Category: poetry and healing

May 11, 2021: Living the Questions

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD1 Comment

Like you, there have been many times in my life that questions seemed to dominate my thoughts far more frequently than answers.  In my youth, my burning questions were often about whether or not some high school “love” interest “liked” me or not.  I was terribly shy around the opposite sex, and at the time, as tall or taller than many of the boys in my class, which only increased my insecurities in the arena of teen-age romance.  Then there were questions about college:  Which one?  Where?  Would I do well?  What if I didn’t? 

Some years later and newly married, my first husband and I contemplated his choice of graduate schools.  Questions dominated our conversations for months. In the end, we opted for adventure (it was the time of youthful idealism and protests) and ended up in Ottawa, where he began his doctoral studies.  We were wholly unprepared for Canadian winters or the loneliness we felt at the time, but gradually, Canada began to be “home” to us, especially in the years after his death.    Decades later, after returning to California for several years with my new husband, he announced his decision to retire from academic life.  We had our own questions, but family, friends and acquaintances peppered us with their questions.   “What are you two planning to do now?”  “You’re returning to Canada? Why?”  Their questions prompted our questions of one another: “But what would we do there?”  “What about our friends?”  “Will we sell our house?”  “What if we spent six months there and six months here?” 

Our transition revealed not only questions, but the realization that we didn’t always share the same wishes and wants for our “What’s Next?” chapter.  Nights were often punctuated by restlessness, the questions invading my dreams.  My notebook was filled with questions, a continuous loop of repetition, and I wasn’t finding any answers in what I wrote.  I don’t quite remember how long it took or when, but we stumbled into a joint decision, downsized our lives, sold our home, and watched as the movers loaded up the van with our worldly belongings and set out, as we did, for Toronto. 

This past weekend, I presented a workshop for Young Adult Cancer Canada (YACC) on the subject of writing for health and specifically, writing alone.  The willingness to “live the questions,” to find yourself groping in the darkness, are part of what writing honestly demands. The answers, in life or in fiction, are revealed as you write, gradually writing yourself into knowing, but not without making your way through the dark before stumbling on a new insight..  E.L. Doctorow, author of the award novels Ragtime and Billy Bathgate, famously remarked that when one sits down to write a novel, “You can only see as far as your headlights but you can make the whole trip that way.”  

Life doesn’t come with a set of answers, but it is riddled with questions.  It’s like making our journey in that darkness of the unknown at times.  We navigate through it as best as we can, deal with unexpected events, difficult chapters, the illnesses and losses we experience.  Cancer is one of those unwelcome chapters in your life, and the journey through it is not unlike what Doctorow describes.  You survive the shock of diagnosis, the worry and after-effects of surgery and chemotherapy, roller coaster of recovery, but despite all that, you can’t see very far ahead.  There are no certainties.  Your life is punctuated by more questions than answers. “Has the treatment worked? How likely is my cancer to recur?  What if it has metastasized and is lurking somewhere else in my body? Stage four?  Then how long do I have?”  No one can offer you certainty.  You navigate through it all in the same way Doctorow described of writing, able to see only a short distance along the path, but gradually finding your way into the answers.

 “Questions in the Mind of the Poet While She Washes Her Floors, “a poem by” Elena Georgiou, poses several questions, ones that play in in the poet’s mind, and like life, don’t come with answers.  Here is an excerpt:


Am I a peninsula slowly turning into an island?

If I grew up gazing at the ocean would I think
life came in waves?

If I were a nomad would I measure time
by the length of a footstep?

If I can see a cup drop to the floor and shatter
why can’t I see it gather itself back together?

If a surgeon cut out my mistakes
would the scar be under my heart?

How much time will I spend protecting myself
from what the people I love call love?

Would my desires feel different if I lived forever?

  (In:  Mercy Mercy Me, © 2000)

Georgiou offers no answers to the reader.  Nor did Austrian novelist and poet, Maria Rainer Rilke (1875-1926) when he offered advice to a youthful protégé, published in his wise little book, Letters to a Young Poet.   “Don’t search for the answers,” he wrote, “which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Live everything.  Live the questions…  Live the questions now.  Live your way into the answer.   I have often quoted Rilke to the men and women who attend my writing workshops.  His words are as insightful now as they were over a century ago.  Whether cancer or embarking on a significant change, living through the questions is not easy, yet it is all you can do. Your task is to be present, to pay attention and live life fully.  Not surprisingly, when you do, you often stumble upon the answers you seek. 

Writing Suggestions:

  • Whether you’re wrestling with the aftermath of a cancer diagnosis or some other unexpected life challenge, make a list of the questions that keep replaying in your mind.  Choose one and for 15 minutes, explore it as you write.
  • Recall an earlier time in life when you faced the unknown.  What questions did you have then, and how did you find your way into the answers?  Are there insights that may pertain to your current challenges?  Write about that time, the questions and how they were resolved.
  • You might use one or two of the poet Elena Georgiou’s questions as your prompt.  Choose it and again, writing nonstop for 15 minutes.  Then read over what you’ve written, underline those words or phrases that stand out.  In a day or two, you might begin with one of those phrases you underlined and explore it more deeply.  You just might discover some wisdom that leads you to some of the answers you’ve been searching for.

March 28, 2021: There’s Not a Book–or App–on How to do This

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD

Siri, that monotonous virtual voice of iPhone assistance, has proven to an unreliable narrator.  Where I once counted on “her” for directions to my desired destination by her unflappable female voice through streets and freeways of my city and arrive at my destination without getting lost, I have been often been offered directions to places not in Toronto, but a city in Oklahoma or somewhere north of Algonquin Park. I confess that more than a few expletives have sometimes been uttered in Siri’s direction.   

How, I wonder, did I ever get from point A to point B in the years I was consulting with organizations scattered all over greater Toronto or the multitude of new technology firms in Silicon Valley?  But now, it seems we’ve all become seekers of much more than driving directions.  We search for advice and directions for navigating our lives.  Yep, there’s an app for all that.   On countless mornings my husband and I turn to our mobile phones for answers to our questions.  (I have dubbed my iPhone as “the fount of all available knowledge.”)  Sometimes I wonder how we managed to get through adulthood without the abundance of advice and information available in today’s world. 

