February 1, 2019
by Jules (Julie A. Bonde)
WHAT IF?
Soon the
moment will be over and we’ll be in our Christmas party-prep mode. This year,
as we put up decorations, bought presents for loved ones and talked with our
family about plans, I found myself wishing this is how we approached more of
our lives. What if instead of just once a year, we quarterly or monthly spent a
day displaying beauty, listening to or singing great music and cherishing moments
with our loved ones? What if? What if it didn’t need to be a date on the calendar
or snow or the perfect tree? What if we just found uncelebrated days to be just
as lovely, just as full of desire to bring joy to one another? What if? What if,
more often, we asked others what they want and then did what we could to help
them get that? What if?
CHRISTMAS
THANKSGIVING
I am so
grateful for this cherished moment—for the music, for the food, for the sun, for
my sons nearby to plan the party with, for my best friend and partner Pete, to
share this messy and glorious life with. What if I dropped the worry about
getting the perfect gifts and the right food and just carried the gratitude
instead? Perhaps the gratitude will be the best gift I give this year. Perhaps.
I will begin
with you. I am so grateful for you in my world dear reader and friend. I couldn’t
be here writing this without you. I couldn’t share it without you to receive it.
You make ALL the difference in the world. Your presence in my life is cherished.
Thank you! Thank
you! Thank you!
With all my
heart,
Jules
December 23,
2021
Long,
dark nights come. It is true.
There
is barely time to catch a ray of sun before the day is over.
Long,
dark times come in life too.
There
is barely a glimmer of hope on the horizon.
Good
news is all but eclipsed by the burdens of life.
Sometimes
it seems as if the clouds will never move away.
Even
so, the light seems to burn brighter in the darkness
the
warmth of love seems more determined than ever
The
earth keeps turning, hearts keep beating,
Music
keeps humming in my dreams
Then
one day it is clear we have crossed that threshold
and
we're headed back to lighter days
the
darkness goes back to its cave
I pray that on this longest night of the year
you
can feel the music that connects you
the
hearts that love you
the
hope that burns on
and a
glimpse of the joy
that
will grow from this moment
(written
by Jules December 20, 2019)
Happy
Solstice dear friends!
Love,
jules
October 26, 2021
One of the ways I practice self-care is I take pictures. What? yes, it is self-care. Taking my camera with me helps me see the beauty, reminds me to look at what is right there around me. I take too many photos but I don't care. Taking the photos makes me so happy, it is worth every one of them. It just fills me with gratitude to see the beauty in the world.
In July we were staying in a cabin on an island in a lake with our kids and grands for a week. One morning, my husband and I were out in the kayaks and we found these turkey vultures perched in the upper branches of the island apparently drying their wings. I was stunned by the honor to see it. What fun to have my camera with me so I could capture it and then today finally get around to sharing it with you. What beautiful creatures turkey vultures are! and oh how they can soar!
Wings are for flying and for soaring. And our wings need care. I wonder if I do what is necessary to keep my wings ready to fly, not real ones of course but the wings of my heart and soul. What self care might be needed to make sure I am ready for flight? What daily routines might create a better environment for me to soar?
Perhaps, just taking the photograph is a good start? Perhaps.
I invite you to let yourself enjoy the beauty that you see and then let that lift your heart to soaring. Or to do something else that lifts your heart. Let's fly!
Let's enjoy the moment while we can!
praying for more self-care and wings! Love, Jules
October 6, 2021
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY KNEE?: On Saturday, September 18, Pete and I were cleaning house, preparing for a party at our house the next day. Pete was vacuuming the bathroom. I was rushing about hiding clutter. In my effort to be quick, I stopped paying attention to my feet and tripped over the vacuum cleaner power cord, falling hard on my knees on the wood floor of our music room.
My right knee took the brunt of the fall. We went to the emergency room that night and 5 hours later had only the news from them that they "saw no breaks" on the x-ray. They sent me home with a knee brace and encouragement to stay off it until it felt better. Well it didn't feel better. The pain kept waking me up at night. so I went to urgent care the following Thursday and got referred from there to an orthopedist.
TO UPDATE ON THE KNEE INJURY: I saw the orthepedist on Wednesday, September 29th. He did a quick exam and sent me off for more xrays. And sure enough, there actually was a crack. I have a longitudinal fracture in my knee cap. That explained the pain I had been having. In a way it was great news to me. I had been imagining a torn ligament somewhere that might put me in surgery. Instead, all I have is a fracture that will heal, likely in 4 to 6 weeks time. I am able to use it and even bear weight as I feel comfortable.
My knee has been improving daily. I no longer need crutches but I still wear a brace most of the time. On Monday, i walked around the block with Pete hanging on to me. It felt good. Yesterday I walked around 2 blocks. It felt okay. I am on the path to healing and am certain all will be well with my knee eventually.
