Vanessa Haney

I love going to parties, I love hosting parties, I love being around people whether they are strangers or old friends. I realize though, that many folks would rather eat worms. Some temperaments are just not suited to gatherings and even if they are, money is tight right now and everyone is busy. Everyone is tired. I feel it too and even I am inclined lately to keep it small.

And small is good. Really good. My circle of close friends isn’t huge but to get all of them together in the same room these days is near impossible. However, I can arrange to go hiking with Jen, have breakfast that leads to an all day gab fest with Renada, have lunch with Kate, and coffee with Amy. Kelly and I spent a few hours just soaking up the sun together last week.

Not only do we love each other, but the CDC reports that social isolation and loneliness can increase the risk of everything from heart disease to depression to dementia to even early death. It is a particular risk for the elderly. My friends and I are all over fifty years old so this is one of many concerns we have about aging.

I do understand that it’s not easy, but for the better part of a year my immune system was compromised to the extent that I could barely leave the house, let alone hug a friend in a crowded coffee shop. I know how fortunate I am to be able to do so now. It is a privilege and one that I will never again take for granted.

By the way, Jen, I know you’re reading this. When do you want to go hiking again?

Has anyone ever told you to go touch grass? It’s one of my favorite things to do, and I particularly love ripping it out of the ground with my bare hands. The grass that grows inexplicably in my raised bed garden flourishes more than any of my other plants, and if I don’t pull it up once a week it will choke out everything else that I’m desperately trying to keep alive.

Yesterday, while plucking it out blade by blade (that way they know what’s coming), I noticed something had popped up where the thyme would have been if it hadn’t shriveled to dust weeks ago during the heat wave. I was excited. Maybe what I thought was long dead had fought its way back!

There’s an app called Picture This (not sponsored 🙂 ) that will identify any plant you take a picture of. I had grown something called a Graceful Spurge. How lovely! Alas, it only took a quick scroll down to learn that my little sprout was just an invasive weed. Argh.

As you might have guessed, I’m not a farmer. Anything I harvest was an accident of fate. Even my house plants are clinging to life, although I am raising a fairly hearty cactus.

Every October (remember, I live in Arizona) I research and resoil and plant new seeds with the highest of hopes and I get so excited when even a few things come up. There is a lot of satisfaction in that, and I really enjoy the time I spend out there with my hands in the dirt. Taking care of my little patch of dirt and dying things is quite therapeutic in a way.

This season was a little different though. Last October I found myself in the throes of chemotherapy and was afraid I wouldn’t be able to have a garden at all, but my friends Kelly and Tracey came to the rescue. We had breakfast and then spent an entire Fall morning out there planting and potting and decorating.

Now, when I pick the tomatoes and peppers we planted and make tea from an astonishing amount of chamomile, I can’t help but remember that day. True happiness that poked through a cloud of dismal dark times.  I’m convinced that my love for those women who got down in the dirt with me is the reason for all of my garden’s uncharacteristic success this year. Each time I touch grass, I think of them.

Right before I rip it out of the ground.

At some point every mother must let go. Since our economy makes it so difficult for young people to afford a place of their own, I’ve been able to put it off for quite a while. Last week, though, my son announced that he is ready.

“Would you go with me to look at rentals, Mom?”

Nothing could stop me. I am truly excited for him, but as we browsed the internet and as he made appointments I could feel something like a vise tighten around my heart.

I not only left home at eighteen, I moved across the country from Buckeye, Arizona to Chicago, Illinois, with almost no money and only one friend, hoping to find my way. The audacity. As it turned out, I did not navigate that adventure with very much grace. If there was a difficult way to do something, that was my way, but I learned so much during that decade and eventually made so many great friends that I would not trade the experience for anything. Even so, it was an experience I would not have had if living at home had been a tolerable option. I long ago vowed to be the kind of parent who would spare Connor the bewilderment and hardship that comes with feeling so alone in the world.

