Ann Murray Paige's Open Salon Blog

Komen's New Plan

Sat, 4 Feb 2012 18:02:36 -0500

I was asked this morning about my take on the Komen situation: i.e. its reversal of decision to not give Planned Parenthood grants for breast health to its population of women in need.

In the last two days I've read a lot of angry commentary from the people who hated the original decision. I saw many lines that ended with "Komen will not get any of my money anymore." To me, that line of thinking is as upsetting as Komen's original decision.

Don't get me wrong: I am glad Komen changed its mind. I am happy it heard the angry outcries. I am glad it decided it made a mistake. But I don't like any conversation, conflict or combat that ends with "and now I hate you." I don't think quick decisions and pulling support for a 30 year organization over one poor decision advances anything positive. And I am all about positive.

Which I think officially makes me a milk toast. And my perspective could be dead wrong; maybe fighting and financial fist-a-cuffs is how any thing good gets done in this world.

But as I battle metastatic breast cancer, I have become more even-tempered. I am hyper-focused on solving problems, not battling them out. And like I just said, I'm not at all sure I'm right. So hooray that Komen changed its mind and kudos to all your reactions that helped it get there.

But I stand by my original reaction, which was this: maybe Komen should go find another way to help out the population that Planned Parenthood addresses. Remember, not all people who go to Planned Parenthood are asking for abortions. I have a friend who goes there because she can't afford health insurance but wants to stay healthy for herself and her 12 year old son. There's a broader non-politically-charged population there--and it needs breast care help. And that is the mantra of Susan G. Komen For The Cure: stopping women from dying of breast cancer.

I guess what I'm saying is maybe there's a place for both reactions: the "screw you I'm taking my money and walking" one and the "okay, if you can't help one way, figure out another way to help."

To that end, here's an idea: maybe Planned Parenthood--and what it does to help a large group of women who find themselves without healthcare insurance but in need of health care--shouldn't be the only game in town. Maybe the world shouldn't be considering financially challenged women and ones-who-want abortions as the same focus group. After all, my friend doesn't go to PP for an abortion. She goes to maintain herself as a healthy parent.

I have no idea what the real reasons were that caused Komen to pull, then reinstated its PP funding--I assume it was political, and twas ever thus. But today, Komen is once again giving money to Planned Parenthood as it aways "planned" to do. Which I am happy about for many women, including my friend. But since "plan" keeps coming up in this conversation, how about Komen plan to figure out how to take its money and give breast health to women in need on its own?

How about Komen side-stepping this entire problem in the future by teflon-coating itself against political pressure forever? How about a new wing of Komen called something like--and I'm making this up here-- "Planned Parent"? Or better yet, "Planned Prime-Of-Life"? With the objective of reaching the underprivileged women out there who don't want an abortion but who want not to die of breast cancer? With the secondary strategy to live to see a child graduate high school, and the third objective to live long enough to be a parent in the first place?

Since we're talking about plans in the first place, how about that for a plan, Komen?

Enough With The Tiger Moms

Tue, 1 Feb 2011 10:02:00 -0500

I’ve been reading about Amy Chua’s book ‘Tiger Moms” everywhere and I’d like to chime in and say this:

When you think you may be dying, none of this crap matters. Whether Amy Chua or Oprah or Dr. Spock or Dr. Sears agrees with you, how you raise your child is your business. As in: trust your instincts, your experience, your friends that you admire and the children you hope your kids turn out like. Find out what worked there and morph it into what works in your own living room–not what works in some distanced country 6 thousand miles away.

I am so very tired of bookstores and talk show guests making me and you feel like we don’t know how to do a job that 200 years ago everybody had to figure out on their own. You may have asked your local preacher or your auntie or your governess for help–not every single person who just tweeted their new formula for mommy success or the 300 titles stacked neatly in a row at Borders or Amazon.com’s pediatric growth and development section.

I say enough already–parenthood doesn’t come with a sticker price and a road map. Figure it out and love your kids on your own–

while you’re still lucky enough to be here to do it.

Cancer Compost

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:10:31 -0400

Hey all--or should I say "Hola Todos"--all the people in Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and the rest of Central and South America who've emailed me after watching my film The Breast Cancer Diaries ("Diario de mi Cancer") on Discovery Health Latin America this week.

Fue un tiempo muy dificil--it was a difficult time--but like the compost out in my garden made up of the garbage of my kitchen, so sprouts seeds from the cancer heap that can actually nourish. Like the potatoes that I see pushing out of the composter in the backyard, the support of friends and family,the love of people I don't even know who saw me bald and breastless and gave me a smile of hope, and the film that tells the story of what breast cancer really does to a life--all those things were the germination of new growth coming from the heap of cancer in my life.

