Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Six Years in the Making

Hello !

I told you all about the Kickstarter and 28 Days of Joy last week, so I’m not going to repeat myself today. Instead, I want to tell you where I was exactly six years ago.

On August 17, 2020, I woke up at a campsite at Chain O’Lakes State Park waiting for the results of my breast biopsy.

Jim and I had gone camping because we needed the escape, and because I needed something to do besides stare at my phone and wonder when the doctor would call. That morning, I sat at a picnic table surrounded by birds and trees and wrote in my journal:

I’m doing okay, and then I’m not. I woke up scared.

Later, I climbed into a hammock strung between two trees and let myself do absolutely nothing. I listened to birds. I watched the leaves. I noticed a little boy proudly telling us about a tiny toad he’d found. I wrote that his grin was “big enough to swallow my fear.”

I didn’t get the results that day.

The next morning, August 18, I wrote that I felt better. More relaxed. I’d spent the previous day swaying in that hammock, letting my mind go quiet.

Then my doctor called.

I had breast cancer.

I’ve been going through those journals again as I work on Diary of a Cockeyed Optimist, and I keep finding moments I’d forgotten. Not the big things, necessarily. I remember the diagnosis. I remember surgery and chemo and radiation. But I don’t always remember the trees. The birds. The tiny toad. The fact that on the day before my life changed, I was already trying to figure out how to be present while I waited for something I couldn’t control.

Tomorrow, exactly six years after that phone call, I’m launching the Kickstarter for Diary of a Cockeyed Optimist.

Choosing August 18 was deliberate. I didn’t want the anniversary to be only about the day I was diagnosed. I wanted to mark it by creating something, by finally bringing this book into the world, and by doing something joyful at the same time.

That’s why tomorrow also begins 28 Days of Joy.

If you already followed the campaign and signed up last week, thank you! Your first joy prompt will arrive tomorrow. If you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still plenty of time. You do not have to pledge to participate. Follow the Kickstarter campaign, look for the pinned update, and you’ll find the information you need to join us.

Follow Diary of a Cockeyed Optimist on Kickstarter

It’s strange to sit here six years later and think about that woman in the hammock. She had no idea what the next day would bring, let alone the next six years.

She was scared.

But she was still paying attention to the birds. To the frogs. To joy.

Much love,

Theresa