Like me he did not have a particular vision for his future, but unlike me he is not reckless or anxious to get away. As a 2020 high school graduate he found himself in a pandemic world of uncertainty, but Connor is pragmatic and launched a career in the trades. Now three years into an electrician’s apprenticeship he is a grown man with a plan.

As for me, I specifically did not plan for this, this painful moment in time that always seemed so far in the future. Now that the future is here I find that I am devastated, but also thrilled to have the chance to be there for him as he makes his way. There will be a lot of tears in the coming months, but mostly tears of joy as I trust in his good judgment, trust in God to keep him safe out there, and trust that I’ll be able to navigate this adventure with grace.

This month I find myself recovering from a double mastectomy with reconstruction. For reference, I look like Frankenstein’s monster and have been severely limited in my activities which, admittedly, have included a lot of scrolling. I’ve only just been able to dial back the pain killers enough to read, let alone get the February newsletter published just under the wire.

An article I did manage to read, Why Boredom is Good for Your Kid, was found in the August 4, 2025 issue of Psychology Today, by Sam Goldstein, Ph.D. Having frequently watched my only child make up games and stories to entertain himself, I already knew this, but Dr. Goldstein said something else that stopped me in my Tramadol soaked tracks. “…slow down for a second. Look around. Let your brain breathe.”

I danced around a similar idea with my therapist once but it didn’t really go anywhere because if I’m going to be sitting around I should be brainstorming, meditating, or reading the news. Manifesting something, at least. Right? She suggested sitting quietly, gazing out the window, alone for a while with my thoughts.

MY thoughts? Absolutely not. My thoughts don’t know how to act. They are intrusive and catastrophic and guaranteed to run amok. Since my diagnosis I’ve put a lot of energy into steering clear of the downward spiral and staring off into space seemed like the mental health equivalent of consulting a Ouija board. It feels like a game until the demon moves into your house.

Disgusted with the doom the other day, I put down my phone and realized after about ten minutes that I’d just been sitting there. Alone with my thoughts. What? I won’t lie, at first they were grim but after about ten minutes more, I found that I wasn’t really thinking about much of anything. I felt my shoulders leave my ears and I heaved the heaviest, most cleansing sigh my stitches would allow.

The exercise didn’t instantly change my life but for a little while I felt better, lighter even.  Instead of social media, I opened the Notes App and drafted a new essay to be delivered (perhaps on time) in the March newsletter.  Since then I’ve often repeated this exercise on purpose and the end result isn’t always creative and doesn’t always feel better. Sometimes I just cry. It is weirdly satisfying though and I no longer consider it a dangerous waste of time. I find now that I crave that sensation when overwhelmed with emails, tasks, pain, worries, and the news. I have to admit that I’m making it a habit to slow down, look around, and let my brain breathe.

* https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/raising-resilient-children/202508/why-boredom-is-good-for-your-kid

If you are a familiar, you know that the devil has been messing with me lately. Everyone goes through it from time to time. There’s nothing like spiraling amidst a life altering trauma that is then sprinkled with random unrelated heartbreaks. The piling on feels unnecessary but surviving, thriving even, under such attacks is the best way to show that he can, respectfully, fuck off.

When life goes off the rails, I will urgently seek out a good (or bad) scary story in any form. The Conjuring Universe is my most comforting default, but I will cheerfully dive into just about anything that promises hauntings, witches, monsters, aliens, or (a personal favorite) demons.

The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas saw me through a few chemotherapy treatments, and recently I landed on a show called My Horror Story. It is exactly what it sounds like and I cannot stop watching (ref: good OR bad).

Creepy coping mechanism? Sure, but final girl energy is contagious and life these days requires the summoning of that kind of courage. At least I’m not possessed by a demon—as far as I know…

I would go so far as to say that most of my childhood trauma was orchestrated by my mother. I didn’t have the words until recently for malevolent parentification but have always been able to make the connections between her actions and the emotions my brave therapist finds herself regularly wading through. Even as I seek out ways to cope with the carnage she left behind, I knew my mother very well. I knew what she was up to, and usually why. Case, more or less, closed.

