When you showed up
You showed up without an invitation.
bursting into my life unexpectedly.
I set out to beat you,
determined to show you
just how things will be the same
and I will be who I have always been.
Yet, you won –
you showed me
how your power changes things
and I was different the moment you showed up.
This poem is about how unexpected challenges change us, despite (or sometimes because of) our resistance or denial. I wrote it originally in spring of 2012 about my experience with an unexpected breast cancer diagnosis. Circumstances are different, yet the wisdom seems fitting as much today as it did back then.
* I took this photo of the needles on a saguaro cacti in San Agustinillo, Mexico.
And Then Opens Possibility 