Why I started this blog and where I want to see it go

Why I write

Beau Dudte

Writing, for me has always been a way to get out how I really feel. 

When you have a conversation with me, you’re not typically going to get anything much deeper than, how I think the Browns screwed up this time, the proper temperature and preparation of meats or the size of the fish that I ALMOST caught. But when I write I have a way of expressing exactly how I’m feeling and thinking in that moment that’s almost therapeutic to me. 

So when I have these moments in life that I can’t always talk about, because you know men just can’t or shouldn’t acknowledge that we too have some sort of emotion, I would just sit and write about it. Well now, with social media being the “thing”, when I got sick I started writing posts on Facebook about my experiences and things I’ve had to deal with. 

Eventually, I started getting messages from friends I hadn’t talked to in years, one girl in particular who I won’t name because it’s, well her story, that I hadn’t talked to since high school that had been affected by cancer and wanted to talk about how I deal with certain situations that come up throughout treatment. 

That was the moment that I realized, the words I’m writing have the potential to help not only me, but also so many other people that are experiencing the same things but just don’t have that outlet to talk about it. 

When I was diagnosed again for the third time, I met Karen Gerwig a year after my first diagnosis, when I cut a tree down for them here in Cinnamon Lake. When we started talking after I had finished the job she mentioned she recently went through her own battle with cancer. I don’t know why or how, but I could walk into a place of a hundred people and end up finding the one cancer patient and end up making a great new friend. But over the years she would always check up on me and see how I’m doing, or drop cupcakes off that her granddaughters had made. 

When when she found out my leukemia had returned again, she approached me and my wife and offered to help with the benefit. Then she started talking to me about starting a blog after she had read some of my Facebook posts in the past. 

It has always intrigued me to write something more than just random Facebook posts, but to me it was just something I did when the mood struck me or I had been sipping a few cocktails after the wife and kids went to bed. I didn’t see anything special about what I was writing, or think if I were to write a book anyone would be more interested in my story over the millions of other cancer stories out there. I mean damn, you can’t even watch a Disney movie anymore without one parent dying of cancer in the first 20 minutes. 

But then, after I started actually putting more time into it, there started to be some feedback that I wasn’t expecting. 

A guy at the varsity football game came over to ask, “is that actually you writing this?” Then I had another friend from Seattle who I hadn’t seen in 20 years, reach out and told me how awesome the stories I was writing really are. When I was talking to my dad tonight about it, he said he’s been approached about it and the questions he always gets are, is that really him writing this or why isn’t he writing a book?

Then he said the amazing thing about it is you’re not writing to get sympathy or pity he said, you’re writing is just explaining the things that most people don’t know about cancer and the effects it has on people. (I think I might’ve churched that up a bit because it sounded more like, “Dagum boy you sho do put dem words together real nice like!”😆) 

But that’s true, I don’t need or want anyone's sympathy thinking I’m more than what I am. When I’m told I’m strong, all I can think is most people are just as strong if not stronger when not given a choice.

One thing that is most difficult for me, as it is with most cancer patients I think, is the "pity you look"  when people ask how I'm feeling or how I'm doing or they look at me like I'm too fragile somehow to handle my normal day to day tasks. Sometimes I feel like crap, sometimes I am too fragile for daily tasks, but I can't handle the pity look. I always tell people, if I’m here and I’m talking to you I feel just fine, whether that’s 100% true or not.

That’s also how I feel about the Go Fund Me attached to it. I’m not just doing this for the money, I had no plans of doing a benefit and all of this when I first found out.  The idea of the gofundme, the benefit is very difficult for me to handle at times. 

But fortunately for me, I’m blessed to have so many amazing people in my life that just wanted to help us out.  

Writing this blog just felt like it was a way for all of the crap I have been through, what my wife and kids have had to endure, to actually mean something. 

The one thing Karen told me when I started was, just write something you’d want to leave behind for your children. 

That hit me in my heart that day and it made me think, if or when something happens to me and I’m no longer here, will my kids even understand what me and their mother went through just for me to be here as long as I can. 

Of course I do want to say we appreciate every dollar that people have reached in their own pockets to help us out. Especially when a lot of people are struggling right now and all of the uncertainty in the world. I told my dad tonight that the most amazing thing to see is how many people will show up and show out for someone they might not even know when someone is in real need. 

We see so much of the worst side of people through the window of social media, sometimes it clouds our vision to the actual beauty there is out in the world. Just know that every dollar raised, is going towards helping make sure that my family, at the very least, won’t have the burden of financial stability if my story comes to an end sooner than we expected. 

The only thing I’m asking, is if you read my posts to the end, and they make you feel some way just about the insight into the world of cancer, please just simply share it. 

I would like this to reach as many people as possible because you never know who might see it. It might be some young guy like I was, recently diagnosed and having no idea what to think, how to feel or more importantly, what to expect. 

Also because my wife and Grandma Dudte never believed that anyone would be interested in anything I ever wrote and I’d just love to shove it in their face and show them they were wrong! Ok, OMG, put the frying pans down ladies, it was a joke! They have actually been screaming at me for years to do something more with my writing. 

But seriously please take a second to share, it does mean the world to me that so many of you have shown interest in us and our story. As always ✌️🧡💪

*****

“So what are you going to do with what you have? And I’m not talking how much you have.

Some of you are business majors. Some of you are theologians, nurses, sociologists. Some of you have money. Some of you have patience. Some have kindness.  Some have love. Some of you have the gift of long-suffering.”- Denzel Washington University of Pennsylvania commencement speech