The internet has no shortage of advice, whether we’re seeking advice on how to prepare food, get directions to places, assemble furniture, fill out required forms, deal with relationships, child-rearing, or emotional and health complaints.   How did we remember directions, facts and other things before the ease of our technology gave us instant answers?  I can’t help but wonder how my grandchildren will grow and learn with ever more sophisticated technologies as part of their lives.

Ask a question about anything, whether your mobile phone or the internet, and you’ll find a preponderance of information, self-help websites, blogs and books.  In 2011, Dr. Jim Taylor, writing for The Huffington Post, commented that whether forced to change due to unexpected illness, hardship or loss, there was likely a book, podcast or DVD offering you a step-by-step explanation on how get through your latest life upheaval.  By 2017 the self-help industry alone was valued at around $9 billion, and in 2019, at $11 billion.  Now it’s estimated to grow to over $13 billion by 2021. “Contrary to the assertions of just about every self-help book that has ever been written,” Dr. Taylor wrote, “change takes incredible commitment, time, energy and effort. Someone might be able to show you the way, but you have to make the journey yourself.”

 And making the journey yourself is something every cancer patient or survivor fully understands. 

Teva Harrison, award-winning cartoonist, who wrote and illustrated In-Between Days (2016), a graphic memoir of her journey with a life-threatening cancer.   “When I was first diagnosed, I made all these frantic lifestyle changes, as if I could turn back time, undo my bad luck.  I think a lot of us do that…I was frantic, driven by panic,” she wrote.   As her cancer progressed and treatment changed, she faced living with an ever-advancing and terminal cancer.  She wrote, “If we manage to stabilize it, it’s only stable for an indeterminate while…it’s only a matter of time before it finds a way around the barricades and begins to grow again…” 

Harrison’s cancer journey required she adapt to and navigate her life through constant change, yet even in the face of a terminal and progressive illness, she sought ways to enjoy what she could. “I mean, the cancer is here, and I have a life to live.  And sometimes living well includes eating something made with sugar or having a glass of wine with dinner,” not something she’d likely find to be advised by the health literature, yet necessary for her.   “I’m not going to be hard on myself,” she said, “I’m going to enjoy every minute I can.” Harrison did her best to enjoy the time she had left, widely mourned in Canada when she died at age 42 in the spring of 2019.  Her humor, honesty and sorrow continue to be cherished for many diagnosed and living with cancer.

Thankfully, there are a wealth of excellent cancer support programs and resources for those living with cancer.  Writing groups, such as I continue to lead, are one example.  The shared experiences of the cancer community can be a source of comfort, making you feel less alone or saying the things you find difficult to articulate yourself.  Again, and again, I witness the power of the group experience to help overcome loneliness, to give voice to feelings and fears, and, even as some face terminal diagnoses, to offer support in multiple acts of kindness—something far more meaningful than self-help books and sites can offer.

In the poem, “There’s Not a Book on How To Do This,” cancer survivor Sharon Doyle reminds us of the challenge of discovering your own way through cancer as she sketches the composition for her fall garden, her celebration of her cancer journey ending. 


There’s not a book on how to do this,
but there is an emphasis on composition.

The trucks that slug by under our window
hold trombones, mirrors, dictionaries.
It’s not my fault they invade
the calm of trees like cancer.  I

don’t have cancer anymore…

…I rarely remember the
uterus I don’t have.  One of my sons said,
“You were done with it right away, right, Mom?”
I guessed so…


(In:  The Cancer Poetry Project, v. 1, 2001, Karin Miller, Ed.)


“There’s not a book on how to do this…” Cancer or any major life challenge doesn’t come with the luxury of a GPS or an “app” to help us navigate through our life upheavals, fears, or grief.  Yes, you may find help from others’ advice; you may have the comfort of family, friends and others, but ultimately, the journey is yours to navigate.  It’s a road full of unexpected twists and turns, conundrums and set-backs, yet with each step you take, you begin composing that new life, the one that honors where you’ve been and what you’ve discovered about yourself and the way you want to create your live going forward.  That is, truly, when healing begins.


Writing Suggestions:

As you write, reflect on your own life journeys and life during and after cancer treatment. 

  • What was most helpful for you as you navigated the rough waters of profound and unexpected change? 
  • What internal compass—your beliefs, aspirations, or faith—played a part in helping you rediscover hope and embrace a new life?
  • Based on your experience, what advice or suggestions might you offer someone just beginning the journey through cancer?
  • If you could compose a garden, painting, sculpture or collage to honor your cancer experience, what would it include?

Regaining Your Voice: Writing Cancer

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD

In these long months of social isolation, I have taken more refuge in my morning writing practice than usual, spending the first hours of the early morning alone with my notebook, a thermos of coffee, and my small dog at my feet.  It’s a practice that not only allows me to plumb the depths of my own thoughts and emotions, but it also alleviates the bouts of anxiety I’ve felt during these long months of a pandemic.  Meanwhile, my husband has taken to immersing himself in poetry—a new endeavor for him–studiously making his way through my poetry collection, over 100 volumes accumulated over many years.   He is not only inspired but obviously finds solace his morning reading routine.  And it’s probably no surprise that in the past several months, I’ve been asked to facilitate many more virtual writing workshops with several cancer organizations.  COVID-19 has heightened the need for ways to interact socially and, for many, use journaling or a writing group to help express the anxieties, fears and loneliness of living with cancer – heightened in a time of this pandemic.  

Baking, creative cuisine, binging on British mysteries, and reading have been the other endeavors I’ve exploited during these long months of social isolation, and not surprisingly, a stack of novels sits on my nightstand.  I’ve found it difficult to read nonfiction:  memoirs of suffering and hardship especially.  But, quite by accident, I picked up what I thought was a novel and instead, discovered a powerful and compelling memoir of one young adult cancer survivor:  Between Two Kingdoms:  A Memoir of A Life Interrupted, by journalist and cancer survivor, Suleika Jaoud.  Jaoud was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at the age of 22 and, for the next three and a half years, much of her life was spent in and out of hospital.  After years of treatments, her life was ultimately saved by a bone marrow transplant, and at age 26, she was declared “in remission.”  Whether you’re a young or older adult living with cancer, Jaoud’s story is, at times, terrifying, but searingly honest and poignant.  Before she was diagnosed with leukemia, her dream was of becoming a war correspondent.  Little did she know that the “war” she would be reporting on was her own life and death struggle with cancer. It was during the many months of treatments that she returned to something she had always “leaned on in difficult times:  keeping a journal.” 

