A quick google search pretty much sums it up:
Alchemy, stemming from the Arabic word “al-kīmīā,” is an ancient philosophical and proto-scientific tradition that, historically, aimed to purify, mature, and perfect materials, with common goals including transmuting base metals into gold. Base metals are common, non-precious, and non-noble metals. Base metals are used all the time because they are so common they don’t really hold any high value.
I’ve discovered that life is base metal. One of the universal experiences of life is suffering. It’s normal and common. Everyone will suffer in their lives, there will be really hard things we have to live through, there will be things we have to do that we wish we didn’t have to do, people and circumstances will bring all kinds of forms of suffering. Suffering is my base metal – It’s not uncommon.
This blog is an earnest attempt to alchemize my cancer experience – to turn the suffering into something pure, mature, and perfected – to turn something common into something of value. People get cancer. I got cancer. I know so many people who are walking the cancer road and that road is paved with suffering. I’m hoping to look behind me and see that my road, paved with suffering has transmuted and is now paved in uncommon hope and faith – something of value.
How will I accomplish this goal? Well, I’m going to be blogging and sharing this experience “looking back”. Everything I share will be in light of what I know now and not my real time emotions about everything I went through because of cancer. As of right now I’m 7 months out from my official diagnosis. I’m going to go back to the beginning with this blog and attempt to transmute that suffering into something of value – lessons learned and perspectives gained.
I’d like to invite you to join me as a spectator to my alchemizing. I have a feeling it is going to be tricky, so I’m might fail or come to conclusions that I later learn aren’t really true for me. I think that may be a part of the process though, missing the mark and then finding the mark and doing that into perpetuity. I in no way want to be prescriptive with this blog. I do not suggest that you think the way I think or try to do things the way I do things. I’m sloppy and unpredictable, not someone who should be telling people how to live their lives – I’m BARELY learning how to live mine. So please read with a grain of salt knowing that this is my experience, not yours and you don’t need to agree or align with everything. Take what resonates, leave what doesn’t.
With love, Emilie
