Rocking the Pink (31 page)

I waited for Brad to resist. To roll his eyes and wonder aloud why I had to go so . . .
big
with all of this. But he didn't. In fact, he didn't seem surprised at all. “Of course you do, honey,” he responded. “Lucy's gotta get into the Copacabana.”

I kissed Brad, laughing, and rushed to make a phone call to the person who had opened the front door of my tornado-ravaged, black-and-white house, the person who had allowed me to see how colorful life could be if only I would reveal, and embrace, my true heart.

Matthew sounded happy to hear from me, as usual.

“Hey, Cuz,” he greeted me in his familiar, laid-back voice. “How's it going?”

“Hey, Cuz,” I answered back, smiling into the phone. “I've decided to make my second album.”

“Naturally.”

“Will you produce it for me?” I knew it was a lot to ask, given his busy touring schedule.

“Cuz, I thought you'd never ask.”

When I was lying in bed—bald, skinny, and gray, not sure if I was still alive or if my ship had already sailed—I heard a soft voice whispering in my ear.
You'll thank me one day,
it said.

In my vulnerable and weakened state, I was not surprised to hear the voice, actually, but I
was
surprised by the content of the message. How could I ever be thankful for this nightmare?
Cancer is a bastard. May it never come back into my life, and may it never be visited on another human being.

And yet here I am, two years past my initial diagnosis, and there is no doubt that cancer has been the catalyst for untold blessings in my life. And for those blessings, I do indeed say thank you.

For one thing, were it not for cancer, I never would have known that my face shape is so well suited to short hair.
Thank you, cancer!

But, of course, there's more to be thankful for than a flattering new hairstyle. Much more.

I now have the inside scoop about a card game being played every single day right under our noses: Every day, God fans out a deck of cards, facedown, and instructs:
Pick a card, any card.
Until I picked the “cancer card” that fateful day, my card had always read PICK ANOTHER CARD. And I had just taken that for granted. When I eventually pulled the card with CANCER stamped across it, I cursed my bad luck. I felt singled out.
This must be a mistake!
But then, slowly, with time and lots of support, I accepted my card. And, with no other option, I played the card I had been dealt to the best of my ability.

Now, I know I must go “all in” with my chips, every single day. I can't control anything else, perhaps, but I can choose to be happy right now. And if I make that choice, then that's everything. Because only
right now
actually exists, anyway. I'm just grateful for every day I get to pick a card.

I was stripped bare by cancer, and I'm not talking about losing my hair or my hips (which have both come back, by the way). Losing my physical self somehow jump-started the process of losing extra figurative baggage, too. As I battled for my very life, it took too much energy to nurture any pretenses, and the layers started peeling off, one by one, until I was exposed and raw. Off went my vanity. Goodbye, ego. Adios, people-pleasing. Sayonara, complacency. Arrivederci, pride. And then, at the bitter end, my self-confidence and self-reliance left me, too. I was completely humbled and in need.

When my treatments were over and some color had come back into my cheeks, I turned my attention to all those layers crumpled in a heap on the floor. And I realized,
Hey, I can cherry-pick which ones to
put back on.
First things first: I quickly picked up and reattached my newly refurbished self-confidence and self-reliance.
Whew!
And then I examined everything else in the pile.
Hmm.
There was nothing else worth reattaching, so I left everything else on the floor.

In all that new space, my true self expanded, flooding into nooks and crannies my cast-offs had previously occupied. I was a helium balloon, filled to the brim with who I really am. Life became . . . simpler.

I do not pretend to have spiritual or medical answers for anyone else, but I believe that the mind, body, and spirit are all connected. For many years, I thought I could wear a colorful scarf around my neck, despite the fact that scarves are not me at all, and play a character in a movie constructed inside my head, without consequences for my soul. I thought I could do all the “right things,” the things a good person is “supposed to do”—unrelated to my deepest hopes and desires and talents—and nonetheless feel sufficiently fulfilled in life by external kudos and approval. I thought I could live with extreme stress at my job for the majority of my waking hours, forcing myself to be a pit bull when I wasn't one—and yet not have that stress affect my mind, body, or spirit. I thought I could
compartmentalize.

