I will probably be working on my other big distraction as of late, which is a piece that was inspired by this month being Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
The information I am haunted by and that I wanted people to be gripped by when they see the painting is that every year in the United States ALONE, there are 20,000 - 30,000 mascetomies and lumpectomies performed in response to a breast cancer diagnosis. That's women, that's men, that's all ethnicities.
20,000 minimum. That's so much flesh that is cut away from a body.
That's a chunk of weight, both physically, mentally, spiritually, that needs to be removed from the patient in order to give them a higher chance of survival.
Surviving their own body.
How surreal is that? To live through that?
Even someone who isn't really "attached" to their physical looks? You're being physically DETACHED from it - and then you really have to analyze how that changes you.
As a human - having to suddenly deal with such a change, such a large scarring - even with reconstructive surgery, the phantom pains and the numbness you feel is just so bewildering.
It comes with it's own set backs and adjustments to be made and I feel like the aftermath for survivors and people who are still in the fight... it needs to be talked about. It is just as heavy as the weight of the diagnosis.
"Well, yeah. That's hard but at least you survived, right?"
It needs to be addressed.
It's still a scarring. It's still a hardship. It doesn't just go away like issues in the movies seem to.
And that's okay.
Adjust in your own time. Come to grips with it.
As for the need for these surgeries:
Find a freaking cure.
People are fighting for their lives in every way they can. Cutting themselves up, poisoning themselves, praying over themselves, beliving that medicine men have all the answers there are.
Maybe they do for now.
Or maybe, we just find a cure already so that more people don't have to go through this nightmare anymore.
Be safe,
~Elizabeth