Same spot, 30 years later. @ Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco, California
Life often feels like a series of unexpected twists and turns. But have you ever noticed how a series of random events can somehow take you back to the same place you started?
We wander off this way or that way in life and sometimes feel like our choices take us off our expected paths. Yet, one way or another, life brings us back to where we started, either literally or symbolically. These are the pinnacle moments in our life where everything seems to come full circle.
Whether it is a major life event like a birthday or anniversary or the culmination of years of hard work, these are the moments worth celebrating. These are the times we will remember with smiles later. I believe each turn we take around the sun is an opportunity to look back at where we’ve been and set our sights on where we’d like to go next.
Going through cancer has given each birthday I am blessed enough to celebrate with friends and family a deeper, more profound meaning. When it comes down to it, all I really want is more time. More time to mother, be a wife, daughter and friend. My biggest wish is for more time to create memories with my loved ones that will live on long after I’m gone.
A week ago, on December 5th, I celebrated my birthday. Less than 24 hours later, I was flying across the country to California with my family to celebrate my birthday back where it all began for me. The most incredible part was this trip was thrown together on a whim just two weeks before. We weren’t planning on traveling during the middle of the holiday season, but when you get a chance to visit San Francisco you must take advantage of the opportunity.
California will always hold a special place in my heart. Returning to the Bay Area brings a sense of going home. It’s where I entered the world and where some of my earliest and happiest memories took place. I also experienced many firsts in California: My first words, first steps, first friends and even my first significant loss.
My time in California, particularly the Bay Area, brings back a bittersweet mixture of memories. I was 5 years old, the same age as my twins when my family moved from California. Getting to visit my childhood home and park in San Ramon with my family was an incredibly moving experience. You could almost say it was meant to be because we pulled up to our old home at exactly 11:11 am on 12/7. I was so moved I snapped a picture of the dash on our rental van to capture the moment.
We took a family walk to our favorite neighborhood vista and my children got to play at my favorite childhood park. Although the weather that day was extremely rainy, the rain cleared up during our time in San Ramon and rainbows seemed to be following us around as we toured our old neighborhood.
Family walk to our favorite neighborhood vista in San Ramon, CA.
Rainbows following us to my favorite childhood park in San Ramon, California.
Rainbows touching the hillside in San Ramon, California.
Visiting California reminded me of the same forces that carved the canyons, mountains and coast made me. It’s incredible how such beauty, wonder and potential devastation can coexist so precariously.
My family was living in the Bay Area during California’s last major earthquake in 1989. What is now known as the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake happened on October 17 at 5:04 p.m. local time just before the start of the third game of the World Series between the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants. I was 4 at the time and I vividly remember riding my Big Wheel tricycle in our backyard in San Ramon and looking over to see the water in our pool churning like a big tidal wave. My mom and brother came running outside to get me as soon as they felt the earthquake. To make matters worse, my grandma was flying in from Chicago that night and my dad was on his way to pick her up from the airport. He crossed the upper deck of the Bay Bridge 9 minutes before it collapsed due to the earthquake. The 6.9 magnitude earthquake lasted only 15 seconds but it wreaked havoc throughout San Francisco, Oakland and the Bay Area, claiming over 60 lives and injuring over 3,500 people.
The Loma Prieta earthquake caused the upper deck of the Bay Bridge to collapse. My dad crossed over the Bay on this bridge just 9 minutes before it partially collapsed that day.
Part of the 880 Freeway in Oakland also collapsed during the Quake of ‘89.
The Marina District in Downtown San Francisco after the 1989 earthquake.
Downtown San Francisco: 1989 vs. Present Day. Buildings have been reinforced and retrofitted to be able to withstand another earthquake of this magnitude.
Living through the events of that day, showed me how life can change in a matter of seconds. I remember the uneasiness that hung in the air that day and the aftershocks kept shaking the ground every so often. I can still vividly recall how our dog kept running in circles for hours due to the constant reverberations. Afterward, I remember driving around a seeing the devastation first hand. I can recall seeing large cracks in the cement and buildings ripped apart. Thankfully our home had minimal damage. However, that wasn’t the first earthquake I experienced living there. In total, I can distinctly remember the feeling of being in three earthquakes in the few years we lived in California. One time, a significant earthquake hit during the middle of my dental exam. I remember the nurse screaming and the pictures on the walls rattling so hard they almost fell.
Revisiting the Bay Area 30 years after such devastation showed me firsthand how much progress can be made and how much can be rebuilt and regrown in just one generation. Ask any Californian and they would probably say another major earthquake is only a matter of time. It seems the potential to experience a natural disaster is the price you pay to live among such natural beauty.
In many ways, learning to live on the edge of chaos and catastrophe is a similar to being in recovery. Chaos is often required before a new, healthier system can emerge. For example, in homeopathy, Hering's Laws of Cure, states complex adaptive systems don’t change in a predictable, linear way. Rather Hering’s Laws state that healing progresses from the top downwards, and within to outwards. Healing progresses from more important organs to those of lesser importance. Disease symptoms are released and cured in the reverse chronological order of their onset.
Hering's Laws of Cure reminds us that our body has an innate wisdom in healing itself, and that its processes of purification and regeneration don't happen in a random or haphazard fashion. Rather, there is an inherent order and consistency to the healing and purification process. So, when we make a conscious decision to improve our health or fitness, parts of our system will inevitably collapse into “chaos” in order to allow for the emergence of a better, more efficient system. With this in mind, we must learn to trust the process. We must learn to see that death and destruction is a necessary part of the growth cycle. Sometimes everything must fall apart so it can come together better in the end.
The potential for disaster is always looming. Yet all we can really do is learn to accept the uncertainty and volatility of Mother Nature. We do our best through diet and lifestyle changes to minimize our risks of cancer or reoccurrence, but the danger will always be there in some form. We must learn to rise about fear. Sometimes the fear doesn’t go away. We have to go forward afraid. But I’ve learned once you push through that experience you will often realize you were stronger and capable of enduring more than you could ever imagine.
Life is full of profound moments that we sometimes don’t fully understand until the very end. So often we expect the events in our life to unfold in a linear way. We believe we must go from point A to get to point B. We believe we must have XYZ in order to be truly happy. However, when we get a glimpse of the big picture, we can see that all these twists and turns were taking us to exactly what we needed to experience at that time.
I’ve learned there are no short-cuts to coming full circle. Each segment, arc, and tangent of our life circle is an important part of our story; without those experiences, we wouldn’t be the person we are today.
Healing from cancer and other traumatic experiences are anything BUT linear. Rather, healing goes in a spiral. Sometimes it’s ruthless and relentlessly pushing us forward and gently pulling us back, again and again, exposing layer by layer until we become wholly transformed into another version of ourselves.
Change often challenges us with the choice to move on to the new or hang on to old. When we are confronted with immense change, we can either become better or bitter. For me, 2019 was about learning to find stability amidst the calm and chaos of life. I’m learning to balance the fear of reoccurrence with the wonder and excitement of being alive.
Looking ahead to 2020, my goal is to say yes more than no to new experiences. I’m want to break out of my comfort zone. I’m taking more trips and more adventures. I’m reconstructing myself from the fragments of what was and finding the silver lining of what may be.
Sources:
1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake
Understanding the Healing Crisis