A true enigma to the day he died-this month-was my father. One of the few things I do know is that his favorite movie was Jeremiah Johnson. It is a seventies film starring Robert Redford about a mountain man who lived during the expansion of the American western frontier. I have seen that movie so many times, and have heard my dad lament over and over that he was born in the wrong century.
My only take away from Mr. Johnson’s adventures was a lifelong enthusiasm for aloof, blonde, horsemen (ref: brave therapist). But Dad craved that solitary life, building a cabin far away from corrupt civilization while hunting and fishing to survive.

Growing up, our vacations were camping trips. We bounced around the bed of the truck as he drove the family along unpaved forest roads for hours, sometimes looking for the perfect spot and sometimes just looking around. A fishing pole was always with the gear, should a random lake materialize during our travels. Frequently, it did. While my siblings and I made ourselves the scourge of the forest, Dad was miles away, either scouting for game prior to hunting season or actively on the hunt.

A few trips a year does not a mountain man make, and over time those trips became fewer and farther apart. A decade of acting as caretaker for my mother and forty years in a blue collar job made it difficult to get away.

Once he was freed from those responsibilities, I was certain of three things: that he would be fishing all the time; that he would hassle my brother into applying for tags on every possible hunt; and, that we would probably have to report him missing someday after he’d gone up north by himself.

This was not the case. He would, on occasion, accompany my brother on various outings but usually declined, and never went by himself. He wouldn’t even be persuaded to use a county parks pass. I could not fathom this. Why was he not living his dream? It was not only well within his reach, Dad was young enough and healthy enough to truly enjoy it-a gift rare among his peers.

He was quick to anger when I was young and it was best to steer clear, but even as his demeanor softened over the years, I realize that I was never able to really know the man. But I did know Jeremiah Johnson and, standing at my dad’s hospital bedside, my heart was breaking over the things he never managed to do.

Why did he abandon the life that he wanted? Did he lack the confidence? Was he too tired? Did he lose interest? Why is it that out of the blue my father contracted pneumonia and was gone within the space of a month? There should be a damn good reason for that one.
Hmmm.
Hyper fixating on what informed his retirement activities will not provide an answer to the real question you’re asking because there is no good reason at all, is there, Vanessa?

Further, his inner thoughts were none of my business, and I’m quite sure there is much I should
be thankful that I don’t know. In the midst of a complicated grieving process, it is absurd to be haunted by a “what could have been” that isn’t even mine.
I must resolve simply to imagine my father now as I believe he once imagined himself: casting a line from the bank of an unnamed river, comforted by the sight of smoke curling off the chimney atop his cabin in the woods.

In the White Tanks Mountains, on the Waddell Trail, there is a mesquite tree down in a wash that someone decorates for Christmas every year. It must drive the park rangers crazy. I don’t know who does this but as I corner that ridge, the ornaments pop up in the middle of a stark gray rocky riverbed to provide an enchanting cognitive dissonance, and I so look forward to it.

My strength is unpredictable right now and therefore my hiking opportunities, but somehow I’ll make it out there this year. Christmas is confusing for me this season. We are supposed to use this time dwelling on birth and hope but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been grappling with my mortality instead.

Christmas reminds me of how often my family says that I need Jesus, but they don’t know how pivotal a role His words have played in my life. I suspect that what the family really means is that they want to see me in church, but I don’t like it there. That’s not to say I have a deep connection with the divine during every hike (unless you count how grateful I am to finally see the car), but many, many times I do and that fuels my feelings and my actions as I move through life. It’s not an altar but there’s something about the rhythmic crunch of my boots in the sand that lends itself quite well to this, as does the not so subtle hint of danger.

