For as long as I remember I have had a love/hate relationship with my body. I have spent my whole life trying to make friends with my body because I know that self-love is the key to accepting my body. But yet this body doesn't shape itself according to my vision of what I want for myself so I continue to have this love hate relationship. It only got worse when I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and part of my treatment was to take Tamoxifen post radiation.
For the last three years I have been on Tamoxifen to prevent the breast cancer from coming back and I would say these last years have been the greatest tests of my life in accepting the body or rather to stop fighting with it. This drug does something that I had no idea it could do- it stops the level of estrogen from being produced in your body - but what does that do to a premenopausal woman? It does a whole lot of craziness and more. And it has been a journey in getting to understand my body and not fight it. I have learned to identify triggers for hot flashes, I have learned to make friends with pains in all parts of my body that I didn't even think existed, and last but not least I have learned to come to terms that yes my metabolism has slowed down like never before and that I will need to move 5xs as much if I want to eat the things that I enjoy eating. It is a journey of ups and down for me. I hated taking this drug when I started it. I hated the mood swings, I hated the pelvic pains that would appear that would make me scared - could this me uterine cancer? I hated my annual visits to the gynecologist because I knew it meant that I would have to do more than my routine pap smear. I hated weighing myself because no matter what the pounds just don't come down. I hated that i couldn't move as fast i wanted to because of pain in my joints. So much hate going into yourself is not good - i had to make a choice - either i learn to live with it and love it or it will eat me alive and I am the one that will suffer. I do believe that 2021 was the year that I finally began seeing a shift with myself and this love hate relationship with tamoxifen. I was not going to stop taking it - so I had to make a choice - find ways to live with the side effects to make my life better. But stop the hate. But to stop the hate I must name it. I must own up to it, name it and be aware. Awareness and opening up is a freeing exercise because it relieves one of shame and guilt and fear and anger. And that is what it has taken.
Do i still have the same problems yes? But what has changed is the relationship with my body- learning to take care of it because it is in pain. For example, I have severe pain on my ankles and feet and this is due to tamoxifen because it does affect the joints - but i need to move - so instead of getting angry at myself for not being able to move, I find ways to move that I enjoy that I know will alleviate the pain. I also go for acupuncture which has been a life saver for me in energy and symptom management. There is a very common saying in my house, that they hear me say a lot - "We all have pain - emotional and physical but we have to work through the pain, It doesn't go away but it makes it less manageable and we have to find the tools that work for us."
I have been reading Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown - this book as I may have referred to in the past is about naming your emotions rather than shutting it down. By naming how I have felt with my body in the last three years =it gives me more power to be my authentic self. The truth is ugly sometimes but the truth can also help see thing clearly and make us more open to being fully authentic with ourselves. This will not be the last time I refer to this book - I believe there will be more blog posts on several aspects of this book - we are now in this society where it is not enough to just keep on living for the sake of living. The pandemic has pushed us to want more out of life - to be better versions of ourselves- to love our imperfect self and to be true in thought word and deed - so I leave you with this quote:
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