Today I still fight--for if you've had cancer, you never stop. You keep eating whatever they say is the right food, and drinking herbal liquids and anti-cancer teas and you pray like hell that you've really beaten the beast. It can come back any time, so you have to keep eyes wide open or else they could one day be closed shut--for a lifetime.

So I like all cancer survivors stay vigilant, and hopeful, and I show my film, run my non-profit Project Pink Diary and tell my story to anyone who will listen. We all have trauma and fear and I have to believe somewhere amid it all we will find some hope, goodness and light. That's why I'm here, that's why I write. That's what I hope you get from my story--inspiration for your world.

Because if in every life compost must gather, I want yours to have some potatoes pushing though the crap of your life, too.

Happy Breast Cancer Month

Fri, 1 Oct 2010 00:10:48 -0400

I wanted to welcome everyone to my month, or as I can be found saying these days, "Happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month." I say this tongue in cheek,or course, as I am a breast cancer 'survivor' and I don't think there's anything happy about that.

But I do think it's amazing, and I am grateful, and yes I suppose happy, that there is such a national spotlight on this ridiculous disease. I hate breast cancer. It changed everything I knew and loved about my life and completely flipped me upside down. For many long months I endured body-exhausting treatments that have left a mark on me to this day. I have no breasts but I sport three mini-tattoos where the radiation was mapped on scarred chest and bad gums and a tendency to say "cucumbers" when I mean "jellybeans." Thank you, chemotherapy.

But the good news is that I am surrounded by a sisterhood: 1 in 8 women in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer each year. That means your mother or your sister or your daughter or your girlfriend, your aunt cousin, niece, we are all susceptible. And at the very least one of them will know someone with cancer, and I hope that knowledge for them-- or you-- is never intimate.

But we are strong. We are fighters. We are winners. And even when we lose our fight, our message, our courage and our spirts live on. I truly believe that. I have to, it's the way I live my life now. I will not be forgotten, especially since I still get to be here. I still get my life. And I am honor bound to all those who didn't survive their fights to live that life to the fullest.

So here's to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a month I love to hate, but a month I am so very grateful for. To all of you who care about this month, who see the pink ribbon--on soup cans and clothing labels and bottles of lotion and everywhere else--know that this ribbon is more than an ubiquitous marketing symbol this month; it has a face. It has many faces. It has too many faces. Mine is one of them.

If you do anything about that pink ribbon this month, whether it's buying that lotion, or choosing the breast cancer stamp at the post office--or if you walk or run or bike or fish in the name of someone you love who's had breast cancer. Or whatever other way you may choose, including just sending out some strength and love to we-of-the-traveling-wristbands, then I send this blog out to you.

And I thank you.

Turkey Trauma

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:12:30 -0500

I hate the Thanksgiving meal.

I don't mean the actual food – I love the turkey, gravy and all the fixings served up on special china plates in houses across America every last Thursday of November. It's not the mashed potatoes swaddled in butter or the sweet potatoes I despise – it's the cooking of the fare that makes me loathe all things Thanksgiving.

I am the one who is always going to someone else's meal, as in "Honey, have you met our new neighbors yet and does their dining table (visible through their front window) look long enough for four extra people?”

There was one year when I had to cook. Nobody else in the family could do it and our neighbors all had surprisingly small dining tables.

I had to ask my brother for a recipe. David cooks his turkey with flourish every year, so I knew he could give me a few pointers. What seemed like 82 ingredients later, I was wrestling a 22-pound turkey into an overnight marinade. I almost fell off the back steps stuffing the bird into a cooler usually reserved for summer drinks. But this night that cooler held a list of ingredients rivaling a baker's pantry along with flavorings that made me wonder if this was an actual pilgrim recipe; one of the ingredients – I'm not kidding – was a pine tree branch.

I barely slept because of worrying about the big dead bird on my doorstep. The morning of Thanksgiving I was in my pajamas pulling a turkey out of liquid that closely resembled what pools in a broken dishwater. I shoved it into the oven and prayed all would come out OK. I walked around the kitchen reading David's recipe like it was the combination to a safe. If I blew this meal who knew what bad turkey karma was heading my way, never mind the possible kitchen fire and ceremonial ordering of emergency take-out fast food.

By some holiday miracle the meal went off OK. I got the bird out of the oven in enough time to make sure nobody died of whatever you die of when a turkey tastes terrible. It was a holiday meal I'll never forget – nor repeat.

But though I lost a good night's sleep and I washed a million dishes afterwards, my one and only Thanksgiving meal went down without food poisoning, a smoke alarm ringing or a call to 911.

And that, in the spirit of all that is good and plentiful each year on the last Thursday of every November, is something for which I am truly
thankful.