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Submitted with love by Eric Wilson

Joan Pinder’s Story

Babe In Total Charge of Herself.com is proud to introduce you to Kirsti Walent and her story of survival and life with cancer.  Please click on her link below.

Camarillo woman fights cancer

                

This is a tribute and a memorium to my friend and past partner Bessie Mae Fulton who passed from this life in August of 2010.  She was the co-founder of this site and though she is gone from us, far sooner than any of us would have wanted or were prepared for, we will never forget her place in the history of this business and in our lives.  Bessie, rest in the peace that you so richly deserve and every once in a while check in and see how we are doing, we’d love to chat with you.  Hugs and kisses my friend!

“Hi! I’m Bess, the other half of BiTCH,inc….the big dreamer and girlie girl side of things. Euphemistically speaking, I refer to myself as a woman of the nineties, sometimes from the 1990’s other times from the 1890’s and that remains true in this new millennium, I just haven’t come up with an adequate updated version of the motto. I’ve been the good daughter, wife and mother; have gone through the empty nest phase of my life, am currently menopausal and a woman in transition….evolving, redefining, realizing my full potential as a woman, my own woman…

“A few months ago I woke up, admitted that I wasn’t happy with my life, acknowledged that I was wasting some of the most productive years of my life – the time in life where I’m only responsible for me possessing the opportunity and abilities to soar far above where I’d flown in my youth, to places I’ve never before been able to go. Well, that day I stopped wasting my time being resigned. Further, I stopped believing that I was an over the hill, middle aged “has been” who’s time had passed. I made myself a promise to start living again, believing in me and the power of attraction to open the doors to a new direction in life.
I realized that all my home management skills, community service experience added to the previous years’ professional background was indeed of value. I had accomplished many things in my life, things I am proud of and it was now time to cash in on them. So I got my act together, jumped back out there and into the game not allowing myself to be intimidated by change nor hindered by my fears of the unknown. Once I took those first few steps, the world began to open up. I began to realize so many other ways in which I had been on the shelf, having placed myself on hold for a later time. Well that time has come. So I’ve been taking all those talents, skills, abilities, dreams off hold – removing them from their shelves – one by one, dusting them off, cleaning them up, polishing them and finding ways to put them back to use, to work for me….creating an updated, revitalized me – seizing upon the vast opportunities that lie ahead for me in my future.
That’s what this website is all about….living our best lives as Oprah says it, living it as full grown, fully mature, wise, accomplished, financially secure and beautiful women in the new millennium. The sky is no longer the limit…..we have the power to reach for the stars, the moon and even the sun if we so dare.”

Check out the Breast Cancer Awareness Store

The 10th Annual Relay for Life in the West Seattle Herald.  Check it out!

Visit the “Wall of Courage” .  It’s dedicated to the children who have been lost to medulloblastoma/PNET a cancer of the brain.  Both heart breaking and amazing at the same time.

I’ve struggled within trying to figure out how to tell my story, how to describe and discuss all the experiences I’ve had with cancer throughout what seems to have been my entire life.

The women in my life who have been cut down in their prime due to the untimely onslaught of this disease is legion.  From progenitors, to siblings, to girlfriends, to my mother-in-law and even some of the males in my family -  how all of my immediate female family members that have struggled with this foe have unfortunately lost their battle  and died prematurely, fallen victims to this devastatingly hostile plague that has predominantly targeted womankind taking them from their husbands, children, family and loved ones long before their time.

My story begins with my natural mother who died when I was four years old from Breast Cancer that had metastasized throughout her entire body by the time she was 44 years of age. Her’s was an almost twenty year battle, fought valiantly until she succumbed leaving behind five minor children ranging from 2 to 10 years age to be split apart and raised by grandparents and an elder siblings.

My mother’s sisters were also victims of this plague, one to Breast Cancer and the other to Ovarian Cancer. Both leaving minor children to be raised by their fathers and other family members. My grandmother who raised me had a an almost forty year fight against this disease having lost one of her breast in her thirties, then years later cancer was found in her uterus causal to the poor medical care Blacks received  in the forties scar tissue from a tubal pregnancy  mutated and infested her entire reproductive system then spread into her intestines and colon. She was treated, went into remission for over ten years but it returned during my junior year in High School. By then, there was nothing that could be done.  She died in 1981 at the beginning of my third year in college.

My eldest sister went three rounds with Breast Cancer. The first occurring during her late twenties wherein she underwent a mastectomy of her right breast. The second go-round was in her mid thirties wherein she lost her left breast. The third time cost her life.  She was only 45 years old when she died in 1987.

My sister, Joan whose picture is posted was my closest sibling relationship and dearest friend. She was four years older than I and we grew up together even though we lived in separate households – she with her father’s mother and me, with my father’s mother. I was the thorn in her side, the little sister who followed her everywhere she went – often sent along with her and her girlfriends when they would have preferred to not have me tagging along behind them. I adored her and looked up to her something fierce. I wore her hand me downs (even though they didn’t fit me all that well – we’re totally different body types) and loved sitting watching her do whatever it was she was doing – whether it was doing her hair that was lots longer than mine at the time or cooking because she loved to cook even as a young girl  and when she was sewing because she was always good at that too. She was the domestic one, I was the musical/artistic one. We both had to take piano lessons but she didn’t excel at it. Whereas we were both taught to cook, sew, do needlework, etc. but I didn’t excel at those things. We were both blessed with beautiful voices and sang in church, with me often accompanying her on piano and in our school choirs throughout high school with me having achieved a full music scholarship to a private college in West Texas. She went to nursing school but couldn’t stand the sight of blood so ended up going to business college eventually ending up in the medical field specializing in medical records management.

We were both late bloomers not having come into our beauty until high school or later and we both had our children when in our early twenties, she a girl and me a boy. She’d left right out of high school and relocated to Seattle along with my brother Lester  so after college and having had my son, I followed. Those were some of the best years of my life, living with her in that second floor two bedroom apartment with the huge picture window  in West Seattle with our two young children,  struggling to survive and growing into women together as we carved out a life for ourselves. We were one another’s closest friend and confidant always there to support, encourage and back the other up. We laughed, we cried, we sang, we danced, we played, we loved our children and enjoyed our lives facing every challenge together and celebrating each one that we overcame. Showering one another with gifts, our favorite cake and ice cream on our birthdays and making sure each had wonderful  Mother’s Day gifts when no one else remembered to send either one of us even as much as a card. What one didn’t have, the other did. When I moved out, just a little

ways away we still spent more time together than apart. We were the other’s shadow as well as being the wind beneath one another’s wings.

The year I met my husband to be ironically turned out to be the year she decided to move back home to New Mexico. It was hard to watch her leave me behind while she went back to pursue what she believed would be her land of milk and honey, and it was for awhile. We talked weekly, sometimes more and our long distance bills definitely reflected that.  In 1998 she sustained an accident having fallen and injured one of her breast. In the process of treatment and due to the injury, the doctor found a cyst within which was a malignant tumor that was fairly progressed thus beginning what was  a three year battle with lymphoma. Hers was a very aggressive form of the disease and she unfortunately went into denial not responding to the dire prognosis concerning her condition refusing to have a mastectomy as she should have done. Because the cancer was in her lymph system it spread throughout her body to every major organ within a very short amount of time due to the failure to arrest it’s growth. She died in 2001 at age 43 and part of me went with her. I miss her although I don’t think of her every single day like I use to, but I still think of her often especially around holidays and birthdays or when something in passing reminds of her,  something she liked or something we did together or shared in years passed. I have felt lost in many ways since losing her and the void left in my life by her death has yet to be filled.

My life has been indelibly, irrevocably influenced and impacted by this disease because almost every close female relationship I’ve had with familial role models as well as friendships has been touched by this disease.  So many things others take for granted like having their mothers to help them when they mismanaged their money and got into trouble financially, to help plan their weddings or to be there when they birth their babies, to babysit, share recipes and the preparation of holiday dinners,  to go shopping with, talk about boys and men with, to talk about the girl becoming a woman stuff then upon reaching middle age what to expect and how to cope with being menopausal….I’ve never had those things. I didn’t have a mother nor grandmother to go to for those woman to woman talks about child rearing, for advice on how to deal and cope with the typical husband woes and how to deal with life in general, to find balance  as a woman, wife and mother; instruction in how to be a woman, self care and how to keep things in perspective.

When my sister died I not only grieved her absence, shortly afterward I became obsessed with my own mortality fearing that since I was next in line chronologically that my number would be up soon, that my days on this earth were somehow numbered. I had nightmares and walked around in terror, in a perpetual state of fear for over five years. Then one day I woke up and realized, “Hey, I’m still here! I’m alive and have plenty of living yet to do before my time is up, so I’m going to start living my life instead waiting to die!” I’m the first immediate female family member to have watched my child walk down that isle at his high school graduation, my older sisters didn’t get to experience that. I’m now in my late forties and I’m the first of my siblings including my mother to have seen and experienced this stage of life, to have the night sweats,  mood shifts and marathon menstrual cycles of menopause. How fortunate I am and I thank God every day that I am still in the land of the living…..I take none of it for granted because I truly know without a doubt that I have been blessed.

More often than not when the words “soul mate” are uttered the assumption by the listener is the person saying those words is talking about their spouse or perhaps their boyfriend or girlfriend in a romantic relationship.  Well I’m here to dispel that assumption.   I am going to tell you about my soul mate, her name was Kathryn and though breast cancer got the better of her going on eight years ago, she is still and will forever continue to be my “soul mate”.

Having said that, I need to clarify that when I first met Kathryn she was anything but my soul mate as far as I was concerned.  In fact, I tried everything I could to avoid the woman.   She and her husband were members of a sister church to ours and good friends to a woman who I had become close to as well.  Looking back I can see how our relationship was inevitable but when I met them, within moments I had determined I would never see this couple and their precious one year old daughter again if I could help it.  Glenn and Kathryn were as mismatched as any two people could be.  Where she was dark and sultry and sensuous and possessed the demeanor, thought processes and actions of a fairy sprite, he was blond, Nordic, stiff as a stick and I think his middle name is actually “control”.    I won’t go into a lot of detail here about what their relationship was like except to say that it lasted through four more children, a move from the big city to a farm on an island here in Washington State, and a miscarriage that almost killed her.   Then she found someone and had an affair with them because, as she explained to me when I asked, “he was nice to me”.  Needless to say that was the downfall of their marriage, at least for Glenn.  Enough said about their relationship.

Getting back to my desire to avoid her, well one day, several years after our first meeting, I got a call from her.  Another friend of ours (the traitor) had told her I knew how to wallpaper and Kathryn was asking me if I would please come and help her do a job.  I tried every nice way I could think of to get out of saying yes, but the magic that fairies have, you just can’t resist it!   That phone call started a 25 year long relationship that was one of the greatest joys and adventures of my life until it ended on January 1, 2003 at 4:00 am when she finally lost the fight with breast cancer and went home to be with God.

Neither one of us expected that we would become what we became to each other.  We didn’t know that we would end up naturally looking out for each other, reaching out when we needed help even though we were many miles away and hadn’t communicated.  All we knew was when we were together, something amazing happened.   We took care of each other, thought more about what the other needed or wanted than ourselves, we completed each other in a way neither one of us could explain.  Others saw it too, many of them misinterpreting it as something unnatural but we always knew what it was and cherished every moment we had because we knew it was rare.  We were the modern, female version of David and Jonathan in the bible and it’s unlikely I will ever have the privilege of ever experiencing that again.   But that’s okay, because it is the story I carry around in my heart, it’s the shining gem that I can bring out and show to those who want to hear about it and to show to myself to remind myself of how lucky I was that she came into my life.  It’s also a reminder of how valiantly she struggled to stay alive and raise her children and how brave she was right up to the very end and how I will never, ever forget her.