How to Eat an Elephant

This project has been years in the making. I have always sort of known that I needed to do it… way back in the top secret places of my mind, but it just seemed so daunting to try to put it together, so I just kept burying the urge.

Recently several people have suggested to me that I should write a book, but I have really struggled with the topic. Should I write a fictional book, or a self-help book, or a biography? There were just too many decisions to really get me to focus on any one idea.

This year I started really feeling an urgency to do this and once I opened my mind and my heart to the idea, the big picture started coming together

When my dad was diagnosed with cancer, he said we would deal with it just like you would eat an elephant… one bite at a time! Our family immediately adopted the elephant as our family icon and we had posters of elephants on the wall of the hospital room and very quickly elephant figurines, pictures, music boxes, etc started popping up on desks and bookshelves and walls in our homes as a reminder of how one deals with the challenges that life throws at you.

So I decided to tackle this project the same way my dad dealt with cancer…. one bite at a time, one lesson at a time. I have fondly nicknamed it Project Elephant for that reason. . I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and as I have started writing chapters, I have realized that my main motivation is to share the stories and the things I have learned. I have decided that instead of doing it in a published book, I am just going to share the chapters on my blog, so that everyone who wants to read it will have the chance. As I publish the chapters here, I will label them all “Project Elephant”, for those of you who wish to follow along.

My idea for this “book” was to focus on some of the lessons that I learned from my dad while he was learning to eat his elephant. As I started pondering thoughts and as I reached out to family members and invited them to share their ideas of lessons learned, I realized that I had been learning important lessons from my dad way before cancer took over our lives. Many of them were not intentional lessons that he set out to purposely teach. Looking back, many of them were subtle lessons that one had to be quietly observing to even notice.

As you share this journey, it is my hope that you will be able to catch the spirit with which this project is intended and forgive my shortcomings as a writer. I like to write the way I think and sometimes it’s difficult to put into words what is in my head and my heart.

It is my intention for this project to be somewhat of a tribute to my dad as time quickly approaches the 20^th anniversary of the end of his journey here on earth and the beginning of his next adventure. In order for me to adequately express some of the lessons learned, there will be stories that are difficult to read and even more difficult to tell. Therefore, I also hope that you won’t hold my dad’s shortcomings as a human being against him. We all have a path before us on our journey here on earth. Sometimes our path is made more difficult because of our own choices and sometimes because of the choices of others, but we all have our agency and for that I am truly grateful. With that agency comes the responsibility to forgive… to forgive others, whose choices have made our own journey bumpy, and to forgive ourselves when we have caused others to stumble.