PAW MarchIssue - Flipbook - Page 42
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero til the end of the night
He’s got to be strong and he’s got to be fast and he’s
got to be fresh from the fight.
— BONNIE TYLER
A
s a culture we have an
obsession with heroes.
Is it the desire for rescue or the notion that there has to be
something better than we are?
Stronger than we are? The one person who saves the day removing any
responsibility from us. I always
thought that running into a burning
building and rescuing small children
was heroic. Solving a global crisis.
Saving the whales. But it is applied
with regularity to people fighting
cancer. We are supposed to become
beacons of enlightenment and hope.
What choice did we have? It’s not
heroic - it’s survival. I think of it as
more cowardly lion than knight in
shining armour.
Over the decades I have assumed many roles less than enthusiastically. I called myself the “reluctant” academic for decades as I never
felt like I fit into the classic mould.
Some of it was self doubt but some
of it was spending years being rebellious and fighting the “man”.
Now I was the “man”. Well
dressed and wearing lipstick, but that
changed no part of the authority role.
I have been a “reluctant” leader, I
found all those people following behind me a bit creepy. It seemed like
too much pressure. I couldn’t even
manage the relatively simple expectation of the traditional domestic role
of a woman and I still think of the
kitchen as the room I go through to
get to the television.
I feel the same way about my
accidental role as an advocate and
educational source in the cancer
communities. I am no hero. I never
embraced this role I was simply trying to figure it out for myself and
honestly share my thoughts. I have
dragged myself mentally kicking and
screaming into most of my appointments. Raising my fists to the sky
and raging against the fates. Or
curled up in a ball sobbing. My mental and physical health have taken a
beating. Nothing admirable about
any of that.
42 THE PRO-AGE WOMAN March Issue
