Emma Jarrett - In This Moment

Once faced with the diagnosis of cancer, my biggest challenge was in choosing what approach to take. It felt like a cruelly urgent "do or die" exercise in learning to trust my own intuition AND rational thought when faced with the expertise of medical science (and the $7 billion cancer industry lurking behind it), the art and efficacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the experience of others who have walked their own path with cancer and the opinions of those who know me sometimes better than I know myself. And the day I realized that there was no single, right pathway to take with a promised, certain outcome, was monumental. I woke up to the fundamental truth that I had no control over whether I would live or die. I was frightened beyond words, yet liberated and relieved at the same time. My breathing calmed and expanded and everything looked brighter and more miraculous. This poem was my best way to describe how it felt to me, and it still gives me shive

It has been a while.   Life has been colourful - to put it mildly.   I seem to be out the other side with a clarity about what truly matters to me.   Hence renaming this blog, In This Moment. We are right here in it, after all. And hello to you as you choose to spend this moment of yours reading my words. Hello! Take a breath and settle in, if you choose to stay. It’s your moment of choice. It has taken a humbling tussle with cancer to open my eyes to the moment I am in. Moments which can be a few seconds; a fleeting interaction, a happy thought. Or periods of time delineated by some external structure; a work day, a treatment schedule or a plane trip. And then moments as life stages; mothering a newborn, high school education, a career, even dying well as you acknowledge your last days. All these hold a context for the minuscule moment which is accompanied by my next breath in and subsequent release.   How am I going to spend this moment that I am present to?

January 2015 saw me completing my 50 th  year and launched me into what I am blithely calling My Next 50.   I fully realize that I have very little control over how many more I will live, but let’s just say my plan involves 5 more decades. But how do you plan for that?! I marvel at all the elements that went into those first 50 years; the growing, the learning, the family and friends, the books and music, the world events and cultural shifts that have accompanied and influenced me. But most of all I marvel at all  the choices . The choices that I felt encouraged to take or was discouraged from taking are truly what have added up to me being the person I am, with the community, the friends, the children, the memories and the plans that I have. It’s pretty mind-blowing when I think about how this all accumulated and I feel filled with gratitude and awe. But what about all those plans? How do I now plan another 5 decades? How do I ensure those plans will be given the best c