An Epiphany?

I heard someone say, "With enough hard work and dedication, dreams can become a reality."  I know it may sound trite, and we've all been told similar things before, but for some reason, tonight it really resonates with me.

You see, even under normal circumstances, it's scary to take risks.  In the past few years, I've spent a lot of energy challenging fears.  I was terrified to go back to school, after working for several years.  Once I was there, I challenged my perception of my abilities to be successful in the sciences.  Transferring to Seattle U, I took on my insecurities about my intellect.  When I started at UW, I was shaking in my boots, surrounded by 50k other students, and not knowing a soul really shook me up.  It would have been easy to just hide away, get my degree and leave, completely unnoticed.  But I took a risk, and threw myself into making friends and connections.  Then came choir.  Not only did I face my fear of music (performing that is),  I met some AMAZING people who encouraged and empowered me, and hopefully will be lifelong friends.  In the end, I even achieved my goal of performing a solo (take that stage fright!!!) I was scared to graduate, and yup, did that too.  Afterwards, even with all the challenges of finding a job, I took risks in applying for jobs that challenged me, and perhaps I wasn't even qualified for.  In the end, I ended up with a great company, actually using my degree.  Facing all these fears and negative perceptions of myself had built up an incredible amount of confidence and self esteem.  My next plans and goals were to get married, make babies and live happily ever after with a minivan and maybe a shitzsu.

Then I was diagnosed with cancer.

No matter what achievements you've made, goals you've met, or dreams you've carried through your life, absolutely nothing hits you like being told you're dying. Just like the tsunami in Japan, my entire world was wiped out with one phone call.  It didn't matter that I'd sung my heart out, earned 2 degrees, or that I had a shit ton of future plans and goals ahead of me.  It was shattered.  I suddenly went from the world being an open playground, to being a virtual slave to my body's limitations.  I had no real choices, other than to do radical, life altering surgery.  The whole, "yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." thing has some serious SHIT HOLE tourist attractions.  I recommend skipping it on your next vacation.

So what do you do when you have no confidence left, your dreams are shattered, and you're trapped in a whirling vortex of fear, panic and terror?  How do you break the paralysis of panic?

So, *big ginormous deep breath*, my new challenge: GET MY FUCKING LIFE BACK!!  Since Feb 2nd, I've dealt with the first part of that, namely, kicking cancer in the gonads.  Physically, I'm healed, although menopause is gonna be an ongoing pain in the ass!  I've got my job back, and financially pretty much back on track.  What's lingering now is letting go of the fear, and to regain my confidence to set and meet goals.   I guess, even more important, I need to figure out a whole new identity for myself.  Great, good to know it's something simple, right?