Self

How does one maintain your "self" when you feel so torn?

I know this feeling I'm having is not helped by the feeling of "dragging" myself along my life since I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  As soon as someone is told they have cancer, your life, your plans, your dreams go on hold, health and treatment take priority.  But being slung into a world of chemo, surgeries, radiation, and whatever else they think is required to destroy the cancer can cause you to be sucked into a vortex that is not easy to crawl out of.

Life gives you more obstacles as it goes.  We learn to duck and weave, we jump hurtles, we bounce back from blows, and continue on our journey.  For some, cancer becomes a yoke, that even if it is lifted, you find yourself far behind your original path, or in completely unfamiliar territory.

My lament?  I have a self that is not realized and it's starting to cloud me.  I am slowly gaining my confidence and abilities to be the mother/wife that I was pre-cancer.  I need to realize that some friends are never going to be more than "someone I once knew" (that's one of the hardest for me).  There is a self that I know took to the sidelines long ago because I needed more time.  I needed more focus on things like income, housework, and life's winding paths.  It is something I have been trying to rekindle, trying to find a way to weave it back into its past potential.  It is my artist self.  I feel more like "Julie" when I'm an artist.  I don't feel like I am in a void, I feel purpose, I feel whole.

I get a moment every once and a while to let it out, but it's not like it once was.  It's not the intensity it used to be.  I need to find that balance that allows me to be all parts of me: mother, wife, cancer dominater, and the Julie formerly known as artist.  My only hope and wish is that once some things are behind me, the reconstruction, some personal things within my life are resolved, I will find answers as to how to find this new balance.  Perhaps my focus will be easier to master once I feel my cancer chapter is more finalized.  Here's hoping...