Well, we all know how that worked out for me. By day I felt physically ill, like I had a “terminal illness”; and by night I dodged oncoming locomotives. And yet I never changed course—until the day I was diagnosed with cancer. Really, I would have saved myself a lot of aggravation if I'd just listened to (and followed) my inner voice before it began shrieking hysterically into my ear. Within
minutes
of learning I'd been diagnosed with cancer, I was defiantly declaring the end of
my legal career. Why the hell did I think I needed the golden ticket of a potentially terminal illness to begin living my life in earnest?

Before cancer, I had started down the path of self-emancipation, of course. I had already recorded my album and was happily skipping down the musical road. But I was doing so with caution. “I'm a lawyer who sings,” I told people at cocktail parties, enjoying the novelty but not wanting to be pegged as a full-blown “dreamer.” Were it not for cancer (or perhaps some other life-changing event that might have come along), it is highly unlikely, in my view, that I would have taken a belly-flopping leap of faith—a leap with all my heart—to pursue my dreams. I probably would have stayed grounded in my head, at least in part, never willing to admit to the world at large, “Yes, my head is in the clouds. I follow my heart. Oh, and by the way, I'm a people person, too.”

As it turns out, when I have faith in myself, when I listen carefully to the voice inside me, I am my own best woobie.

It has been quite some time since I dreamed my bare ass was the main attraction at Macy's or that a train was barreling through my bedroom. Have I finally conquered my lifelong anxieties? I'm getting there—though, in the interest of full disclosure, Brad says I still occasionally demand in my sleep, “Who the hell are you?” Apparently, I'm still working on it. But I am grateful for my progress.

And here's something else I am sure about, now more than ever, thanks to cancer: Nothing is insurmountable. One day, we will all die. (I'm sorry if I just spoiled the ending for you.) Dying is the worst that can happen, right? That being the case, there can be no permanent
downside to striving to optimize one's self, to at least trying to live one's dreams. I now understand: There is no permanent downside to being the real me, to opening my heart and exposing myself to pain. Because pain is not permanent. But regret is. And, of course, the upside to trying all of these things is limitless.

 

 

When I was at UCLA, I took an ancient-Greek philosophy class that has stayed with me all these years; in particular, I've never forgotten Plato's “Allegory of the Cave.” Forgive me if I butcher this, but this is how I remember it from twenty years ago: There is a group of men living in a cave, all shackled together in a row. They were born there, and they've never left. Year after year, the shackled men sit, bound together, staring at the wall of the cave. Just behind them, where they cannot see, there is a bonfire that throws shadows onto the wall in front of the men. The bound men are entranced by the flickering shadows on the wall.

One day, a man at the end of the row breaks free of his chains. Once freed, he turns around and sees the bonfire and realizes the source of the shadows he's watched his whole life. He tries to convince the others of what he sees, but they do not believe him.

“Let's leave this place! Let's see what else is out there!” the freed man exclaims.

“There is nothing more than this,” the others say.

But the freed man will not be deterred. He makes his way to the mouth of the cave and steps outside for the first time. He is overcome by a blinding light—the glorious sun! At first his eyes are pained by
the brightness of the light and by the vibrant colors he has never witnessed before. But soon he is able to adjust to his new surroundings. And, he realizes, they're beautiful. He exults. He races back to share his discovery with the shackled men.

“You must come! There is much more than this outside the cave!”

But the shackled men, who have never left the cave, cannot conceive of a world outside it. They have no way to fathom the sun. They are content to watch the shadows flickering on the cave wall. It's all they know.

