I'd Like to Make Some Toast

In fact, I did last night. I toasted the end of this cancer experience. I said thank you to the divine for new life and to all the souls who've helped me move through this often-challenging chapter.

One of my favorite movie scenes is in Despicable Me 2, when young Agnes announces she will say some words at the wedding of her father, Gru, and his bride, Lucy.

“Hi everybody, I’d like to make some toast,” she says.

I felt like Agnes last night.

It was at a gathering of some of my dearest pals, in celebration of the end of my cancer adventure of the past year.

And indeed, I wanted to make some toast—plural. Not just one.

Firstly I thanked God. The Goddess. Spirit. I toasted the divine, which I believe enabled me to heal from appendix cancer. To endure 12 rounds of chemotherapy and a 10-hour surgery to scrape out cancer from my belly.

I then toasted all of you. By you, I mean all the readers of my social media posts and the FrauenTimes newsletter. All the souls who have lifted me and my family during often-challenging months.

Lastly, I offered words of gratitude to each of the assembled guests in my living room: Helen Nadel, Joel Zarrow, Felix Zarrow, Eddy Mo, Mariette Patent, Colette Plum, Jason Patent and my lady, Rowena Richie.

I told the group that my toasts were integrated. Because I see divine sparks in all the people who’ve carried us through this rugged, sacred journey.

In fact, that’s been among the gifts of the past year: clarity that human beings are radiating like the sun, capable of remarkable generosity and love.

We toasted with a special bottle of scotch whiskey that readers of FrauenTimes may recall. It was Ardbeg “Heavy Vapours”—a bottle I bought with a friend after I’d had a chemo infusion.

I was drawn to this particular scotch because it was a product of a mistake. Ardbeg left out a part of the usual distilling process with this batch of whiskey. But the unusually unfiltered result was a singularly yummy spirit. “Beyond peaty” as one of the guests last night said.

A spirit a bit like my experience with appendix cancer. A flaw that leads to something surprisingly precious.

The cells that went haywire in my gut were causing havoc and threating my life. But the process of making sense of the disease and moving through treatments brought many presents.

Rowena made a comment last night in wake of my remarks that boiled things down perfectly.

“I’ll miss the last year,” she said.

Maybe the best toast of all.