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Marilyn Muses

On Life, Cancer, and other stuff

A Rollercoaster

Ongoing  energy spent creating my life But insecurity made me hide, causing me strife It’s like a roller coaster struggling up to who knows where I was hiding my inner resources,...

Lovers

When we look at the Lovers tarot card in the Rider Waite deck, we see Archangel Raphael with his wings spread wide protectively with Adam and Eve, standing below. At first glance...

Shana Tova

The dentist chair is in a reclining position and so my body is comfortable but my mouth is wide open with a block between my teeth so I can’t bite the dentist. My mouth is numb...

The Hierophant

“There are many paths, but only one journey.”   In Greek, Hierophant translates as “expounder of sacred mysteries” and “one who teaches the rites of sacrifice and worship.” The...

The Emperor

The Emperor is all about recognizing and accessing our inner power and using it to master life’s challenges. Mary Greer states that the Emperor assumes responsibility and acts...

It’s Never Boring

How many times have we heard “this will be funny someday”? At the moment, funny is the last thing it is because fear, embarrassment or in my case anxiety doesn’t feel funny, it’s...

An Embarrassing Life Lesson

  We used to visit my father’s parents every Saturday. They lived in an apartment over a bar on Bay Parkway in Bensonhurst Brooklyn —at the time - the 1950’s and 60’s, it...

The Fool

  I want to write a comedy piece on cancer, having been disappointed that the jokes on Comedy vs. Cancer night that Sloan Kettering put together were comedy routines that...

Launching our Demands Into the Sky

I always liked the idea of wishing on a star, but which star? Which wish? As a child there were many. I wished school wasn’t so hard, I wish the boy I liked in the 6th grade...

The Moon

Ramana Maharishi, thought to be one of the most gifted sages, introduced a meditation called, “Who Am I?” Over the years I would have easily answered this question with, “I am a...

The Hanged Man

In the 12th Major Arcana Tarot card, the Hanged Man is hanging from a tree upside down. He has a peaceful expression and in the Ryder Waite deck there is a halo around his head....

The Salt Marsh

I live across the street from a salt marsh, in the south-east corner of Brooklyn. Marine Park. When we first moved there, the salt marsh was a dumping ground for abandoned cars...

Really?

When cancer was over it was hard to move onEverything ended and old opportunities were gone. Though I was cancer free, it hardly mattered.I didn’t want to start over, I felt...

Choosing Life Again

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, February 2020, I wrote an essay called Choosing Life where I spoke about the ambivalence I often felt about life and a favorite cartoon on...

The Tower

I started picking a Tarot card for the day in January 2023 when we went to Aruba for a vacation. My husband’s family took an immediate liking to the cards and their interest gave...

Management

I’m now managing the symptoms of my disease,And as you might expect, I’m feeling ill at ease.Prednisone shrank my lymph nodes, so it looks like I’m in remission, But the abnormal...

The Empress Within

  The Empress lives within each of us. Though several Tarot decks depicts the Empress as a pregnant woman, the pregnancy itself can be seen as a metaphor of being pregnant...

The Golden Years

It’s unusually warm outside but I’m still very cold.One of the downfalls of getting so old. I was always so healthy, as to how I can’t answerBut now I am fighting my second round...

Free to Be Me

  When I was 18, I went to live on a Kibbutz in Israel for 9 months. It was an elaborate way of running away from home and it saved my soul, which started me off on a path...

Groundhog Day

Sometime in January I read that the movie, Groundhog Day, would be having its’ 30th anniversary and that it will be on the AMC channel all day. I think I was the only one who...