On backless dresses and packing boxes

I have been utterly floored this past week, barely able to lift myself from horizontal. The clash with Christmas inevitably made it harder than I'd anticipated to rest-up post-mastectomy and I am now paying the price. My body has brought me to a shuddering halt.

In some ways, it's not been a bad time to be sofa bound. I always feel compelled to turn inwards in early January, before fully committing to wrapping my arms around the new year. The need to take stock, reflecting on the year just gone - what went well, what might I have preferred to go differently - a sort of ‘two stars and a wish’ life review, coupled with a desire to consider where I would like to focus my attention in the year ahead.

Unsurprisingly, my health is still my number one priority, with a core focus on the four pillars of stress reduction, quality sleep, exercise and diet in order both to regain my strength and try to protect against future disease. Nothing is more important to me.

But this year, unlike last, my health is not the only thing on my year plan. On January 13th it will be two years since my diagnosis, and my focus is slowly starting to widen out again. Re-engaging with the outside world, strengthening connections with family and friends, prioritising the things that bring me laughter and joy and tuning in to my purpose have all made my list for the coming year.

Change is in the air.

And not least because, in two weeks time (counter to my best stress reducing intentions), we are moving.

For those of you who know us well, yes, you did read that right. We are moving. Again.

I can almost picture you rolling your eyes in disbelief. I can hear you sigh, and perhaps even snigger. And I notice the urge to hang my head in embarrassment at our seemingly compulsive restlessness.

I hardly dare add it up, but by my quick reckoning, this will be our ninth move since Oscar, our eldest child was born, 18 years ago. That averages out at once every two years. Seeing that in black and white I actually feel a sense of shame.

Despite all appearances to the contrary, we are not addicted to moving (although I am married to a man who is something of a self-confessed change junkie). It was though never our intention to not to provide a constant, settled home for our children. Far from it. But for reasons I still don’t yet entirely understand (but am working on), that has been the reality we have created. I can not help but feel regret, and fear that we may have condemned our children to years of future therapy as they try to unpick the impact of our itinerance.

But we can give a sound logical reason for each of our moves. Each time we have just been trying to do our best. Each move has been a reaction to life's events, a bending in the wind. Some were because we’d outgrown our home as our young family grew from two people to three, four and then five. Some were to embark on new adventures. Some were moving home after adventures. Some were temporary, six-month rentals or short term stays because house purchases had fallen through or while we renovated houses that we could barely afford. Others seemed logical at the time when confronted with a deluge of challenging life situations - job losses, ill parents, sky high debt and a yearning for green space - though perhaps less so in hindsight.

Each move was considered. And reconsidered. And considered again. Each was discussed and dissected ad nauseam. And each was painful in its own way, bringing with it some sense of loss. Each time we have moved, it has felt as if we have left behind a little part of us.

And so the last two months have been deeply challenging. The emotional stress of coming to a decision to move again, in an attempt to respond to and juggle the competing needs of five near adult individuals (this time it has primarily been our kids who have driven the move – urbanites at heart who have struggled with the lack of independence that village life has brought), has been intense. Facing again the practicalities of moving – putting our home up for sale, finding and trying to buy a place in a limited market, having to let that house go at the 11th hour, rapidly pivoting to the ‘elegant solution’ of a rental property so as not to lose our buyers at the 11th and a half hour – with all the uncertainty that is wrapped up in that decision, and the absolutely sinking knowledge that renting means that we will inevitably have to do this all over again in a couple of years. On top of that, I have felt an extra layer of self-generated stress about being stressed, and the impact of that on my health.

It has been emotionally exhausting, at a time when I was only just getting back on my feet and struggling with the return to work. For me, the process of deciding to move again has felt intensely triggering and has, at moments, left me feeling more than a little unhinged. I am slowly learning how profoundly the impact of losing my father at a young age has left me maladapted to decision making, uncertainty and change. Each are capable of surfacing deep trauma, activating a terrified inner 6-year-old self whose desperate attempts to make sense of a threatening world and grasping search for stability and safety have the power to totally sabotage my rational adult self (although confusingly, my childhood experience has also gifted me with another part that is in quiet but semi-permanent existential crisis, constantly restless in the belief that life is too short to get stuck in a rut). Welcome once again the knotty bag.

And so I will own that I have been deeply conflicted. I have really struggled with the idea of moving yet again and have felt an unshakeable sense of panic and sadness at the prospect. Stuck in only feeling able to focus on all that we would lose in the move, rather than being able to feel open to what we might gain.

We are leaving a house which I have a deep affection for, which we have only lived in for a little over 3 years. It is the house we bought on moving out of London (after a brief spell in a rental house – move number 8). A house which has been my refuge through illness. A place of retreat from the world and its demands. An enveloping comfort. A place in which to break down, to break open and to try to piece myself back together. A handsome and generous house, which has been truly magnanimous. We have been incredibly lucky to have lived here, and I do not take that for granted. Parts of my being feel bonded to its very bricks and mortar. Within its four solid walls I have felt safe, at a time when all else has felt insecure.

But this is not the whole picture.

Truth be told, especially for the rest of my family, there has also been a certain darkness to our time here. It has been the house in which I grieved my mother’s death, the house in which we were locked down together – our children variously furious at having been moved out of London, and the house in which I had cancer.

