​WOW! What an amazing day yesterday. Thank you to everyone for all of the amazing messages for my birthday. I'm still reading through them all ... I am so blessed to have so many amazing friends and family.
I also want to thank everyone who contributed to the book Heather made me for my birthday. She gave it to me at dinner and I was so moved. I still haven't been able to read through it all, but I am already overwhelmed by the amazing messages and wonderful memories. For those of you Heather wasn't able to connect with, she made me a book with pictures and stories from family and friends about how I have touched peoples lives. It's a book to help me get through the tough times on my medical journey. If you weren't able to get something in before she went to print or if she wasn't able to reach you, it's not too late. You can still connect with her @ [email protected]
Thank you again for another amazing year in this journey we call life. So far, 44 is looking pretty awesome ... and Pride Weekend started today. Woop!

​Heather is making me a black forest cake from scratch for my birthday tomorrow. OMG, I am so excited. Been so long since I had sweets, or anything with flour. So darn excited! I feel like I'm 6 all over again. Pretty sure I can't wait until midnight

So this arrived in the mail today. A shirt for me and one for Heather with a lovely card from my amazing rugby club ... Milwaukee Scylla. I know I've mentioned before the community that rugby has been for me (and others). It's gestures like this that blow you away. 

I was unable to finish the Spring season with the Scylla when we feared my cancer was back and all of the appts, procedures and hospital stay that followed. It was very upsetting for me to not be able to finish the season with these women who set out last August to win the DII title in the US. They worked their butts off during the Fall season and in the offseason to get fit. When they learned I wasn't going to be able to finish the season with them ... they made these shirts, so I would be there in spirit. OMG, I can't describe the LOVE! They all wore these shirts for the Midwest playoffs during warm-up. I knew they'd done it from FB, but it wasn't until Heather and I received our own that it truly sunk in the amazing gesture of love, support and family. 

As I have said many times, and will say many more, there is no family like rugby. 15 people on a field with a single objective over 80 minutes. Contact, yeah ... that's the best part. It's a complicated sport of many rules (we call them laws), that isn't always obvious to an observer. For me, it was the complexity of the strategy and brut physicality that drew me in the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college (granted I didn't play in the Fall after I broke my leg flipping my bike down a flight of stairs the first day of school my sophomore year). From the moment I joined my college rugby team (Univ of Vermont) and playing for one of the best women's clubs in the US (Beantown), I knew I'd found a home like no other. In the late 90's, I even went on a rugby tour in Australia with a combined team from New Orleans and Colorado and didn't know any of them until we met in Sydney. Rugby is community. Rugby is family. 

Back to the Scylla family ... these women have been there for me through some incredibly tough times. Six weeks after moving to Milwaukee in 2012, and 2 weeks after joining the Scylla, I lost my mom unexpectedly. I left abruptly to try and see her before she passed and then didn't return home for nearly two weeks. Scylla reached out to me (the woman they barely knew) and asked if I needed any help, for example getting my car from the airport. So I FedEx'd them my keys and they found someone who could drive my car (only manual transmission for this girl) and took care of my car until I returned. Community ... family! If you have been involved with the rugby community, you know what I mean. If not, you should find a rugby community immediately. Of all of the sports teams and other communities I've been involved with along the way, there is nothing like the rugby community. I mean, a sport that you literally beat the crap out of each other for 80 mins, shake hands and then go share a keg and sing rugby songs. Who wouldn't want to be part of this family?

Staying on the rugby kick for a moment, I have enjoyed coaching all of the teams I've been associated with, but there is one experience I will cherish for ever. Coaching women's college rugby (back in the late 90's and early 2000's) involved introducing women to the sport. At the time, there wasn't much of a high school rugby scene. That has since changed, which is AWESOME! So each season (there are two in a school year) we would get a wave of women to come and check out the sport. 15 positions on the field and pretty much 12 unique skills sets and body types needed (big, small, fast, strong). There is a place on a rugby team for anyone who is willing to tackle, be tackled, and be a team player. Most people don't get that, but for those of us lucky enough to show the skinny girl whose never played an organize sport, let along a contact sport how to love and embrace this sport it's something you will never forget. I am fortunate to have had a few of those in my years of coaching. One of them was one of my best players and tacklers. Contrary to public belief, it's not the big girls that excel at tackling ... it's the small ones that learn how to use gravity to their advantage. Coaching to me was about unlocking a person's potential ... and in rugby that's a combination of physical and emotional.

Rugby, best family and community ever!

THANK YOU SCYLLA for this amazing gift! 
I love and miss you all so very much and hope to see you all soon. Come visit us in Seattle!
#scyllastrong
#ilovescyllarugby