by Lucy Mathews Heegaard | Feb 8, 2014
I have written about my friend Elizabeth on a couple of occasions, one post about a trip we took together seven months before she died (Why Miss the Moment) and another which was a reminiscence after her memorial service (Where the Angels Live | Lullaby for a Friend). But today, I am reblogging a post from OK Everybody Let’s Get Organized, the website that serves as a memorial to her life and legacy, because today I want you to hear from her in her own words. [Photo credit: Elizabeth Alling Sewall © 2008] (more…)
by Lucy Mathews Heegaard | Feb 10, 2011
In 2002, one of my dearest friends was diagnosed with breast cancer. In her late thirties, with a wonderful spouse and two young sons, I watched as she navigated surgery, chemo and radiation, as so many women do. Beyond the grueling aspects of treatment itself, there was the enormous heart space to travel: How do you talk to your kids about having cancer? How do you maintain your closest relationships when you are going through something most of those around you can’t understand first-hand? Bigger, yet, how do you face your own mortality?
My friend and I live more than 1,000 miles apart. Â When you’re that far away, you can’t pitch in to do the things that are most tangible– picking up the kids from school, running errands, making dinners. Â Yet, I desperately wanted to give her my support and love. Â So I went to the archive of our past history together– old letters I had saved from our decades of friendship, beginning in high school, spanning through college and our early years in the work world, to getting married and having children.
Each week, I sent her a package containing one year’s worth of her letters to me, beginning in 1980 and ending in 2000. I marveled that we had traded letters in every single one of those years. I was awestruck by the depth of what we shared with one another. I lamented the fact that we slowly stopped writing real letters with the advent of email and arrival of our children. I copied each letter (no, i didn’t part with the originals!) and wrote commentaries in the margins about our escapades. I laughed and cried as I revisited memories and hoped that they would be a good distraction for her after each weekly chemo treatment.
My tiny window into her world during that year made a huge impression on me. Since then, so many more of my friends have been diagnosed. Gradually, I have become more and more involved in the cause to help find a cure for breast cancer and support women going through it.
I always knew that someday I wanted to tell the story I had witnessed. Â Yet, often, the stories that are closest to our heart are the most difficult to express. It wasn’t until I saw a neighbor of mine– newly diagnosed and on a walk after chemo– that the words to this story came tumbling out. Though it is written specifically about women and breast cancer, the message applies to any major life challenge. Every picture and every journal entry is from a woman who has been through it. More than 30 women shared their private moments and thoughts to offer comfort to those currently on the path. . . one step, one true step, at a time.
by Lucy Mathews Heegaard | Feb 8, 2011
Don’t we all wish we had the 20-20 vision of hindsight in the moment an event is unfolding? We would have all the insight that retrospection brings, without having to wait. I used to believe that if we thought hard enough, studied and scrutinized long enough, then we could do all the right things, take the shortest route, make no mistakes. Of course, life doesn’t work that way. And if we believe in that fallacy, then we’ll spend lots more time feeling we’ve failed than feeling we’ve succeeded.
In truth, hindsight can only come with time and reflection. Often, it’s only by looking back with the perspective of distance that we can see the turns we missed, or the steps that could have made life easier, or the ones we took that were right on the money, even though we made them without fully knowing which direction was best. Perhaps that’s the point, after all– that we cannot know everything. We can only do the best we can in each moment. It’s not about being perfect but about learning.
Maybe the real purpose of hindsight is to help us make sense of what we’ve been through, to sort through the messy details of the ups and downs and turn them into a story with a beginning, middle and end. And, ultimately– if we are willing– to offer our story to someone else.  Because in sharing our own story we can help others feel less alone, more connected, more empowered or simply comforted in the midst of their own moments of not knowing. In return, we might be lucky enough to have someone else’s story reach us at the moment we need it most.
We all have wisdom to share, usually more than we realize. Start telling your story. Trust me, it matters.