Unfortunately, my upper back hurts and has been bothering me for awhile. that may also be a side effect of falling and maybe it too, will improve with time. Prayers for that.
SIDE EFFECTS UPDATE: my lymphedema is still there a bit but hasn't flared up in a long time. I am happy with that. my neuropathy in my feet and fingertips continues. Nothing I have tried seems to make any different ot the neuropathy. Sigh. More prayers for that.
Sigh! I miss my feet. I'm a barefoot girl from the beginning. I love being able to feel with my feet and now half that is missing and i can't be barefoot so much. I miss my feet so much.
And then there's my knees. I'm learning my knees are about more than kneeling or walking stairs. The knee is one of the main centers of our movement. All the tendons and muscles and bones connect right there. The knee is the heart of the leg. If it is in pain, we don't move so well, we wonder how to take the path. I am grateful for all my knees are able to bear and able to provide for me.
(based on the childhood rhyme)
one, two, buckle my shoe,
three, four, get out the door,
five, six, take pics,
seven, eight, lose some weight,
nine, ten, gain it back again,
eleven, twelve, forgive myself,
thirteen, fourteen, what is most important?
fifteen, sixteen, can I do anything?
seventeen, eighteen, ---maybe need some caffeine
nineteen twenty, thoughts aplenty!!!
Happy end of summer everyone!
August 31, 2021 (version 2)
Julie (jules) Bonde
September 1, 2021
Deep breath! September is here!
Just now, I was perusing Facebook, glancing at photos and reading here and there of people's tenderness or glory or adventure. And it just hit me, that even in the midst of chaos (and there is definitely plenty of chaose right now), even in the midst of so many reasons to grieve and struggle, even in the midst of a Facebook full of ridiculousness, there is wonder and mystery. There are people living into their authenticity and truth. There are people connecting with the beauty within and around them. There are people reaching out to support one another and the world and nature. Even in the midst of the crazinesss and busyness, there are lovely little blossoms growing out of the chaos and lighting up the horizon of my day.
Thank you each for taking a moment to share yourself here or elsewhere. thank you for taking a moment to be supportive or creative . Thank you for offering your honesty and vulnerability. Thank you for the songs and poems and stories and photos. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being you.
Thank you!
I hope to be sharing more with you in the near future. I am putting that intention out there.
Deep breath! September is here!
The Last Day
It was a big day for me. It still seems a bit surreal. Really? Am I really done? There are no more scans and biopsies scheduled. I won’t see my oncologist again until September 15th. (for the record, my particular kind of breast cancer does not have any blood markers…so the only way to tell if there is more cancer is scans and biopsies, of which I’ve had plenty). I’m still wrapping my brain around the idea that I might get to move on. Really? Meanwhile part of me is hopeful that I might actually get to make progress on my side effects as my body detoxes from the poison we know as chemo.
The First Day
Back in the day, it was a popular saying “today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Today that saying is just true for me. I feel like I’m starting over again, praying for guidance, for health, for presence of mind and heart to live fully and deeply. It is all that matters at this moment, to live fully and deeply and show up for myself and for others, the best I know how. There is still a lot of healing to do. There is a lot of work yet to do, a LOT of work to do but starting today, I have been the gift of another day to do it in.
I look forward to leaning more into my passions again. I look forward to being with Pete and our kids and grandkids for a week up at a cabin up north later this month. I look forward to many more quiet mornings sitting on the patio, listening to the birds sing while I sip my tea or do a sudoku or the crossword puzzle. I love waking up early for a quiet morning! I look forward to singing again more, now that we can, with all the lovely voices I’ve come to adore in the groups I sing with. I look forward to connecting with friends, as we are able and enjoying those magical moments when we just know that we are connected, that we are one, that this world is one with us. I look forward to more deep conversations about love and God with book groups and in spiritual direction and with family/friends.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I’m going to start by giving thanks and listening for my heart. I’m going to start by saying Thank you! And then having a few tears to honor this moment when I get to move on.
Peace be with you dear friends! Love be with you dear family!
Love, Jules
Thanks to Rena Lindgren for the photo of me walking through the stone threshold from our trip in 2015 to Pipestone National Monument.
June 24, 2021 with photos of tonight's sunset and moonrise!
On Tuesday, June 29th, I will be done with that nasty chemo pill and with treatment. After Tuesday i can focus on detoxing and doing what I can to help heal up all the side effects; especially the neuropathy. It will be a long road still, I suspect.
In many ways it is just another day and just another year and just another sunset. And in many ways, it is unique and special. Each day is unique, each sunset is unique and you never know what will happen in the lake or on the playground when Grandpa Pete and Solveig and WEndell and Sophie take off on their pirate ship.
Thanks be to God! Amen!
love you big,
Jules
Here is tonight's sunset and moon rise! Enjoy!
