I want to introduce you to Donna. I met her at a Deep Writing Workshop at Kripalu in Lenox, MA. When I dropped myself down into the chair next to her, we somehow both knew we were meant to meet. Over our time there, we discovered that we shared many people, places and experiences including our age. Both of us count among our teachers in life people and places like Alaska, Thich Nhat Hahn (who we had the pleasure of seeing together), endurance exercise, attending college at institutions that had only recently become co-ed, particular life challenges, writing, mindfulness and a deep interest in lifelong learning. Throughout their marriage, Donna and her husband, Cliff, have trekked…..I mean serious trekking. Long treks, all over the world. In August, just after completing a 200 mile trek, Offa’s Dyke in the United Kingdom, Donna learned that she had stage 4 colon cancer.
What?!?!?!
Well, in Donna form, colon cancer has become a part of her journey - it is a trek she hadn’t known she was training for. As she recently told me, “cancer is only about 2% of my experience, and who I am right now.” She is facing this cancer head-on, all while she is also planning her next trek: Via Francigena, 2020! A 1,200 mile pilgrimage from Canterbury England to Rome.
She is blogging about her experience. If you’d like to be inspired, I highly recommend that you read her blog - one she started long before being diagnosed with cancer. The blog is called We’d Rather Be Walking. As she describes it, it is “an honest, daily chronicle of the travel adventures of one baby-boomer couple and their sage travel companions as they take on long-distance walks, hikes and treks cross-country and around the world.
I recommend starting at the August 7th blog which is entitled The Unexpected Journey. Each blog is an inspiration for living fully, every day of our lives! Enjoy.