“Illness had turned my gaze inward,” Jaoud wrote.  “As a patient you are constantly asked to investigate the body, to report on yourself, and to narrate your feelings…I understood now why so many writers and artists, while in the thick of illness, became memoirists.  It provided a sense of control, a way to reshare your circumstances on your own terms, in your own words.”

Her survival became her creative act, her journaling allowed her a new way to communicate and imagine herself beyond the confines of her hospital room.  Quoting British author, Jeannette Winterson, she wrote “literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.  It isn’t a hiding place.  It is a finding place.”  Not only a place of discovery, but as we have learned from other patients, writers and psychologists, writing can help us heal. Writing through her illness as Jaoud did ultimately led her to the New York Times and an interactive column, “Life Interrupted, where she chronicled her experience as a young adult living with cancer.  

Writing and poetry were part of the healing process for former US poet laureate, Ted Kooser.  He was diagnosed and treated for oral cancer in 1998, and began writing again during his recovery.   For the entire time of his cancer treatment, he had not written at all, describing himself as “depressed by my illness, preoccupied by the routines of my treatment, and feeling miserably sorry for myself… During the period when I was in surgery and going through radiation, I really didn’t do any writing.

As his radiation treatments were ending, Kooser began a routine of early morning walks through the Nebraska countryside in an effort to regain his physical strength and stamina.  On one November morning, he surprised himself by “trying my hand at a poem.”  From that point on, his morning walks became the inspiration for a series of short poems—only a very few mentioning cancer, most inspired by what he noticed while he walked.   He began pasting the short poems on the backs of postcards and sent them to his friend, novelist and poet, Jim Harrison.    (NPR interview, PBS News Hour, Oct. 21, 2004).  The postcards ultimately became a book of poetry:  Winter Morning Walks:  One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison, published in 2001, one in which we see the author’s return to his craft and his love of life.

Just as Jaoud found sanctuary and structure in her journaling, Kooser found his poetry writing helped him regain a sense of control, saying, “It was very important for me to see something from each day that I could do something with and find some order in, because I was surrounded by medical chaos or health chaos of some kind.”

Some time ago, a member of one of my past cancer writing groups sent me a note.  Although in remission, she lives with the knowledge that her cancer is a relentless type, but she finds solace in writing.   She is more aware than ever before that “life is short,” and that she—as we all do—needs to be reminded not to waste it nor be consumed by things that do nothing to help us feel fulfilled and happy.  I thought about her this morning as I began writing, recalling the advice of writer, Annie Dillard, someone Jaoud also referred to in her book.  Dillard advice to writers was: “Write as if you were dying.  We are on terminal patients on this earth; the story is not “if” but “when” death appears in the plot line.” 

Dillard’s advice reminds me of the final line in Jim Harrison’s poem, “Larsen’s Holstein Bull,”  “death steals everything but our stories.” Writing is not only healing, but a way to have voice, to discover insight, meaning and creativity, to share stories of not only struggle, but life and healing that touch others’ lives, helping overcome the isolation and loneliness that often accompanies illness and suffering.  It’s why I write, and why I continue to lead writing workshops for those living with cancer. 

Writing Suggestions:

  • What has helped sustain you in these difficult times?
  • If you have used writing as a way of healing, how has it helped you?
  • Have you found others’ words meaningful, whether poetry or memoir?  Which ones and why?
  • For anyone wishing to write out of difficult times, Suleika Jaoud also offers an online site, The Isolation Journals, which features many different creativity prompts. https://www.theisolationjournals.com/

January 16, 2021: The Moment of Diagnosis: Different Points of View

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD

He opens the door

               and walks in,

his face and white coat

stiff with starch,

holds my hand, and

he says,

“I’m afraid.

I am afraid

you have cancer…”

From: “Diagnosis,” by Majid Mohiuddin, in The Cancer Poetry Project)

“Write about the moment when the doctor said, “Cancer.”  It’s usually the very first prompt I offer in a new series of my “writing through cancer” workshops.  That moment of confirmation, the seconds in which a physician delivers the words that, in that one instant, will change your life forever, is something everyone in the group shares, an event that evokes strong emotions as it gets written about and described. 

Writing that is most healing has some particular characteristics, as psychologist James Pennebaker and his colleagues have noted, among them, writing that is concrete, vivid, and gives detailed descriptions of trauma, distress and emotion.  When I ask group members to return to that first moment they hear the word, “cancer.” No one ever responds to this prompt with generalities.  And when they read what they’ve written aloud, it’s often emotional, as they remember their doctor’s words, “I’m sorry; you have cancer.” 

Shifting your perspective, from the immediate and first person (“I”) perspective, can sometimes reveal other aspects of your experience.  At the least, it’s interesting to try writing about that same moment of hearing your diagnosis, but instead of “I”, try using third person, “he or she” to refer to yourself.  It forces your perspective to shift a bit, as it you are looking at yourself in that moment and doing so can reveal other insights into what you experienced or how you reacted in that moment.

But consider the other’s point of view:  while those words, “you have cancer,” are unfamiliar and terrifying to us, to the doctor, they are words delivered many times, to many different people.  How difficult must it be to be the physician who delivers those words to a patient?  Not once, but so many times throughout one’s medical career? 

The door seems impenetrable.

Today is arduous.

I have seen patients with cancers of pancreas,

Gastric, cervix, colon—all unresectable…

Why is it so difficult to enter this room?

(From: “The Door,” by David H. Huffman, MD, in The Cancer Poetry Project, v. 1, 2001)

 “The Before,” written by Jennifer Frank, MD and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, offers the reader a rare—and poignant–glimpse into the doctor’s mind as she prepares to call a patient with a cancer diagnosis, the words no one wants to hear.

This is the before.  A moment suspended like a bubble floating on a warm summer breeze gently but inevitably toward the ground.  I feel the pop coming, an implosion of the very center of your life.  Anticipating what this moment would hold, I nevertheless hoped for something different.  To be able to eagerly dial your number and shout out the good news to you in a breathless rush.  “It’s not what we thought.  It’s not cancer.”

