Dandelions: Growing Back Twice as Strong

Mackensey, a special photographer, once told me that when dandelions get cut down, they grow back twice as strong.  I love that!  When I first set out to conquer cancer, I naively thought that if I mustered up every ounce of strength inside of me that I could sail through the storm with unwavering optimism.  Fear wouldn’t be able to touch me if I dug deep and held on tight to the happy person that I had always been.  How wrong was I! 

A year ago, I was at perhaps my lowest low.  The perfectly happy-go-lucky, silver-lining finding girl came face to face with fear.  I was so terrified of dying, of leaving my girls motherless, that I even wrote them a letter.  Fear and grief had found me despite my smile; I fell hard.  But, yall, we’re all human; and as I have learned, you can’t sail through adversity in life and find yourself unscathed on the other side.  There are going to be marks: visible or invisible. 

It’s not about learning to stand strong and never allowing yourself to feel fear or sadness like I had originally hoped for.  Nor is it about allowing yourself to drown in those unforgiving waves of grief either.  Nope.  Instead, it’s recognizing that these emotions may be part of us, but they don’t define us; and they sure as hell don’t make us weak.  (They exemplify our humanity). 

What matters most is learning how to rise again after a fall…how to grow back twice as strong.  Check out MAKING LEMONADE to learn strategies for how to do that.