part 2 *sung to the tune of Ag Please Daddy* “Ultrasounds, mammograms, biopsies, and marker-clips, CT scans, bone scans and MRI’s.... Red devil chemo, and Taxol and Zoladex, and lotsa Zofar pillssss so you don’t.throw. up!” It has been a year today - 10 long months of chemo, a double mastectomy, 5 weeks of radiation, and the 1st of my 3 reconstructive surgeries are done. And a year filled with so much love, support, thoughts, prayers, gifts, comfort and being sent allll the right and best people at the right time, and during times I didn’t even know I needed them. And through all of this – and with 2 operations still looming – I continue to say that cancer is the best thing that has ever happened to me. It has given me SO much more than it took. It has made me reflect, reprioritize, grateful, content. It has forced me out of my comfort zone, my complacency, stagnation. It has allowed me to reconnect with all the things that make my heart and soul so very happy - the things we neglect in the grind, in the vicious perfunctoriness of routine – family, friends, nature, my passion for local fashion, art, design. I have found my creative tribe. I have come into my own. I finally feel like I know who I was meant to be. I have stared my mortality in the eye and smiled a comforting, knowing smile that says “I séé you - but not juuussst yet, gurl.” So here’s to all that lies ahead. To happiness and strength and vulnerability. To being ok with not being ok. To healing through creativity. To seeing light in the darkness and beauty in all which may seem ugly. To helping others and their families currently dealing with the same. And to everything and all the things, and all the time with my Jannie. 🫀 ~ mersini x #cancer #breastcancerawareness #getchecked #earlydetectionsaveslives