Uncovering Our Muffin Tops

Whitney, the woman I wrote about in the last blog, passed away over the weekend ... she has been on my mind along with her two daughters and her husband. I remember her coming to a Heartworks meeting with her daughters last year to sell the bracelets they were making to raise money for Breast Cancer Research. They call it "Sisters for a Cure" and the bracelets are beautifully made out of soda can tabs. The girls spoke at the meeting while Whitney stood behind them, stroking their hair while they spoke.
I remember thinking that even though I barely knew this woman, and I don't know what it feels like to have cancer,  I knew how she felt about those two little girls. I feel the same about mine. It made me love her. Love her girls and love the fact that 40 women were being reminded of how fragile life is ... how quickly it can change ... and how on any given day it can be our turn to set up chemotherapy treatments and have to depend on other people for meals, rides and play dates for our kids.
This is what I love about Heartworks ... how it sucks the ego, image and pretense right out of everything. The night these two girls stood up to tell us their story about having a mom sick with cancer, and why they make their bracelets, there was not one woman in that audience thinking about the shoes they had on, what their hair looked like or what size jeans they were wearing.
Simply put, Heartworks cuts through the crap and gets to what is important. It snaps us out of the false reality we can all so easily dwell in if gone unchecked ... the false reality of "that will never happen to me" and that if we love people enough, they will never die.
I stand by the door and watch women come into the meetings. I watch them blot newly applied lipgloss as they step into the house. I watch some of them keep their coats on to cover their "muffin top" or their "not hip enough" outfit. I watch how their eyes wonder around, surveying the house, taking in the decor and comparing it to their own. And at the end of the meeting, I look at them again, after witnessing someone like Whitney, living day to day in the true reality of the unknown with her two little girls hanging on to every moment they have with their mom. I notice that as the same women leave, the shine on their lips has dulled, their coats are now being carried, and the only place their eyes are wondering is to other women to hug goodbye until next month.
Without the willingness to get real, we miss the true connection that we all so deeply crave. Illness has a way of forcing us to get real. Heartworks has a way of helping us to sit with it. Shiny lips, muffin top and all.