MY LAMENT A YEAR LATER---APRIL 27, 2020
DAY 1 OF ROUND 3 OUT 6 OF TAKING XELODA
The pattern to taking Xeloda has been taking four 500mg pills twice a day for 14 days, then 7 days off. So I just finished my “week off” and am starting on Round 3 of this pattern with one exception. My dose is now three 500mg pills twice a day instead of four.
One of the most common side effects of Xeloda is something called “hand/foot syndrome.” Hand-foot syndrome causes redness, swelling, and pain on the palms of the hands and/or the soles of the feet. Blisters are possible Just to be clear, this is not the same as peripheral neuropathy which is damage to the nerves of your hands and feet.
I already had neuropathy from having Taxol infusions last year. That neuropathy has not gone away and is aggravated by this new side effect of hand/foot syndrome. So now I have a combination of numbness, tingling, redness, and pain on both the soles of my feet and my fingers. In one case I did get blister on my foot. By the end of the second two weeks of taking the Xeloda my hands and feet were pretty sore.
Tylenol takes some of the edge off. I use a lot of lotions and ointments and wear socks and gloves to protect them. My body has clearly liked this last “week off.” Both my feet and hands recovered some. It is a strange thing to experience this. It is very hard to describe the sensations when there is a combination of numbness and pain. I have moments when I despair and grieve for the loss of my amazing healthy feet. Other times I find myself wallowing in deep gratitude for being able to still walk, to still type, however clumsily, to still be able to sing, to still be connected to friends and a delicious family. And I continue to be in awe of how magnificently our bodies are made, that even with all this stress, all these chemicals, the body continues to work on healing and making way for the sun and moon to shine within, the joy and sorrow to bring their colors. What a magnificent body it is; even as it is struggling or even more so as it struggles. Wow!
So, after letting my doctor know how things were going, she lowered my dosage for this next round. I pray that the side effects will be less severe this time around. If all goes well and I can hang in there for all 6 rounds of this, my last dose will be June 25, exactly a year after my first chemotherapy infusion in 2020. Please pray with me that this is the end of treatments and the end of any and all cancer in my body.
OTHER THINGS ARE HAPPENING
Meantime, other life is happening. Pete is project manager in replacing our old garage with a new one. The foundation for the new garage was poured on Good Friday which seems like a nice coincidence. In this Easter/Spring season, the garage will be coming to life also. Managing the project has taking a lot of Pete’s energy and I am extremely grateful I don’t need to do much. We have a friend of Pete’s sister Karen helping with the building of the shell. Pete & other Bonde members or friends will be putting on the siding and roof shingles and installing the electricity. I’m not sure how much Mr. Pete has time for his garden but I’m sure something will grow there anyway. Like our bodies, plants are also tenacious beings.
Meantime, we also pray for our
city (The Twin Cities), for our nation and the world, that healing may come to everyone’s body,
to everyone’s heart and to everyone’s family and community. That love may come.
That peace may grow out of gratitude and joy.
That kindness will be the habit that lines the streets and manages the space between us.
THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR KINDNESS AND PRAYERS!~love, Jules
What does spring mean to me? I have to say that after the year we had in 2020, everything needs to be redefined. I feel like we just threw out all our mindsets, all our previous beliefs about life, about democracy, about this country we live in, about how the world works, how nature works, how healing works, etc. Even the greening of the trees is going to be different this year. So, I am hard pressed to answer the question “what does spring mean to me?” The question itself implies a continuity that I am just not seeing.
Will it be a rainbow? How did Noah know that a rainbow was it? Will it be a green bud on that old bush in the back yard that we thought was dead? Will it be my granddaughter reading me her first whole book because she finally got to go back to school in person? Will it be that the numbness in my feet starts to go away and I can walk barefoot and feel the grass? What will be the sign that the spring of our humanity has returned? Will a republican and a democrat suddenly reveal on Twitter that they have been secretly working together and have a plan for cooperation to return to our government? Will we finally understand that healing requires that we breathe the air from the trees on the other side of the world? That we finally understand that healing requires leaning on the wisdom of the water carrier in the Congo even as we offer our financial support to her village? That we finally understand we are one? That we finally understand that we are one.
That will be spring to me this year---healing as community works together, healing as my body finding its way to wholeness again, healing as we reach our hands out and our hearts out touching each other with genuine kindness and care, healing as we finally begin to listen to each other’s stories, healing as we finally agree to support all humans as we would our brothers and sisters. This will be spring to me this year and it might not come in March or April. I don’t know if I’ll see the signs, but I pray that Noah will teach me how to know that a rainbow or the green grass or the eagle flying overhead is a sign that God’s grace has returned to us.