Instead I take a deep breath, pressing each number slowly, cautiously, drawing out the moment before the burst.  The burst of your plans and your dreams and your future.  I stall for time, asking if this is a good time, are you alone, do you have a pen and paper? …

I want to be straightforward but not blunt.  I want to be compassionate but remain professional.  I slow myself down, remind myself that the words I’m about to say are ones that I’ve said before, many times, but that the words I’m about to say are also ones you’ve never heard before… (In: “A Piece of My Mind,” JAMA, March 7, 2012, v.307. no.9).

It’s difficult, when we are the patients, the ones receiving the diagnosis, to understand what is felt by the person delivering the bad news.  We may never completely understand what is behind the doctor’s mask, yet we need the practiced and steadfast hand of a professional to guide us through the upheaval, and help us find our way through a regimen of treatments.  “All I can offer is my hand,” Frank concludes, “…to hold you up, prevent you from going under until the sea calms and the path clears.” 

Several years ago, when I was leading writing workshops for the “Writers’ Workshop at Stanford Medical School,” I invited a group of medical students and physicians to “write about the moments just before you had to deliver bad news to a patient or someone close to you.”  What they wrote and read aloud were achingly honest and no less powerful than those written by the people living with cancer.   Their stories and poems offered a glimpse behind the medical mask, a reminder of what it is to be human, to care and to feel, whether patient or physician.  As Huffman expresses in his poem,

…I can only be forthright and compassionate.

Why is it so difficult to enter this room?

Maybe someday I will be in that bed.

I hope that if that time comes

My doctor will be as truthful and considerate.

But if she hesitates at the door…

I will understand.

Writing Suggestions–Changing Point of View:

This week, write about that moment, the one just before you hear the words “you have cancer.”  Remember, if you can, write in as much detail as you can:  what you were feeling, where you were sitting or standing, what you remember about your doctor’s voice, eyes, face.  Write in the first person, “I.”

Then, as options to try a different point of view, write about that same moment again, but instead of “I,” write in the third person, as if you’re watching yourself from a distance, using “he or she” or she to write about that same moment.  

Now, as an even more intriguing perspective, try putting yourself in your doctor’s shoes and write from her or his perspective.  Imagine you are the one who must deliver the bad news, this diagnosis, to you.  What the doctor might have seen as she or he looked at you or heard when you came to the telephone?  What might she or he have felt?  Write in as much detail as you can. 

When you finish writing in either the third person to refer to yourself OR writing from the imagined doctor’s perspective, compare the versions.  Did anything change in the way you think about that moment? Did you discover any new insights or understanding?  What was it like to write from the doctor’s point of view? 

One Word for 2021: Gratitude

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD

The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along—to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.

(From: “New Year’s” by Dana Goia, from Interrogations at Noon, 2001)

For several days now, I have been reflecting on the year gone by, 2020, the year of a pandemic, of social isolation, masks and lockdowns…a year unlike any I’ve experienced before, challenging my assumptions about life and living, daily reports of escalating cases of COVID and of deaths.  An undercurrent of caution, of worry seeping into my daily life…hope, much of the year, seemed elusive, and I struggled, some days, to dig myself out of a persistent case of the blues.

Rewinding the mental tape of the year just passed, I recalled my intention, the choice of my guiding word, for 2020. “Calm.”   It has been impossible to miss, this word, displayed, as I do each year, in a small frame on the bookshelf in my office.  A word that confronted me every single day of the past year, but a one, given the landscape of 2020, that fell by the wayside within weeks of the first COVID case in Canada.  Calm was all but absent in the context of this past year for me.  I fall into the category of “higher risk” where COVID is concerned, and given the political tension and upheaval in the US too difficult to ignore, my days were nagged by a persistent undercurrent of worry and low-level anxiety.  I tried, for a time, to live with “calm” daily, but despite frequent self-admonitions, attempts at meditation and extended periods of deep breathing, it didn’t work.  Tension and anxiety were my regular visitors.  Any pretense of calm was just that, utter and complete pretense.

With the daily onslaught of reporting—which I tried not to read and failed miserably—whether about new numbers of COVID cases and deaths or the nearly unbelievable reports of the circus surrounding the US presidential campaign and election, hope was nearly nonexistent, at best, a slender thread that seemed to be growing fainter each day.  My notebook attests to the dark cloud that grew and hovered overhead.  I wrote, as is my daily habit, but increasingly, I found myself going down the rabbit hole more than a few times.  Gradually, I found a reprieve in the daily practice of making explicit my gratitude for those on the front lines, unexpected kindnesses, shared laughter, and little surprises or inspiration from others. 

Articulating gratitude became the most important habit in my daily life, the one that balanced out the tension, complaints, worry or depression.  It served to remind me of the gifts I have in my life vs. what I didn’t.  Making gratitude explicit in a daily list, halted those self-defeating thoughts and forced me to be quiet, observe, and remember all that enriches my life.  It’s what I want to carry into this new year, a spirit of gratitude.

2021.  Hope, where the pandemic is concerned, is within reach, even though there is still much healing ahead of us in the coming months.  Yet as I say good-bye to this tumultuous and difficult year, I do not want to forget all that has happened around the world and there is yet much work to do for the good of all people:  eliminating disease, hunger, poverty, violence, racism, and wanton disregard for this fragile planet.

It’s no surprise that the guiding word I have chosen for 2021 is simply “gratitude.”  It’s not only a way of remembering what is good in my life, but hopefully, makes me more aware and intentional in responding to others with kindness, generosity, and forgiveness.  This is the only life I’ve got—gratitude also ensures I am intentional in how I live it, and the kind of footprint I leave in each day of the year ahead.

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this 
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

(“You Reading This, Be Ready,” by William Stafford, from The Way It Is, 1992)

Writing Suggestions:

.  What is the word or intention you have for this new year?  Write it down, exploring the reasons you have chosen this one word to frame your intention.

.  I’m not one for resolutions, since I rarely followed through on the vast majority of them, despite my good intentions!  But if resolutions for the new year are your preference, then write them out—and also spend some time exploring the reasons for each one you’ve chosen.

