*Lyrics from St. Vincent’s Year of the Tiger. Love.

I must take a break from house stuff, from trivial pursuits like color stories and drying paint to celebrate a friend who just launched her first blog. Her blog is not about home stuff, or decor. It’s about breast cancer, survival and the unenviable (yet inevitable) decision she has made to undergo a bilateral mastectomy and immediate reconstruction. I only found out recently that she was diagnosed just before Thanksgiving, and her surgery is set for next week. Since we live in different states I can only offer emotional support from far away. Luckily, since she’s so damned adorable, smart, funny, warm, honest, loving and just great to be around she has a huge network of friends who are there for her (and will be there for her), and her husband and their two kids.

But, I did have the idea to make her a mix. Songs, as you all know, are central in my world and what better way to show your love and understanding than by crafting a mix of songs that help reflect, inject and reverberate the emotions that I can only imagine she’s going through. I thought I’d share this with you all because breast cancer is fucking scary. And it’s not even happening to me. By sharing this mix, and Lisa’s blog with you all I hope she can feel the love and support that surrounds her, even from way up here in Massachusetts (she’s in D.C.). And I wish for her the strength to fall apart, the courage to let the sadness creep in, the bravery to cling to the hope of a positive outcome, and the tenacity to continue to feel whatever she wants to feel, for as long as it takes.

With love, for Lisa, the baddest bitch around. xoxo