Terri's Big Dream

Today's guest post is by Terri Wingham.  Thank you Terri for sharing your dream with me.  I have heard countless women saying that their lives and focus changed dramatically after cancer, and that their old lives seem empty.  Her dream may inspire you to join in or find your own dream.


"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting, he thought, as he looked again at the position of the sun and hurried his pace." - One of my favourite quotes from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

Cancer turned me from a pragmatic realist into a dreamer. In my old life, I wrapped my fingers, like the sucking tentacles of an octopus, around anything I thought could control. I thought if I could work 60-80 hours a week, juggle my schedule to try to make other people happy, and earn a six figure salary by the time I turned 30, someone would give me the key to a mystical place where my worries would disappear and I could finally relax.

Then, October 27, 2009 arrived and as I sat on a scratchy purple couch outside the doors of one of the cavernous conference rooms at the Vancouver Convention Center, a doctor's voicemail pried the fingers of control open and I watched life as I knew it, slip right through.

Some of you know the rest of the story...18 months of treatment including 3 surgeries, 4 round of chemotherapy, baldness, a flat chest, hot flashes, depression, and disillusionment....what a ride. But, then...on New Years Day of this year, the heavy fog surrounding my heart lifted and for the first time ever, I listened to the Hell Yes in my gut and came up with a crazy dream to go to Africa.

With an outpouring of support from friends, family, and readers, I raised the money to participate in a six week volunteer program in the Townships of Cape Town. Some of you came along as I crashed into love with a group of mischievous 1-3 year olds, met women my age who had lost entire families to AIDS, and saw more joy on the faces of people who struggled to provide their families with the basic necessities of life, then I ever felt when I earned my six figure income.

If you visit the My Story page on A Fresh Chapter, you will read my (still unanswered) email to Oprah and learn about the book I am sweating through writing. But, today, I want to tell you about a different dream, a MUCH bigger dream that might involve you or someone you know. If I can just get past the anxiety building in my chest and string letters into sentences so I can share it with you, I know I will get one step closer to making it a reality.

I can hear you saying, as you think of all of the other things you need to do today, "C'mon already....what's the dream?"

So, here it is.

I want to start a Not For Profit to help other cancer survivors volunteer internationally. If you have a few moments, please come visit my new page entitled My Big Dream where I tell you more about why I think this experience might heal other survivors in the way it healed me.

I would love to hear your thoughts, positive or negative, about this idea because I don't pretend to know what will work for everyone. Each of us who have faced cancer have handled the experience in our own way and come through it with a different perspective about what we need to move forward. This idea is still a red faced, naked, newborn baby and I know your input will help shape it through the sleepless nights and dirty diapers of its infancy...

In order to start making this dream a reality, I am officially giving up my apartment in Vancouver on September 30th, lending or giving away almost all of my worldly possessions and packing my bags for a Round The World Trip. As I write these words, the old me wants to drop-kick the new me and wrap my arms around everything I own and refuse to let go.

But,  every time I feel the old tightness of fear clamp down on my chest, I look at Mark Twain's quote, written on a card, and stuck to my fridge: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines! Sail away from the safe harbour! Catch the trade winds in your sails! Explore! Dream! Discover!

I'm not suggesting that all of us should quit our jobs and travel the world in the hopes of starting a Not For Profit. But, I would love to bring you with me as I figure out a way to partner with a volunteer organization and then raise awareness for this new venture by traveling the world, volunteering in Asia, Africa, and maybe even South America and then putting the structure in place to help other people dream big, post-cancer, reinvent your life kind of dreams.

So, what do you think?

If you want to get involved or have any ideas around shaping this Not For Profit, please email me. I would LOVE your support and to hear your feedback. I have no idea how to make this happen, but recent events in my life have taught me that Courage is Not the Absence of Fear and if I dream a big dream, anything is possible.

Terri Wingham is a blogger, world traveler, friend, sister, aunt, daughter, wine lover, post-wine booty shaker, writer, dreamer, and breast cancer survivor. Terri’s current address is in Vancouver, Canada, but after her recent return from 10 weeks in Africa, she is itching to finish her book, pack her bags, and travel the world while she starts a Not For Profit to help other cancer survivors volunteer internationally. Follow Terri’s adventures on her blog: A Fresh Chapter. http://www.afreshchapter.com/.