August 15, 2020: The Comfort Found in Books

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD2 Comments

I’ve been thinking about how much our daily lives have changed as the COVID lockdowns continue here.  More than that, I think about  what it is that keeps us putting one foot in front of the other on a daily basis, how the small daily routines or household tasks keep me going, providing a sense of normality to our lives even though this prolonged period of social distancing and relative isolation continues without any sure end in sight.  I’m not alone in fending off boredom, feelings of malaise or that constant low-level anxiety that is part of the uncertainly of this strange and isolating time.  Heart failure puts me in a higher risk category for contracting COVID just as those of you living with cancer, undergoing treatment and continuing recovery, and in many cases, your diagnoses pre-dating the onset and rapid spread of the current pandemic.

Not surprisingly, the title of a recent article got my attention: “It has been easier to cope with my cancer during lockdown”  British author Susie Steiner wrote in a recent issue of The Guardian/Books.   In treatment of a brain tumor, she opened her article saying “I wrote my latest novel…with a 9cm tumor pushing my brain over its midline.  But I didn’t know about it.”  Even more ironically, Steiner wrote, “…I was plotting a cancer storyline, not yet knowing that I had cancer.”

“So much of the experience of cancer is the waiting rooms,” Steiner said, “is the hard chairs, the inequality between patients and medical staff—you feel so vulnerable in your elasticated slacks with your terrible hair…waiting for them, terrified, in the Room of Bad News.”  Yet she writes that it has been easier for her to cope with her cancer during lockdown knowing she was not the only one whose life was on hold nor fearful of contracting the virus and possibly dying.

Cold comfort perhaps, but like cancer, we’re all in a kind of waiting game, in limbo, taking greater precautions, dumping the plans we might have had for travel or evenings socializing with friends, amassing a supply of face masks to last however long this pandemic continues to spread.  She quoted Christopher Hutchins, author of Mortality, a collection of essays about his struggle with esophageal cancer.  He described cancer as “stasis… a  bit like lockdown, you spend your time in treatment, saying to yourself, “I just have to get through this, then I’ll get my life back.”

Nevertheless, Steiner writes “it has been easier, weirdly, to cope with my illness during lockdown, because I’m not the only one whose life is on hold, not the only one terrified of dying…”   What has comforted her—and what I find I have also found invaluable–are books.  “One thing you can do a lot of when you’re a patient,” she remarks, “is reading.”

The idea that reading for healing, like writing, is not new. Jenni Odgen, PhD, writing in Psychology Today, notes that Sigmund Freud was known to incorporate literature into his psychoanalytic practice in the late 1800’s, and even King Ramses II of Egypt was known to use reading for healing,  keeping a special chamber for his books with the words “House of Healing for the Soul” above the door.  The term “bibliotherapy,” the art of using books to help people solve personal issues, was first used in 1916.  It now takes many different forms, including literature courses for prison inmates to reading groups for elders suffering from dementia (“Can Reading Make You Happier?” by Ceridwen Dovey, New Yorker, June 9, 2015) .  In fact, two or three years ago, I stumbled onto The Novel Cure, written and published by two bibliotherapists, Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin in 2017.  Written something like a medical dictionary, it matches ailments and illnesses with suggested reading “cures,” including having cancer and caring for someone with it.

Reading, whether for pleasure, information or healing, helps us to navigate periods of isolation, boredom, and worry.  Dovey cites research that demonstrates how reading puts our brains into a state similar to meditation, bringing the same benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm.  Regular readers, she notes, sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem and lower rates of depression than non-readers.  Quoting the author Jeannette Winterson, she adds, “fiction and poetry are doses, medicines…what they heal is the rupture reality makes on imagination.”

My husband and I have also been devouring books for the past many weeks.  He’s gone from a diet of current affairs and research psychology to poetry; I’ve added several non-fiction books, especially biographies of artists and writers, to my own regular stash of novels. Books are as comforting to us even now as they were when we were children, sneaking our books to bed and reading with a flashlight under the covers, learning about others and the world beyond the borders of our small towns.  In this time of COVID, books—poetry, fiction, nonfiction—have been indispensable to ignite our imagination, interest and combat the boredom on those days when our moods can turn as grey as a dull overcast day.

Susie Steiner, in her article for The Guardian, describes how her reading changed during the course of her cancer treatment, and why she turned to books written by other cancer survivors.   She was hungry, she said,  for what she called “fellow feeling.” Living like this is gruelling,” she wrote, “ we need imaginative empathy in fiction to help us through it.”

This is surely the … therapeutic power of literature – it doesn’t just echo our own experience, recognise, vindicate and validate it – it takes us places we hadn’t imagined but which, once seen, we never forget. When literature is working – the right words in the right place – it offers an orderliness which can shore up readers against the disorder, or lack of control, that afflicts them.—Blake Morrison, “The Reading Cure,” The Guardian/Books/ January 5, 2008.

 

Writing Suggestions:

  • What is helping you get through this time?
  • Whether you are actively dealing with cancer or well into recovery, have you found comfort or inspiration from any books?
  •  Have you learned anything new or helpful about navigating the ups and downs of cancer?
  • What books—any genre—would you recommend to others?  And why?

 

May 29, 2020: In Praise of the Commonplace

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD4 Comments

It’s been nearly three months since our daily lives were altered by COVID-19.  Some days I can’t believe it’s been that long; other days, it seems that we’ve been living in a world of closures, social distancing and relative isolation far longer.  What do I miss?  The ordinary life I had…walking without being so conscious of staying six feet apart from others, face masked, knowing I’m one of those in a” higher risk” category, and our world largely confined to our neighborhood and the Toronto apartment where my husband and I now live.  Normally an early riser, I have begun to sleep a little longer in the mornings, the dull rhythm of a question, “What am I going to do today?” playing in my head like a broken record.  But old habits re-exert themselves, I grow restless and rise to begin, again, another day.

What keeps me going in this strange time?  It’s the familiar, the habits and structure in  small, daily tasks:  making the morning’s coffee, walking the dog, sweeping the floors, making the bed, writing—even as the pages are often filled with the increasingly mundane meanderings of a mind  dulled by repetition—planning and preparing the evening meal, a pre-dinner glass of sherry with my husband, a good novel on hand, nightly reruns of Agatha Christie mysteries and other old British dramas, then lights out sometime around 11 p.m..  And in the morning, my routine begins again.

The shoes put on each time
left first, then right.

The morning potion’s teaspoon
of sweetness stirred always
for seven circlings, no fewer, no more,
into the cracked blue cup.

