Who's already sick of January? (Who's just plain sick?)

Latest cancer complaints, sparkling new Compassion Brigade, & your chance to help!

You know when you pick up the phone and the other person says (too fast and friendly), “Everything’s fine!” The quicker they chirp, the more you know that things were indeed not fine very recently, but no one is currently bleeding from the head or pinned under a car or actively dying. We collectively HATE phone calls like this.

This is me chirping a plucky “everything’s fine! New year, new me, no cancer!”

Because for about half of the days that this year has held, I thought that last line might not be true.

Breast Self-Exam Reminder Warning Ahead

A mere 3 days into 2025, while the newborn year was still squishy and pink-faced and tender, I found a New Stupid Lump in the New Stupid Breast when I once found the Old Stupid Tumor.¹ Didn’t you have a double mastectomy, Laura? And doesn’t that remove all your breast tissue? And wouldn’t that mean you wouldn’t have any more risk of breast cancer? To which I would respond: yes; yes; no. Because breast cancer—especially Triple Negative—is a complete jerk who keeps wanting to ruin the party.²

I spent nearly a fortnight trudging through every cancer survivor’s “favorite” (read: least favorite) trifecta of oncologist—testing—waiting for results. After I had basically pre-written my own obituary since I am obviously an optimist and not at all prone to despair because life has whacked me at the kneecaps more than a few times before, I finally learned that the ultrasound and mammogram were clear. Once again, to the best of my knowledge right now: still cancer free. WOO HOO.

No, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in YOUR health care, dear clinic. Pleasure’s ALL on this side of the mammogram machine. Also thanks for including the screening recommendation I ALREADY HAD CANCER, CHECK THE FILES.

So what was the culprit then?!

I’m so glad you asked

Basically I’m dying inside. HAHAHA CANCER SURVIVORS CAN MAKE ALL THE DARK HUMOR CRACKS WE WANT AND NO ONE CAN STOP US.

The lump is fat necrosis from my reconstruction surgery. Translation: part of the fat that the surgeon injected around the implants is dying and calcifying inside me. I’m not at all weirded out by this, thanks.³

But the experts at Mayo confirmed this week that 1) this won’t kill me; 2) it will hopefully never require intervention; 3) the fat necrosis should soften and shrink eventually. This is awesome news, because my oncologist at the U of Minnesota told me that the fat necrosis will get bigger and harder. Life on these American-health-care-system-streets is wild and continues to make zero sense.

Gosh, Laura, why you can’t just settle down and enjoy 2025? Just manifest good vibes only! Then maybe the fat necrosis will shrink or swell, harden or soften, disappear or destroy you, whatever, man!

New year, same old tricks. You sly dog of a devil, you never quit, do you?

Moving on

I’m honestly so sick of the oncological roller coaster that I couldn’t bear to bring all my beloveds along on the latest gut-dropper turn through the twists of DOES SHE HAVE CANCER AGAIN OR NOT. So apologies for tumbling through the tunnel alone this time, but it’s what I needed. While it’s often a gift to bring everyone along for the ride, it also means I have to manage people’s emotions and anxieties, and my own were more than enough to bear this time.⁴

But in the immortal words of Gloria Gaynor, I will survive⁵ and let’s move on because

We Need The Compassion Brigade Stat

That our world appears to be falling apart is news to zero of us, so I’ll presume you know about all the latest horrors in the headlines. What you might not know about is the etymology of the word “compassion,” and for that, I can be your resident expert.

I might love the Online Etymology Dictionary even more than its creators, and I consult it every day for some word or another that I’m curious about. The stories contained in the history of words are endlessly fascinating pour moi, which is why you’ll often find me waxing eloquent in essays about an etymology that turned everything upside down for me.

Let’s take compassion. The word literally means “to suffer with,” from the Latin passionem.⁶ Which is why it drives this writer crazy when people use “compassion” as a synonym for “sympathy.” Sympathy feels sorry for you. But compassion sits right in the darkness with you and doesn’t leave. Sympathy is the acquaintance who stops you in the hallway and wants to hear how you’re doing, really. Compassion is the close friend who doesn’t need you to respond because they know silence might be what you need now instead. Sympathy was the crowds lining the road to Golgatha, the gawkers and gossipers. Compassion was the closest ones—the women and the mother and the lone best friend—who stayed at the foot of the cross and never left.