Elyn Jacobs

elyn@elynjacobs.com

http://elynjacobs.blogspot.com

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Elyn Jacobs is President of Elyn Jacobs Consulting, Inc. and a breast cancer survivor.  She empowers women diagnosed with cancer to navigate the process of treatment and care, and she educates about how to prevent recurrence and new cancers.  She is passionate about helping others get past their cancer and into a cancer-free life.

The Libyan Gamble

Libya. WTF? In a nation as polarized as we are, things aren't supposed to be this complicated. You're either Pro-War or you're in with Big Peace. You're either a neocon or a realist. You're either Pro-UN Internationalism or Pro-US Unilateralism. What do you do when your deliberative President reaches a similar conclusion to that of a "decider?" We're supposed to know exactly what to think, which party officials will do what, and which voting blocs will behave in what ways.

Karl Rove isn't supposed to "God Bless" Hillary Clinton.

Adrastos says it well:

[G]ood intentions are NOT sufficient. After watching the Bushies give Wilsonian internationalism a right wing twist, I'm a born again realist in matters of war and peace.

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I *really* hope I'm wrong about this because I'd love to see that murderous brown clad shitbird Gaddafi toppled. But the way they've gone about this gives me the heebie jeebies.

I think this is the biggest gamble America's made in decades. Ousting Gaddafi quickly with the combined might of Allied air-power and United Nations mandate restores badly needed credibility to internationalism. America no longer world policeman? I'm down with that. A big plus would be the preservation of the Arab pro-reform movement sweeping the Middle East. If newly liberated Libyans are cheering in the streets and setting up a post-Gaddafi government, Bahrain and Yemen are more likely to cut some deals at the conference table. And that's all secondary to the elimination of one of the world's last true madmen.

But if Gaddafi wins? Everything falls apart. Internationalism and the United Nations will be worthless. The United States will have sealed the deal in establishing a new era of Great Powers (that is coming quickly anyway but why hurry it along?). Gaddafi will butcher people on state television and no one will be able to do a thing about it. The Arab Reforms stop in their tracks, as dissent is crushed by autocrats who never have to listen to anyone but themselves again, ever.

That's just what happens immediately, and I'm not seeing a middle ground.

How did we get here? Let us count the ways:

Somalia was such a disaster for internationalism that little was done about Rwanda & Burundi, the Sudan, and - of course - Somalia.

The Balkans were the messy win of internationalism at work: proving that thousands dead, genocide, and war crimes in the neighborhood will eventually push the Europeans to clean house and bring America along for the ride.

Afganistan was the base of operations for those who attacked us on September 11th, the USS Cole, and in Kenya and Tanzania; it was an ongoing human-rights disaster; and it was a mess we had no small part in creating. I don't argue about our nation going to war in Afganistan, though I wonder what strategies could have been used to end that war sooner.

Iraq. We've really been in a state of undeclared war with Iraq since 1991, when the triumphant coalition of international allies drove Hussein's armies out of Kuwait. But we never really left. This is the longest-running external armed conflict in US history, and we are now on President #4 trying to end this cycle. The American people are still arguing about the restart of this war in 2003, basically so we have something other than Vietnam to argue about. And we're arguing about it despite the fact that the troops have held together two invasions this most recent invasion and an occupation without a clear strategy from Washington; without the appropriate resources needed to take, hold, and rebuild a nation of millions; and without true international support. That is an amazing accomplishment that is usually ignored when talking about this war.

Because the talking is mostly arguing about why we went to war in the first place. And that argument, based on our intervention in Libya, apparently hasn't been settled or even acknowledged. Which is one of the ways we've gotten to where we are today.

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World Police & the Foreign Entanglements

As wonderful as it would be to remove a tyrant, it is difficult to imagine the United States engaging in another regional conflict when our prior two regional engagements have yet to be concluded successfully. I'm not even talking about all the possible realist and pragmatic obstacles that exist to US intervention in Libya, I'm discussing things from a straight-up resource managment scenario.