I apologize to you if you are a certified Greek philosopher. But this rendition, whether accurate or not, is what has stayed with me all these years. The moment I read this allegory at age nineteen, I knew I didn't want to be one of the shackled men in the dim cave, watching shadows flicker on a wall. I wanted to venture outside into the bright sunlight, even if it meant initially searing my eyes. And yet, despite this innate yearning inside me, there were times in my life when I settled for dim light and flickering shadows, out of fear or complacency.
It's comfortable here,
I told myself.
This is just fine.

Now, though, I know I must never stop searching for the bright light outside the cave. I must strive to learn and explore, and to stretch myself in ways I have not thought possible. And I must do so in ways that are true to me. Rather than being maniacally driven to
accomplish,
I must take greater care in choosing
what
to accomplish.

As with the freed man in Plato's cave, my shackles have clanked to the ground, and I have turned around to behold the flickering bonfire behind me. And do you know what I have seen in the illusory flames? My need for others' approval. My lifelong willingness to let
others define me. My pursuit of “success” without regard to personal cost. My overblown sense of my own importance. Shadows of reality.

And when I ventured outside the cave, do you know what I witnessed there? Love. Powerful, healing, nothing-else-matters, lift-me-up, wipe-my-tears-away love. Higher love from God (or the universe or the collective conscience) that has the power to uplift and heal! Love from strangers, my new brothers and sisters! Love from family, my dearest ones, the keepers of my heart, whom I will never take for granted again! Love for myself—my flawed, big-dreaming, optimistic, spaztastic, late-blooming, adventure-loving, bighearted self! Love is the light I saw when I ventured outside the cave. There was nothing else out there. Or if there was, I didn't see it.

 

 

One of the first things people want to know when they talk to me now is, “Did chemo work?” I know everyone wants to hear me say, “Abso-fricking-lutely!” I hate to disappoint people, I really do, but the honest answer is, “Who the hell knows?” The surgeon took out the initial tumor and lymph nodes, and I choose to believe that no cancer cells remained after that. Of course, if my optimism is wrong and bastard cancer cells did remain after surgery, then I am certain chemo blasted every single rogue cell to kingdom come—and then poisoned, nuked, stabbed, shot, karate-chopped, and electrocuted them, just for good measure.

I will officially be in remission in three more years, when I hit my five-year mark without a problem. Until then, how do I know if it “worked” or not? I just have to wait and see. But I refuse to spend the
next three years waiting to cross some imaginary finish line. I'm just going to live my life to its fullest in the here and now.

Remember when Dorothy, trapped in the Wicked Witch's tower, watched in terror as the grains of sand fell unabated into the bottom half of the hourglass? Even as a child, I couldn't help but wonder why Dorothy just sat there, staring at the hourglass. Why didn't she check to see if the tower door was, by some lucky chance, unlocked? Or maybe look for a secret passageway? She could have used her time so much more wisely!

If you knew the Wicked Witch had turned over an hourglass to mark the end of your life, would you sit in the tower, fretting and staring at the grains of falling sand? Or, with whatever time was left, would you beat down that damned tower door, bitch-slap a flying monkey or two, and move on down the road? Speaking for myself, I'm gonna bitch-slap the monkeys and boogie on down the Yellow Brick Road.

After my return from Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp at the end of 2009, Matthew and I immediately began recording my second album throughout 2010. Each time he came home for a few weeks from a leg of his world tour, we disappeared into the studio together for days at a time.

Oftentimes, our sides hurt from laughing so hard; occasionally, perhaps inspired by our mutual brilliance at capturing a perfect drum solo or slide-guitar lick, we danced around the studio together like Kevin Bacon and Chris Penn in
Footloose.
Many times, despite our best intentions, recording never happened on a particular day, and instead we spent our time together sitting in the studio, talking, hugging, and crying away the hours. But mostly we just enjoyed the thrill of creating music together, the joy of sharing our common passion.

At the end of that year, despite Matt's crazy touring schedule and my own frantic schedule as a wife and mother of two busy girls (sports
for Sophie and musical theater for Chloe), Matthew and I managed to bring my songs to life. And oh, the joy! They turned out exactly as I'd envisioned.