Gracie Guardino
About Gracie:
Gracie is 30 years old and her diagnosis was a shock to everyone that knows her. She had nagging health issues for over a year but cancer was not considered and she continued to live a very healthy and active lifestyle including working full time and becoming a certified Pilates Instructor.
Gracie has a strong family that supports her and a community rallying behind her but she has a long road ahead. She was initially told she had a year to a year and a half to live but she was able to get help from a cancer center in Houston Texas called MD Anderson. They were able to successfully remove the tumor but the surgery was extreme and the cancer could not be completely removed. She continues to fight through chemotherapy and various other treatments as she recovers from surgery.
Gracie fights courageously, not only the cancer but also the emotional demons that come with such an overwhelming disease. Her condition is very unique and treatment requires frequent trips to Houston to see the specialists that are able to help her.
Written by Gracie before she was diagnosed:
It’s days like these that I want so badly to be angry with my body. Angry with it for the days I get mysterious fevers and chills, for the nights I sweat through my clothes, for the nausea when I’m just trying to eat breakfast, for the heart palpitations at work events, for the fatigue and aches that stop me from my passion of movement, for the hopeless tears I’ve shed because of it all… angry with it for the days it incapacitates me, most recently to the point of not being able to go to my family’s thanksgiving dinner. I just want to feel normal, which is something I’m not sure I’ve ever felt and it’s something I’m scared I’ll never feel again.
But it’s these moments when I want so badly to be angry with my body, that I realize it has every reason to be angry with me. Every reason to be angry for the years of sabotage and abuse, for the moments I just didn’t know and for the moments I just didn’t listen. These are the moments that brought me - us - here. But it isn’t angry with me. Instead, without the need for a “thank you” or an “I’m sorry”, it fights for me and this normalcy that I long for.
Each fever a message. Each bout of nausea a direction. Each drop of sweat a purge. Each tear a release. Each breath an act of love. Each heartbeat - something sacred & unconditional.
We entered this world a unit, with an unspoken, unacknowledged agreement that it would silently take care of me in any capacity it knew how for as long as it could carry me. All I had to do was exist. But I no longer want this agreement to be one sided. So I’m rewriting it-
Dear body, vessel, temple -
I take care of you, and you take care of me. You’ve always so selflessly held up your end of the bargain. And if I hold up mine, maybe then, we can really live.
It is not discipline but devotion, not solitude but a sacred union, that will heal us. We cannot be untangled, so why should I treat you as so separate from my Self? Leave you to fend for yourself in this world that I lead you through?
It seems until now I’ve been too selfish to learn your language. But I know that you speak in unwavering truths.
I ask, ‘What do you need me to do?’
You say, ‘Listen….’
Are you listening?