Clusterfook

Nom­i­nated by Paula

When Paula nom­i­nated Lisa Kelly’s arti­cle, Fac­ing Myself, to receive the Post of the Day Award, she wrote: “Pretty much her entire blog is award-worthy. She posts about her life with can­cer (for the 3rd time!) and the pos­si­bil­ity that she will leave behind two lit­tle girls and a hus­band with great can­dor and humor. This par­tic­u­lar post changed how I look at myself.”

Lisa calls her­self a “can­cer fighter.” Specif­i­cally, she is bat­tling ovar­ian can­cer for the third time, but it has now “metas­ta­sized to my liver and lungs.” Undaunted, “I plan on kick­ing cancer’s ass once and for all,” she writes. She describes her­self this way:

Focused, Con­fused, Bitchy, and Fun-Loving all wrapped into one huge Clusterfook …

Does this really need expla­na­tion? I’m no dif­fer­ent than any­one else except that I’ve had a lot of life expe­ri­ences, some harsher than oth­ers but who hasn’t. I con­sider myself a life blog­ger because that’s what I do … get through life.

Many read­ers will relate to Lisa’s con­fes­sion about how she looked at her­self for most of her life: “I’m the one who was my own worst critic, harsh­est judge and quick­est to dis­miss myself. Although I’d love to say that I turned 40 and had a middle-aged epiphany, like a matu­rity but­ton clicked on or some­thing it didn’t hap­pen like that all.” Rather, “[t]o no longer judge myself or allow oth­ers to judge me …it took a three­p­eat of cancer.”

After tak­ing a close — and sur­pris­ing — look in the mir­ror one day this past March, when she sus­pected that she was ill again, she began snap­ping reg­u­lar pho­tographs of her­self in order to chron­i­cle her jour­ney.  “I started to take pic­tures of myself after I was diag­nosed with can­cer this third time so that I could see the changes in my face on good days and bad days as a way of fac­ing myself,” Lisa explains. “Some­times it’s hard to see your­self by look­ing at the reflec­tion in the mir­ror. Study­ing a pic­ture, see­ing the emo­tion and always hav­ing that moment in time is some­thing entirely different.”

Lisa invites read­ers to view her pho­tos on Flicker.

Although can­cer may seem like this hideous mon­ster of a dis­ease it’s given me a lot of peace of mind, per­sonal self-direction and the abil­ity to face myself. ~ Lisa Kelly

Fac­ing one­self and con­duct­ing an hon­est assess­ment of one’s own strengths and weak­nesses is a daunt­ing task, healthy or not, so it is easy to see why Paula was moved by read­ing Lisa’s arti­cles. Lisa is not only brave enough to con­front her his­tory of depres­sion and ongo­ing health bat­tles, but to do so in the blo­gos­phere where read­ers can learn from and be inspired by her. It is an ongo­ing strug­gle, as she reveals in her most recent post, Puffy Face: “You know it’s just like me to write a post about fac­ing myself and talk about self-acceptance only to have it all change a week later.” But if I were a gam­bler, I would put my money on Lisa, not cancer.

I encour­age you to visit Lisa’s site, sub­scribe to her RSS feed, and fol­low her on her jour­ney back to good health. My guess is that if you do, you will, like Paula, find that you never look at your reflec­tion in the mir­ror the same way again.

Lisa, it is an honor to bestow the Post of the Day Award upon you!

Epi­logue: Lisa lost her bat­tle with can­cer on Feb­ru­ary 27, 2009. How­ever, her site, Clus­ter­fook, remains online and her hus­band, John, updates it peri­od­i­cally. In addi­tion to read­ing all of Lisa’s posts and the story of her strug­gle, you can read about how her daugh­ters and hus­band are far­ing with­out Lisa.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Clus­ter­fook, Post of the Day Award, The Ris­ing Blogger

You should also check out:

• You Are a Fly on My Wall
• Writing in Faith
• We’re At Dad’s That Week
• Vent … a Series of Takes
• Tricia’s Musings