Touching the pocket for wallet,
for keys,
before closing the door.

How did we come
to believe these small rituals’ promise,
that we are today the selves we yesterday knew,
tomorrow will be?

(“Habit,” by Jane Hirshfield, in Given Sugar, Given Salt, 2002)

In a 2014 “Writing Through Cancer” blog post, I had explored what it meant to be “in remission,” told that one has  “no evidence of cancer at this time,” words that signaled a reprieve from the relentless routine of doctor’s appointments, scans, tests, and weeks of treatment regimens to a return to “normal life.” It didn’t mean a return to the life one had before as many survivors discovered.  And I’m all to aware now, that after we finally see an end to the COVID lockdowns, whatever was normal before the pandemic will not be the same afterward.

When one survives cancer and is given the diagnosis of “in remission,” you still live with the knowledge that “survivor” does not guarantee a permanent state of grace.  You may have many years left to live or perhaps less.  There is one certainty, however:  you never take anything for granted again. You might even feel a little guilty, especially when you have come to know many others, cancer patients as you once were, whose prognoses are less favorable and may well die from their illness.  You’re relieved, yes, but it can also seem unfair.  Why have you survived while others will not?

“I’ve gone from thinking, ‘Why me?’ to thinking, ‘Why not me,” a former group member said.  “In the beginning, it was comforting to think of fighting to survive…   I believed that I should have a powerful drive to accomplish something, but,” she confessed, “I don’t find that drive in me now.”  Now, as the economy worsens and so many people are feeling the other effects of the pandemic:  job loss, retirement incomes diminishing, loss of family members or loved ones, what, I wonder, will the “drive to accomplish something” be like?  What will “normal life” look like after COVID?  And what will have changed for each of us.  Perhaps if we are to learn anything from the state of being “in remission” or once this pandemic is truly ended, it may be about living differently that we did before and truly cherishing life in ways, perhaps, that we have been too busy to notice.

A friend and cancer survivor wrote me several months after she had officially been diagnosed as “in remission.”  The likelihood of her cancer returning is still greater than she would like, but she discovered things about life and living that have become truly important to her after cancer.  In a letter to me, said wrote:   I love the things I do day by day.   I hike with a beloved friend.  I spend time in the wonderful garden of another.  I meet friends for coffee, talking with each other with pleasure and leaving them with joy and a benefit to my mind and spirit… It frees me from having to make every moment count.  It takes off pressure that would exist if I had to accomplish something in particular before I die…” 

Like many survivors, she was discovering comfort and meaning in accepting the natural ebb and flow of everyday life, small pleasures of love, companionship and nature.  She was grateful for Life, for what, as poet Ellen Lerman so wonderfully expressed, the simple joy and fulfillment in what life gives us:

 This is what life does. It lets you walk up to

the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a

stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have

your eggs, your coffee…

 

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the

pond, where whole generations of biological

processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds

speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,

they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old

enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?…

 

Upon reflection, you are

genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have

become. And then life lets you go home to think

about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time…

 My friend’s words still resonate with me, because it took me more than one life crisis to cement my resolve to live differently.  The achievement ethic drilled into me early in life, good intentions would give way to slippage into old habits of being, of accomplishment, and the rush, busyness and stress of a life style that was not, I sometimes allowed myself to admit, good for me.  It would take a few more years, an emergency ride to the hospital, three days in observation and a diagnosis of heart failure before I paid attention to truly changing how I wanted to live.  The real task of living required a mindfulness, a time to be fully present and pay attention to little moments, the gifts of beauty, joy, and laughter.  Gradually, I developed daily routines that continue to give my life a healthier structure and meaning:   the morning walk with my dog—at her pace, not mine—the creativity and mindfulness of preparing  an evening meal and taking the time to enjoy it with my husband, to have the sacred space to write each day, because doing so keeps me attentive, grateful, and remembering how lucky I’ve been in life—no matter the hardships I’ve suffered from time to time. Now, in this time of isolation and social distancing, I am again reminded of how one find can pleasure and something new in each day, despite its seeming predictability or, in a time of uncertainty, because of it.  These are the simple gifts to be found in the ordinary and commonplace.

I turn to the poetry and wisdom of A., diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer, and part of the Stanford Cancer Center group I led for several years.  She lived with the knowledge of her certain and impending death, choosing, for the final year and a half of her life, to live alone in a small cabin in the California redwoods, a source of inspiration and peace for her.  She wrote prolifically and daily, creating poetry, several of her poems published, out of her experience and reverence for the life and beauty she found in the most ordinary moments of each day of her life.  In 2012, cancer took her life; a few weeks later, three of her poems were published in the American Poetry Review—testimony to her extraordinary gifts.  In the poem, “Directive,” she reminds us to remember the abundance of gifts to be found in what we consider commonplace—if only we stop to pay attention:

Remember the commonplace, the wooden chair on the white planked deck,
trees kneeling in the rain and deer prints
leading into elegant rushes. A kinder place
cannot be found: where you sit at the top
of shadowy stairs, the window lifted…

Let me speak for you: there’s comfort
to be found in fatigue, in letting principles
fall like stones from your pockets…

Fall into the ordinary,
the rushes, the deer looking up into your heart,
risen, full in the silver hammered sky.

 (From “Directive,” by A.E.)
I am grateful for the gifts of poetry I received from A. and remembering her words in this unusual time that it is in the commonplace,  the ordinary and everyday routines that  give some shape to  the days and are reminding me, again,  to appreciate the life I have, the small gifts present in each day.  I don’t know what life after COVID will be like—but I know it will not be the same.  I only hope the lessons of this time will have some lasting impact—and not just for me, but for the world.  For now, I am grateful for Life…the commonplace, everyday, routine of living.

This is life’s way of letting you know that

you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,

so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you

were born at a good time. Because you were able

to listen when people spoke to you. Because you

stopped when you should have and started again.

 

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your

late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And

then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland…

 

(From “Starfish,” in Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds, 2005)

 

Writing Suggestions:

  • “Borrow” a line from any of the poetry in this post.  Let it be the first line you write on your page…then, let it take you wherever it wants to go.
  • What, in the ordinary routines of your life, matters most to you?  What small habits or practices?  Why?
  • Write about this “time of COVID” and how it’s changed your life—possibly for good.
  • What lessons do you hope come from this pandemic experience?
  • Has your experience with living with a serious or life-threatening condition help or hinder how you’ve dealt with life in lockdown?  What wisdom might you share?