If I’ve dragged Mike out far enough and early enough, the close yipping of coyotes tells us that we might be surrounded. Is there something even bigger tracking us as well? Probably, but I wouldn’t mind if my last memory is the scent of creosote-the best scent in the world. Better that than the smell of the treatment room, no?

I frequently find myself in places with signs that say, “Have Your Bear Spray Handy”, and “Mountain Lion Crossing”. I’ve always figured that if not from something with claws it would be a clumsy tumble over a cliff that finally ends me. But after all the dumb shit that I’ve done, to be taken out by cancer? No fucking way.

It is prime hiking weather in the low desert right now and I cannot wait to get back on the trails. But first, I must complete what I hope is my last treatment. My body has been poisoned over and over for six months and I am so, so tired. I even tried to get out of this final appointment, but my doctor is right. I am fortunate that there is such a treatment at all.

So, I view this Christmas season as a (re)birth of hope and of my will to fight with renewed faith in my team and in my body and in those words.

Chemotherapy is torture. I’m not a scientist so there is no good answer within my intellectual reach but in dark moments one wonders why, in 2025, are we still poisoning people like this?

It’s so easy to indulge in grim thoughts when the side effects are at their worst but it is no joke that navigation of this illness is a journey to be taken literally one day at a time. It’s liberating in a way and I’m not the first woman to say that, in our chaotic world, being forced to live in the moment is a sort of healing process of its own.

However, in the absence of a tolerable medical solution, cancer patients are taught to lean on faith, keep hope alive, and to practice gratitude. With varying degrees of success, I’ve taken that advice to heart and it being Thanksgiving week, I’ve chosen to mine my journal and report for you on the latter.

So in no particular order, and in addition to life itself, I am eternally grateful this year for the following: Daisy purring in my lap, Connor, Mike, Kelly, coffee with Amy and Ren, Miralax, my walking pad and vibration plate, Wellbutrin, yoga, grocery delivery, You Tube Premium, meditation, almond butter and bananas, Xanax, Pinterest, ginger in any form, mashed potatoes, saltine crackers, lemonade, and night toast.

There are other bonuses. Since I am immunocompromised, we cannot be in ‘super spreader’ situations so large family get togethers this season are out of the question. Not that I dislike my extended family, but Mike, Connor and I will be spending a quiet Thursday with movies and a charcuterie board. After fourteen treatments and seventy-six doctor appointments since May, I am so looking forward to the holidays. These simple plans have made me realize there is one lesson I’ve learned this year that stands out among the others. I’ve learned how to be thankful in advance.

After reading my latest short story, Mike said, “Wow, that’s pretty dark.”
Yes, it is. He’s right, and I do have a very dark side. It’s shadowed my whole life, usually in the form of nightmares and catastrophic thinking. When the wind sets off our Ring camera my imagination can turn the weather into a home invasion, a blood-soaked crime scene or even a wrongful conviction if I’m having a low self-esteem day.

Of course, there are pills for that, and therapy and meditation and, and, and…
But there is no pill for the demon that peeks around every horrific headline lately, the demon who whispers, “What if this is it? What if all your most unspeakable fears are coming true at last?”

As far as I know there is no cure for situational existential dread. For what it’s worth, I often find meditation to be the gateway to a downward spiral, but out of those have emerged some of the best story ideas. And I have found over the years that while there is no cure for it, that dread can be treated with a keyboard, a pen and a piece of paper, or even the back of a receipt. I don’t mind sitting with my demons for a while, by now we’re used to each other but, for my sanity’s sake, at some point they must be exorcised—trapped in the page.

“What if”, you say? What if indeed. The stories I write might make you chuckle, they might scare you to death, or they might just make you wonder what the fuck. But dark times need dark people to take notes. Art, of any kind, not only illuminates the awful, but uses that light to show us the way out. Creativity starves the despair that feeds on helplessness, so please, if you’re looking for a way to fight back…sing it, paint it, play it or write it down. Frightening as it is.