By Jules Bonde—2/2/2021
March 2, 2021 ---Meantime my indoor garden is super excited about the return of the sun and more daylight. This is my dining room. We get to eat with these lovelies every day. My plant friends bring me so much joy. I understand now why my mom paid so much attention to her houseplants. In fact, both my Christmas cacti and my African violets are from my mother. Thanks Mom! A living legacy filled with joy! Love you always Mom! Love you always houseplants!
Sunrise ~ February 16, 2021 Sunrise from my bedroom | Sunset ~ February 16, 2021 Sunset from our office |
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| The Sunrise of our New Life? I hope so. |
Today is my last day out of 20 radiation treatments! Wahoo! I can't believe it!
Four weeks of radiation has been way, way easier to handle than 5 months of chemotherapy or even surgery. Evenso, I've had to drive to the hospital every weekday for three weeks and get zapped. About a week ago I started getting the expected burn on my skin and an itchy rash. So it hasn't been without some discomfort and inconvenience. But it also hasn't been all bad.
During my visits, I met a lovely man from Zimbabwe. What a sweet human he is! Each day he greets everyone in the office as he walks in the door and asks how they are. I am glad to have crossed his path, however briefly. And every person who works on me at radiology treats me with kindness and dignity and affirmation. I am grateful for the peole who work there.
During my drives to and from, I've been learning more about country and our world as I listen to NPR radio shows. I've also been listening to a lovely book, "An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith" by Barbara Brown Taylor. This books focuses on all the ways in which we encounter God as we walk through our lives.
Alongside this time, I've been participating in a spiritual practices group via Zoom. This group is sponsored by our church but not exclusive to members. Since October, four of us have been taking turns teaching a new prayer practice each month. Last month we learned about focusing on compassion. My favorite part was the practice of breathing in the pain, holding it for a moment and then breathing it out and releasing it. The idea is to focus on someone who needs compassion and breathing in their pain and then releasing it. Cooincidentally, part of my radiationt treatments is to "take a deep breath and hold" while the radiation is administered. "Now you can breath," the therapist says when each position of radiation is accomplished. Due to my prayer focus on compassion, I've been using my daily radiation treatments as a time to prayer for healing, to breathe in the illness and breath it out, making space for the healing. I've been praying for myself and for others. And maybe I'm encountering God in the radiology therapy machine. Hmmm.
I never expected for this to happen, but it did. And as a result, I feel like my energy level has been good. Though I'm glad today is the end of it, I'm not worn out from it. I feel reassured and more confident that healing will come. Compassion is the beginning of healing right now for me and for my friends and neighbors and even those I disagree with. Perhaps as we make more room for compassion, we make more room for healing. I hope this is so.
Even as I end my treatments I am going to continue this practice: "Take a deep breath, breathe in the pain and hold it for a moment" then "Breathe out, releasing it all."
Will this be the end? I don't think so. But I do hope it is the beginning of a stronger healing time. I hope this for all of us. I hope this is the sunrise of our our new life!
It is not lost on me that there is a cancer of sorts in our culture too. I think we all feel it. Whether we know how to name it or how to cure it, we feel it in our bones or the shortness of our breath. It's been there a long time and only now got serious and big enough for us to really know that we need healing. We need to stop and allow healing to happen. 
This practice is not just about exercise. It is about seeing the other part of the world, the other part of our reality, outside of our four walls and the screens that connect us now. 
January 4, 2020
On the last day of the year, 12/31/2020, I went to see my radiologist for my mappings scans. This seemed an appropriate way to end the year, after all that has happened. This is the process for them to map out exactly what they will point the radiation at. A physicist works with the radiologist to create a plan using the scans. This week, on Wednesday, I will go back for a final review of the plan and a dry run. Then Thursday, I will start my official radiation treatments. They will be every weekday until I have done 20. My last radiation treatment is Wednesday, February 3rd. Whew!
I am feeling peaceful and hopeful about the radiation. I am assured that the side effects are minor and I am thrilled that it will be over in a month compared to 5 months of chemotherapy and all that mess. We can do this! Radiation can kill things scans can't see. The radiation treatments are mainly to prevent recurrence of the cancer.
My neuropathy continues to be an annoying issue. I keep hoping the feeling in my feet and fingers will someday come back. Sigh! Meantime, my hair is beginning to grow back. My grandson tells me it is "really soft."Yay! And so, I am grateful that you continue praying. My sister once said to me, "if we could bottle prayer, we could cure lots of things." Amen to that!
Meantime, Pete and I have had a wonderful holiday season with our COVID bubble, otherwise known as our kids and grandkids. Since it was also school break, that meant both Jacob and Karl had more time to be with us. We got see all of them for Christmas Eve and all of them at some point around New Year's. We are so grateful for this time to just be together and have some fun. It is good for our souls. I pray that all of you have had some moments of joy too over the holiday. Here is my New Year's Wish for you:
