Thrills, pills and a headscarf

I love an inspirational quote. I'm a bit of a sucker for a nice little line to pick up my mood. As some of you may have noticed, Alice in Wonderland is a particular favourite of mine. However there's one line I see quite regularly that I just can't abide - the "This too shall pass" phenomenon. Something about this one really winds me up. I think it's the naivety of it. The truth is, not everything does pass. I got diagnosed with cancer over three years ago. Initially I thought I would take chemotherapy pills for two years and then I'd be done. It would pass. That was naive. Once you've been diagnosed with cancer it doesn't pass. Even if you recover and get the all clear, it doesn't pass. You get to live with the knowledge that you can be attacked from within your body, without knowledge, at any time. I would say for the majority of people who have had or have cancer, you live with a heightened suspicion of everything you feel. It wasn't...

"Tired of trying to cram her sparkly, star-shaped self into society's beige square holes, she chose to embrace her ridiculous awesomeness and shine like the freaking supernova she was meant to be." My aunt posted this quote months ago and I just had to save it, knowing it was exactly what I want to say in this post! This post is probably the most important one yet for me. I've known I've wanted to write it for sometime, I've spoken to large groups of teenagers just scratching the surface on this topic and I feel like now is the time. It's the time because this is the month of my 32nd birthday (I know many of you will be shocked I'm not turning 24 again this year!), and it's also the month I'm going to start the process of losing my physical identity again as I begin back on intravenous chemotherapy. To be honest my physical identity is starting to feel so fluid I'm not really sure I know what it is anymore. It's also the tim...

Written, as promised, for my mother. Since I started travelling I said you always want things to go really right or really wrong - you never want average. At least with really right or really wrong you've got a good story. This is a rationale I started applying to life too. I had no idea how much it was going to come back and bite me in the arse! About a week after returning from my South America trip I sat in a cafe with my mum in Karangahake, discussing many things including my health - or lack thereof. She said to me that I may be giving a false impression that this is an easy journey with my positivity. That several people had commented on how well I was dealing with this and I acknowledged I had had similar comments. So, because it's the year of yes and because I love my mum (even though I tell her the wonderful daughterly things like how terrible she is and how I'm pretty sure her carcinogenic toasted sandwiches were the cause of the cancer in the first place)...

I've always said that travelling gave me an education I could never buy. One that could never be taught in schools or universities; that simply needs to be learnt as each opportunity presents itself. Those opportunities could be great fun or amazingly challenging. All of them important to deal with. I feel so thankful to have had another four weeks to continue my education in life and as slow as I've been on my blogs I want to share some of those learnings. Some useful, some not. Language is great in it's ambiguity: I thought I spoke Spanish to a point. I guess that's still strictly true but we had some fun experiences with it. It was quite empowering to realise I was still able to get by in Spanish, speak to people and get done what I needed to get done even if it wasn't perfect. What I did learn was there are many more differences between the Castellano I have learnt and South American Spanish. In some of many language confusions we established that ...