Navigating the Alchemy of Grief

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD2 Comments
For several days now, my thoughts have  been occupied with Nova Scotia, home to me for over 13 years.  The shock of 22 innocent people shot and killed in a matter of hours has weighed heavily on the minds of so many of us.  It is Canada’s worst mass shooting since 1989, when ‎14 female students died at the hands of a  gunman at Montreal’s ‎École Polytechnique in Montreal.  Stunned, I reached out to old friends, knowing the closeness of the social networks in the Maritimes.  Some of my friends had known the young female Mountie who was killed and her mother, and together with so many others, mourning the loss of life, the senseless and incomprehensible violence perpetrated in the province.

Ironically, perhaps, the memories of the close community of friends I experienced while living in Nova Scotia were also punctuated by unexpected losses:   my first husband’s drowning, two friends dead from AIDS and another from cancer shortly after I moved to Toronto.  Then, yesterday, as I remembered it was the birthday of my dearest Nova Scotia friend, a memory of the telephone call, one I received barely 14 years after my husband’s death, and another of my friends telling me A. had committed suicide.   I felt the waves of shock and sorrow for days.  How, I asked myself countless times, could she have been so distraught to take her own life?  It made no sense to me.  I remembered how she and her husband had been steadfast in their love and offered such extraordinary support for me and my daughters after L.’s death.  To this day, I doubt I could have gotten through that period of grief without their unyielding support and kindness.

“Before you know what kindness really is,” poet Naomi Shihab Nye tells us, “you must lose things…”

feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

(In: The Words Under The Words ©1994)

“How desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness…”  Our world has, in the past many weeks, seemed, at times, desolate as thousands throughout the world have died or lost friends, family and acquaintances during this pandemic.   We have been forced, as individuals and as nations, to re-examine many of the assumptions we’ve held about life:  no one has been immune, and new cases of the COVID 19 virus continue to emerge.  Virtually every country has been in lockdown, financial outlooks seem precarious, and fear and uncertainty of what the future holds when—or if—life returns to normal are rampant.

Yet it’s easy to forget that throughout history, losses of similar proportions have been felt by people all the around the world:  disease, wars, unimaginable hardship and cruelty, starvation, massacres, deadly earthquakes and the unimaginable loss of human life.  In our country, we have been relatively immune to such disasters as other countries.  Yet such tragic loss of human life can ignite sorrow and grief that invade our very being.  For some, they are buried or forgotten until the next tragedy or loss, for others, the heartache and sorrow linger—even re-ignited by a calendar date, a photograph, a sound or a song—and it all comes back. We experience again the weight of loss, and we grieve.

Grief, the psychologists tell us, is the emotional state that accompanies loss, and although normal, when compounded by the unimaginable losses in life, when no explanation or rationale can be found,  the sorrow is deeper, more lasting, and we experience the kind of sorrow that resides in our hearts for a very long time. How can we make sense of these unexpected and even incomprehensible losses we suffer?

I am learning the alchemy of grief, how it must be carefully measured and doled out, inflicted—but I have not yet mastered this art.” –Judith Ortiz Cofer. The Cruel Country, 2015)

Since I began leading my “Writing Through Cancer” programs twenty years ago, death has become a frequent visitor, as cancer always claims the lives of one or more of my writers.  He death of a group member has never become routine, and nor have I developed some protective layer of numbness for those times that one of my writers dies. I am humbled by the medical professionals who, by virtue of their vocation, must continually deal with the loss of human life, for each time a group member’s life is taken by this disease, I must   learn again to confront my grief as well as the collective grief of the group.  Everyone has their way of dealing with the loss of life, but for me, it’s the reason I originally turned to writing and poetry as a way to make sense of sorrow and loss.

I’ve said before that writing, for me, is a kind of prayer.  It takes me deep inside myself and a way to remember, to mourn and yet to articulate what I feel when loss has, again, entered my life.  When words fail me in times of sorrow, and they often do, I turn to reading poetry.   Poets have always written, about human emotion, and their expressions of sorrow and grief helps me mourn, to name what I am feeling, and to take some kind of solace in knowing the sorrow and I loss I am feeling has been understood and put into words by others.  I not only discover new insights, ways of expressing my sorrow, but a kind of solace, a way to gradually let go of the grief I feel.   If you are someone who finds comfort or inspiration  in poetry, I recommend the collection of “Shelter In” poems, offered by readers to the American Academy of Poets during this time of pandemic and social isolation.

I am more aware than ever now that loss is part of our human experience, something we all must deal with, something we all have to learn to make sense of.  Knowing that doesn’t make it easier, but finding ways to put it in to words or discovering wisdom in the word of others helps to make it bearable and to let it go.  As Mary Oliver so beautifully reminded us:

To live in this world

 You must be able

to do three things:

you love what is mortal;

you hold it

 against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

(“In Blackwater Woods,” In:  American Primitive, 1983)

Writing Suggestions:

  • Create a kind of balance sheet:  in one column, list the names of people you have lost; in the other, the acts of kindness you have experienced or discovered in loss.  What insights emerge?  What have you learned about loss, grief or sorrow?
  • Re-examine periods of significant loss in your life.  Has your experience helped you to see things in a different life?
  • Try expressing your feelings of grief or sorrow in a poem.  Stuck?  Model your poem after a poem you like or use the first line of someone else’s poem as a beginning.

 

For April 13, 2020: Spiritual Nourishment in Difficult Times

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD2 Comments

I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will…

(“How the Light Comes,” by Jan Richardson, in Ten Poems for Difficult Times, 2018)

A note from Sharon:  To those of you reading this post:  It is difficult to find the words that capture this extraordinary time we are now experiencing—no one has been immune to the crises triggered by this world pandemic, and for the foreseeable future, our lives will continue to be affected, our daily habits changed, by the impact of the corona virus.  It is a worrisome time—and for any of us who are in the “higher risk” categories, it is difficult to escape the underlying anxiety that seems to invade one’s daily life.  What gives us solace?  Offers hope? A few years ago, I wrote this blog post which follows, reflecting on the importance of our spiritual lives.  Whatever that life involves, it’s certain that Life’s hardships thrust us into what can only be defined as a deeply spiritual journey.  As we all deal with the impact of the corona virus on our lives, our loved ones, and how our lives will be change because of it, I offer this week’s post, originally published in the early part of 2014. 

