The week of quiet since my last posting has been anything but quiet from my perspective. I got off my 18 hours in the air after the gig and then holiday with Aidan and arrived back at home to welcome my Cultivating Leadership colleagues who had come in for our southern meeting (we meet once in the southern and once in the northern hemisphere each year). There were three days with the whole firm, three days with just the leadership team (two of those in Paekakariki), and three radiotherapy sessions. Today the third gale has blown in since my arrival at home.

The new American president has blown in with a gale of alternate facts and terrifying executive orders. And my colleagues have mostly blown away, back to the five countries from which they traveled to get here, refreshed by talk of our Connection, our Order, the Exchange we make together, and the Destiny or purpose to which we are called.

Now, I’m at the hospital, four (of 25) radiotherapy treatments behind me and the band aid that marks the place where I got the belly shot this morning. This week the symptoms of each of these medical interventions will start to arrive: my skin will begin to redden and get sore and menopause will blow in like the forth gale of the month.

Today is the stillness before that storm, even with the battering gale outside. Today the only symptom is dread, and the little soreness from the big needle into my belly this morning.

How will these next 4.5 weeks pass as I lie in the machine each morning? How will I be different on 25 February, when I have finished my last treatment and climb back into my life, back on a plane to California? One month is a blink. One month ago it was Christmas day and Melissa and Ayla and my brother and my kids and Michael at our house in Paekakariki. One month is an eternity. In that month we have had a new president–a new world order; Naomi has gone from playing on the beach to studying in the snow; Aidan and I have been on our magical holiday; my whole firm has come and gone. Rarely do we peer forward into the crystal ball of our lives and find we have no way to imagine what life would look like in one month. (Sometimes we look back and are shocked at how much our life has changed in one month, but often we do not see that coming.) So I will sit very quietly here in my little house at the bottom of the world, wondering whether summer will ever arrive this year, and wondering who I’ll be in this one little and massive month.