Finding Peace
Finding Peace
Excerpt: Why am I doing this? Sally asks herself.
A bit too late in the game. She’s already much more than halfway up the final summit of Mt. Everest and still climbing. Too late to be wondering, What on earth do I think I have to prove? Too late to say to Ellikka, their guide, their Fearless Leader (as she likes to call herself), This is crazy, isn’t it? Totally crazy. Could it possibly not be happening? Is it a dream? A hallucination?
There is no right time to say such things to Ellikka. Despite her strange, Nordic name, Ellikka is a big, lanky, former girls’ basketball champion from New Jersey, no European mystique about her at all. She’s rigid with a blank, athletic optimism, and though Sally has already tried repeatedly to tell her, I’m sorry but I realize now I’m not cut out for this. Not everyone can climb every mountain. I don’t want to prove to the world that cancer survivors are tough cookies, Ellikka will have none of it. Ellikka simply repeats what she’s said before, not just to Sally but to the entire Breast Cancer Survivors team in her morning pep talks, “Never say you can’t do it.” (One Story)