If your domestic priority is the subsidization of the uber-wealthy, your nation cannot also pursue unending wars and military conflicts as a foreign priority. At least, your nation cannot do both of these things, and hope to remain solvent.

In America, our governments are slashing funding for medicine, schools, roads, infrastructure, and programs that assist our most vulnerable citizens under the guise of "fiscal responsibility," even while our nation maintains a robust military presence all over the world, and is still engaged in not one but two ongoing wars.

And now, a lot of the same folks who have argued that health care and schools are too expensive want to get us to go in, guns blazing, and rescue a bunch of Libyan rebels who many not really represent the "good guys" we'd like to pretend they are on the evening news.

Which is it, fellas? Are we broke, or do bombs grow on trees?

I will be the first one to say that Quaddafi's continued rule is not in the interests of American foreign policy; nor is it in the interests of human rights and dignity. The best thing would be a cavalry-call of international smackdown to remove the liveried dictator from power and drag his ass before The Hauge.

But there is only so much the United States can do about that based on the resource management skills of our former and current national leaders. The nations of Europe have militaries, as do the nations of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. (Well, I guess our allies the Saudis are too busy putting down the popular demonstrations with their military in another US client state to be bothered by an actual military threat that exists in their region.)

And that's just the resource managment angle. The moral responsibility angle is still out there. Luckily, some real conservatives are specifically examining America's responsibilities in this scenario. Too bad we didn't read more of that back in 2002.

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Neoconservative Fantasy Life

This weekend when I wrote about Tunisia, I wondered how long it would take Neoconservatives to start taking credit for the Tunisian people's revolt.

Back home, failed neoconservatives - architects of our failures in Iraq, Iran and Afganistan - will point to the recent and ongoing Iraq war as the catalyst for the Tunisian revlot. "See!" They will say, "that's what happens when democracy is spread."

Some may see this as prescient, but this is easy to predict. After all, this train is never late.

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Tunisia

This primarily Muslim nation in North Africa just drove out their autocratic leader. Americans, still reeling from Tuscon, may not know what to make of this, but Hillary Clinton fairly spells it out:

"While some countries have made great strides in governance, in many others, people have grown tired of corrupt institutions and a stagnant political order," she said. She appealed for leaders to heed calls to rein in rampant graft and offer all of their people a better way of life.

"Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever," Clinton said. "If leaders don't offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum."

This is one of the most mature statements I've heard an American Secretary of State make about the Middle East in almost a decade, and it fairly sums up the situation. How does it affect the United States? Because some of those "others" filling the vaccum happened to be Osama bin Laden.

For a long, long time, the United States ended up supporting too many anti-Democracy autocrats in charge of oil-rich Arab nations in the Middle East. Our intention was strategic control of oil, and democratic institutions might have threatened that. Better to engage a client autocrat to keep the communists at bay than foster democratic sentiment and give them a chance to change government through voting.

In the absence of political enfranchisement, the populations turned to the "others," those selling false religious fundamentalism, that could not be effectively controlled by these nation's autocratic rulers.

Our greatest failures? Our support for the Shah of Iran, our support for the Mujahedeen in Afganistan and our support for Saddam Hussien in Iraq. All decisions which have cost American lives, and have been doing so for decades.

What will happen in Tunisia? Hopefully, a liberalization will occur, and this nation will get to embark on their own experiment with self-government. Hopefully, they will never have to experience a rash of political suicides and riots that come along with internal unrest and self-propelled regime change. Hopefully, the people who just gave their blood for economic and political liberty will not surrender that liberty to tyrants of a religious stripe.

Back home, failed neoconservatives - architects of our failures in Iraq, Iran and Afganistan - will point to the recent and ongoing Iraq war as the catalyst for the Tunisian revlot. "See!" They will say, "that's what happens when democracy is spread."

Do not heed their words, for we do not know how Tunisia will reinvent herself, and we know from experience that neocons would have rather played ball with a corrupt autocrat than with a messy but vibrant democracy. This is what happens when the people choose, not when a government is forced upon them.

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