by Ivy Hughes | Jul 15, 2019 | Dating after cancer, Life after breast cancer, Life after cancer, Relationships after cancer
I am and have been many things, a liar has never been one of them. Unfortunately, the affect that I seem to have on people these days makes me want to learn how to lie. When I spend time with a new person, the beast of a story that I’m working through shotguns any...
by Ivy Hughes | Jul 12, 2019 | Cancer grief, Life after breast cancer, Life after cancer, Surviving cancer, Your body after cancer
For the first time in my life, I spend very few hours of the day thinking about my body. I’m not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, an even, or an or. It’s just a fact. I think about my posture and holding it appropriately, but that awareness developed way before...
by Ivy Hughes | Jul 2, 2019 | Cancer grief, Life after breast cancer, Life after cancer, Mindfulness, Raising kids after cancer, Raising twins, Surviving cancer, Survivorship, Uncategorized
Most weekday mornings at my house start with a boob search party. “Boys,” I say. “Help me find my boobs.” “Mama, boob. Mama boob,” says Ryder as he squats down to look under my bed. “Hmmmm,” says Loren, following his mother’s verbal thought cues. My two year olds are...
by Ivy Hughes | Jun 22, 2019 | Life after breast cancer, Life after cancer, Mindfulness, Relationships after cancer, Survivorship, Women empowerment
If I could put the love that I feel for the women in my life into a capsule and get any guy to swallow it, I would silver platter myself the perfect partner. With the exception of romantic love, the women in my life tick every love box any psychologist anywhere could...
by Ivy Hughes | Jun 19, 2019 | Cancer grief, Life after breast cancer, Life after cancer
I would like to know if the two assholes who coined the phrase, “stages of grief,” have ever experienced the sewage that is grief, piles and piles of shit slopping onto an already overwhelmed hill only to avalanche into a sticky, suffocating, crystalized pile of slop....
by Ivy Hughes | Jun 19, 2019 | Life after breast cancer, Life after cancer, Relationships after cancer, Surviving cancer, Survivorship
I discredit pretty much every piece of advice that my parents give me. I discredit dad because his way of getting to Texas from Colorado is via Zanzibar. I discredit mom because she has feelings, many of them. After proving quite heartedly that my decision making...
by Ivy Hughes | Jun 19, 2019 | Life after breast cancer, Life after cancer, Raising kids, Raising kids after cancer, Raising twins, Surviving cancer, Survivorship
My twin two year olds are teaching me a hell of a lot about how I speak, specifically how I use curse words. This started last weekend the YMCA of the Rockies’ pool. As I was pulling into the parking lot, I said, “Oh damn” about something—who knows—and the backseat...
by Ivy Hughes | Jun 1, 2019 | Life after breast cancer, Life after cancer, Raising kids, Raising kids after cancer, Surviving cancer, Survivorship
In February 2019, I wrote an email to my lawyer saying that I wanted to give up all rights to my children. I felt like I was being pushed out of their lives emotionally, I felt incapable of being anything they would ever look up to, I was heartbroken every two weeks...
by Ivy Hughes | May 29, 2019 | Life after breast cancer, Life after cancer, Travel
Just after sundown the first night of safari in Kenya’s Naboisho Conservancy near the Masai Mara, six lionesses corner a group of water buffalo. The water buffalo moo and clumsily stumble around the boulders that separate them from the lions. Myself, a Dutch couple...
by Ivy Hughes | May 12, 2019 | Life after breast cancer, Raising kids, Relationships after cancer, Surviving cancer, Survivorship, Women
I view my mother as this superpower whose energy and love sort of hold my life together. No matter where I’ve traveled or lived or what kinds of crazy assed schemes I’ve come up with, my mother’s love has been my container. She contains so that I can live, so that I...