In many ways it has felt isolating. We moved from the conviviality of our London terrace where we had known many of our neighbours for decades, to a detached house in a small, aged village where we knew no-one, on the eve of two years of lockdown, give or take. We have spent a lot of time looking inwards here. Our covid and cancer house. A house which, beautiful as it is, is above our pay grade and is slowly deteriorating under our watch. A house which the kids feel has robbed them of their urban independence, rendering them reluctantly reliant on multiple daily lifts (mainly from me). Our children call it the ‘lonely house’ and it is their insistent craving for life, for turning towards the light that has propelled the move.

And so we are moving into town (true to our original intention when moving out of London) - close to the station, the cinema, restaurants, shops and friends. Life. A chance to bring closer together - even if only psychologically - our scattered family, which is currently spread tenuously between London, Brighton, Lewes and here. A chance to simplify our collective lives. A chance to turn our gaze outwards again, to choose connection, lightness and life above separation, darkness and death. Expansion not contraction. An invitation to play again.

Before my recent contra-lateral mastectomy, I was afraid of how it would be to be flat chested. I found it hard not to focus on what I was losing, mourning what had been and concerned I would no longer feel like or appear as a woman at all. That I would lose my very identity.

But it has not been like that. Undoubtedly, it will take some time to get fully used to my streamlined silhouette. My new scar is less than perfect and I feel some frustration at this. But I have almost instantly adapted to life with no breasts. Because that is what we humans do. That is what life is. A constant process of change and adaptation. Nothing ever stays the same. Permanent impermanence.

At Christmas my wonderful friends clubbed together to fund a new dress to celebrate my altered body. I felt humbled by this gesture of love (thank you again to all of those who contributed). Determined to embrace being flat chested, rather than regretting what is no longer, I looked for dresses that previously would not have been an option – welcome to the out-of-bounds rail of bra-free, off-the-shoulder, halter neck, backless, strappy dresses. I may not have breasts now, and of course, something has been lost. But there is also an excitement in turning my face forwards, considering what new sartorial options are open to me. Finding the offer of my new reality.

Despite my pre-op worries, it now feels glaringly clear to me that changing the packaging does not, of course, take way from what's inside. I am still me. It offers instead a different perspective on the world. I have simply added another scar (albeit it a little shonky) to the criss-cross collection that tells the story of my life. And this new one is perhaps the most important of all – it shows my commitment to choose life.

And so slowly, despite my uncertainty, I am recognising that there are some important lessons here to help me embrace our imminent move. A reminder that we are able to choose where we focus our attention and how we see things. We can look backwards, rueing change. Or we can decide to look forward, lifting our eyes and investing in what might be, rather than on what is no longer.

No emotional state is absolute. However overwhelmingly dominant our emotions may feel at times, there is always light and shade. There are textures and undulations in our emotional landscape, constantly and subtly shifting and rebalancing, moment by moment.

When we are full of joy, we may also experience passing moments of anxiety, concern, or sadness. And when we are full of upset, if we really tune in and loosen our grip a little, we may notice occasional lighter, more hopeful flashes in the mix. Fissures in the fabric of our darkness. They may be passing, well hidden, or feel impossible to grasp – but they will almost certainly be there.

The trick is to notice these, bringing them into conscious awareness, breathing into them and prising them open with our gentle focus until they become cracks wide enough for the light to come in. The experience of sadness or loss may remain, but the overall balance of darkness to light can become subtly changed, materially altered.

It is up to us where and how we place our attention.

Do we focus on the missing breasts, or the backless dress?

Do we focus on the lost house, or a welcome opportunity for connection?

Last week I heard that Heather, a woman I met at a photoshoot for the charity Flat Friends in October, had died of secondary breast cancer. Like me, she was diagnosed with primary breast cancer in 2021 and had been through a similar treatment programme. Theoretically ‘cancer-free’ (whatever that means) post treatment, she had started to feel as if she was getting her life back. But when I met her she mentioned that in the preceding few weeks she had started to develop a tightness in her chest and a dry cough. She was concerned that the cancer had spread and was waiting to see her oncologist. I felt utterly side-swept to hear that she died on 28th December – just two short months after we'd met.

Her death has pulled me up short. Overwhelmed by house move decision stress these past three months I have rather lost sight of the life lessons that having cancer gifted me. The lessons I swore to myself to never forget.

Life is fragile. Life is precious. Life is short.

Absolutely nothing about my future (or anyone else’s) is guaranteed.

I have choices about how I spend the exquisite time I have here.

Wasting time stuck in rumination (something I seem to be the absolute queen of) is not good for my mind or my body. I well know the potential impact of stress on cancer recurrence.

What matters most are not the external forms of our lives – the things we own, the shape of our bodies, the houses we live in. It is how we choose to fill our lives that counts.

It is not about wasting precious time looking backwards, regretting what was or what could have been. Nor is it about fixating on what challenges may (or may not) come up in the future. Rather it is about making the moments we have matter, in the moment. Appreciating what is right in front our faces. Nurturing what brings us joy and connects us to others. Doing what we love, and spending time with those who are important to us.

So yes, we are moving. And as sad and nervous as I am to leave the security of this beautiful house, I will find the offer in our move. We are lucky. I am lucky. One step at a time we will create a new, safe home for our family.

And I will embrace this opportunity to lay down some of the heavy baggage of the last three years, to let in the light and to invite a fresh breeze to flow through, blowing away the cobwebs.

I will choose to focus on life, in all her rich glory, for as long as I have her.