I chose Prairie Flower Prose as the title of this blog because I find prairie flowers delicate and beautiful but also wild and hearty. Many prairie flowers have deep roots and grow from a point underground. This attribute makes them well suited for fire. Fire is surprisingly essential to a prairie flower’s growth. Fire destroys the weeds and other invasive plants around the flowers that were choking the flowers off from the sun and robbing them of the nutrients in the soil.
This is why I am fascinated and in awe of the prairie flower and garner for myself its physical traits of beauty and resilience despite or even in spite of destruction. In order for a prairie to flourish, it must burn until it is blackened to a crisp only to sprout new life again.
Like many of a person's life transitions, a prairie goes dormant only to spring back to life over and over. This process of destruction (fire) is for me analogous to life’s tragedies that come our way. New growth: emotional and or spiritual growth often appears after our personal fires.
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In 2016, I found myself in a doctor’s office staring at the results of a genetic test showing I had an 85% chance of getting breast cancer and a 40% chance of getting ovarian cancer. The terrible options I had before me were to screen every 6 months for breast cancer or have a preventive double mastectomy.
Rather than wait for cancer to show up, I opted for the difficult decision to lop off my perfectly healthy breasts and to have them reconstructed.
This blog post, explores the emotional impact of losing my breasts and the impossible task of trying to hold on to a version of myself that no longer existed.