By the time I get to Phoenix, I'll be a booby

Tao Te Chu shouldn't be a breast cancer blog anymore. Sure, all the descriptors still hold: I'm still introverted, still concave-chested, still got my little shadow of breast cancer following me around. But I don't want the shadow to define me; it comes and goes, like any shadow, depending on where I stand in relation to the light. Sometimes I can't even find it for long moments at a time.

And I don't think readers need to keep hearing about it. It's me again: Still in remission! Still think about it! Still run into people who give me grisly accounts of their sister's death by breast cancer! Kvetch, kvetch.

I need to let the phoenix die so it can come back anew. Right now, I know, I know. The blog looks pretty dead, a pile of ashes in a raggedy birdy mess of a nest. But if I'm very still and very quiet, I sometimes see a twig move here, a feather appear there. I am getting the sense that my blog's rebirth won't be the glorious Feng Wen phoenix of Chinese lore -- wings spread in an iridescent spectacle of power and renewal. I see it as maybe more like a blue-footed booby.