Do you see how compassion is a sea change? How it incarnates love into a willingness to stay when everyone else evaporates?

(Imagine if we had compassion cards instead of sympathy cards. See what I mean?)⁷

Theologically, I love compassion.⁸ Christ embodied compassion to the full, by entering into what it means to be human, even suffering and death. A God who suffers with us is a remarkable, relatable, caring, loving, present God. That’s the God I’ve found, especially in the darkest days of my life. Even when nothing gets “fixed.”

Existentially, I’m pretty sure I’m still here because of compassion. Because of YOU. So if we’re going to keep this Compassion Brigade going, which I’m determined to do, then now is your time to let us all know where we can enter into suffering and stay there with each other.

Maybe you have a friend or relative who lost their home or business in the California wildfires. Maybe you know an amazing non-profit that is helping to keep people warm and housed in the latest polar vortex. Maybe your best friend has gotten a terrible diagnosis and you’re rallying folks with a GoFundMe or online meal train. Maybe you have been sick for three straight weeks and could simply use some prayers (and/or someone to DoorDash dinner tonight).

Drop your requests or links in comments. No need too big; no need too small. We’ve got prayers and thoughts and humor and humanity and Venmo and wallets waiting. Most importantly, we’ve got compassion. And badges.

If you want to give or pray or celebrate what someone else has shared below, why not respond to their comment and let them know? When life is falling apart, it can be incredible to know that other people care. You can rest assured that I will be praying for each and every person/place/community you share with us below.

Let compassion be our compass.⁹

Requisite Disclaimers Because The Internet Gets Mad Faster Than An Irritated Mom Who Asked 10 Times Already

This is an open mic. I am not vetting these opportunities to give. I am trusting that we can practice wisdom and be adults who discern what to support and where to give our time/energy/attention/money/prayers. We can also practice compassion in comments.

Got it? Good. Let’s go.

1. My kids’ beloved 1st-3rd grade teacher always reminds them not to use “good” or “nice” in their writing because it’s not a Quality Adjective. Every time I write “stupid” here, I know it’s not a Quality Adjective and it haunts me. But I say “stupid” with gritted teeth because the more descriptive adjectives I could use are expletives that my mom doesn’t want to read.

2. Picture triple negative breast cancer like that obnoxious drunk guy at the bar who keeps trying to pick a fight, no matter how many times the bouncers throw him out.

3. But I do keep saying wryly I’m dying inside and quoting 2 Corinthians 4:10—“We are always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies” which makes me laugh so hard that I cry while others look on with bewilderment and bemusement. An absolute trip to be a theologian in this day and age; highly recommend, 10/10.

4. Blessings upon my supportive and long-suffering spouse.

5. At least for now lol.

6. Keep scrolling down that etymology page to read about the beginnings of passion: started with Christ! Deeply fitting.

7. Emily McDowell’s empathy cards might be the closest we get, and I have purchased more than a few. But even empathy isn’t the same as compassion, and I say this as an empath whose porous soul often makes it difficult to get out of bed and back into the brutal world. Empathy is our own projection of ourselves onto another (“A term from a theory of art appreciation that maintains appreciation depends on the viewer's ability to project his personality into the viewed object”), while compassion is our willingness to stay in the suffering with someone else.

8. Here’s a whole bunch of places I’ve written about compassion:

“If you love too, if you yearn the heart forward, if you keep going when wounded people wound you, if you keep your eyes and hands fixed on the point and purpose of being a human and seeking the divine, you will wind up with a heart like that. This is the conversion of metanoia that breaks us open to compassion, seeing and suffering with everyone else.” (Yearn The Heart)

“Believe me, part of me still wants to yell at that woman. I can be a lousy pacifist of a Christian, despite my daily scrappy climb toward love. But when I see her hellbent face in my memory now, I start to turn to curiosity, which is the soft soil of compassion.” (How to Forgive A Stranger)

“You have two choices when you feel it happening. You can let your heart stretch to the point of ripping open to the beauty and agony of living in this mortal world. Or you can pull the protective shield back over the vulnerable center. You can break or you can burrow. I have done both. Only one gives life.” (Until The Heart Stays Open at the On Being Project)

9. Did “compass” come from “compassion”? No, it didn't! But now you know that, because you are learning to love etymologies!