._ . _ . _ . _

A few years ago, when I was living in San Diego, I participated in a workshop on contemplative practices that could enrich our lives.  My part in it was to invite the participants to consider the spiritual practice inherent in writing.  Like so many Americans, I’ve been a lapsed church-goer for the better part of my adult life, finding I craved a deeper spiritual practice to sustain my daily life than the Sunday morning services.   I had dabbled with other religious traditions, tried to learn meditation, but still, I couldn’t make anything work for me.  What I hadn’t realized is that I had already had the tools to deepen my spiritual life—writing.  I had always written, and during the years of a soul shattering time in early adulthood, writing was a refuge, my port in the storm, a virtual sanctuary.  I just hadn’t thought of it as having the potential become my regular spiritual practice.

Within a year after returning to California from Toronto,  I was confronted  with the first of a series of losses and unexpected life changes beginning with my father’s death from lung cancer, and followed by mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s, the onerous and painful  task of downsizing a dying nonprofit, an unexpected diagnosis of early stage breast cancer, and my mother’s death.  In the aftermath of my first husband’s drowning a decade earlier, writing had become a refuge, a lifesaver I clung to through those turbulent times.  Writing not only helped me cope, but ultimately, became an important daily routine.  As my writing practice solidified and deepened, it became a fundamental part of my spiritual life.

My writing grew to become a daily ritual and meditation, something I practiced early each morning before the outside world intervened to pull me into its noisy demands.  Its place in my spiritual life has only solidified over the years; it is a regular practice that begins in the stillness of early morning when I first open the pages of my notebook, the same leather-bound journal I’ve written in for years.  Like the dawn of each new day, a new page awaits, blank and inviting—reminding me now, as I write, of Rita Dove’s words in her poem, “Dawn Revisited:” the whole sky is yours/ to write on, blown open/ to a blank page…”   I have no agenda when I first begin writing, no expectation. I begin with one small observation, something I notice in the present moment—the fog lifting from the canyon floor, a trio of hummingbirds at the garden fountain, the red-tailed hawk’s wings spread as he glides just beyond our deck—whatever captures my attention.  Sometimes, a haiku poem emerges; other times, what I describe is enough to trigger a memory or a feeling that begs to be written.  It hardly matters.  What matters is that I write, embracing the solitude of the morning, intertwining the external world with my internal one, going deeper into whatever I’m exploring on the page, writing myself into “knowing.”

Writing is my meditation and my prayer.  It opens me, ensures I am “paying attention” to what is before me, what is inside me. It informs my intentions for each day and ultimately, the work I do with others, helping them express and explore the material of their lives in writing.  While writing might become become a spiritual practice for anyone, as it is for me, so can art, music, dance, yoga, T’ai Chi, meditation, and prayer—anything that takes us into the quiet contemplation and deeper parts of ourselves.  As Thomas Merton wrote, “Art enables us to find ourselves and and lose ourselves at the same time.”

One’s spirituality is not dependent on a specific religious belief or theology.  We all have spiritual needs and yearnings.  What matters is that we find a way to nurture them, that we feed our souls as well as our bodies and minds.  In times of hardship, life-threatening illness, or other suffering, it’s often our spiritual lives that keep us from losing hope, that keep us whole.  As New York Times editor, Dana Jennings, diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer, wrote in his blog, “One Man’s Cancer,” our spiritual lives sustain us through life’s most challenging chapters:

I am not a fool. I am a patient with Stage T3B cancer and a Gleason score of 9. I need the skills and the insights of the nurses and doctors who care for me. But they don’t treat the whole man. Medicine cares about physical outcomes, not the soul. I also need — even crave — the spiritual antibodies of prayer, song and sacred study.

A cancer diagnosis is not something any of us want.  It can feel like a death sentence, and it may challenge your faith,  casting doubt on all that you believed was right and true.  But while cancer—and many other painful experiences– may seem like a dark night of the soul and challenge your faith,  it may also offer you the chance to explore your spirituality,  deepening your self-understanding and compassion for others.  It’s something I witness again and again in the expressive writing groups I lead:  a time to explore and deepen one’s understanding and compassion, an opportunity to define what is essential and important in life, and gratitude and appreciation for the ordinary gifts in each day we have.  As one cancer survivor wrote, “The community I am building with my fellow writers …is… a form of spirituality.”

Through the exchange of stories, we help heal each other’s spirits…Isn’t this what a spiritual life is about?–Patrice Vecchione, Writing and the Spiritual Life

Life’s hardships thrust us into what can only be defined as a deeply spiritual journey.  We may kick and scream, rail against the injustices of those events, but like it or not, we’re forced to re-examine our lives in ways we have not, perhaps, done before.  We begin to pay attention, really pay attention, to what truly matters to us—and to our lives.

“At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world~ now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening.– Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, 1982.

Varda, who wrote with me for the last two years of her life, died of metastatic breast cancer several years ago.  She wrote honestly about her cancer experience, her fears and her hopes, sometimes poignantly, sometimes humorously, but always honestly, voicing, so many times, what others were afraid to express.  Near the final weeks of her life, she wrote a poem entitled “Faith,” that described her spiritual re-examination during her cancer treatment:

…My cancer has challenged my faith,

and I have found an incredible well I did not know I had. 

I have found true surrender,

 enormous peace.

I have come home to God, and we have renewed

our friendship.

(From:  “Faith,” by Varda Nowack Goldstein, in A Healing Journey:  Writing Together Through Breast Cancer, 2004).

Varda was thrust into a journey that can bring anyone to their knees, but her honesty, her willingness to plumb the deepest parts of her experience and write so honestly about her life, cancer and faith were humbling and inspiration to us all.   Her stories were, I’m certain, strengthening her “spiritual antibodies”—not a cure, but courage to face and, not unimportantly, help loved ones face her inevitable death with grace, love, and even shared laughter.  Surely this was evidence and testimony to the depth and importance of Varda’s spiritual life, and something, whatever form it takes, we all need to navigate difficult and challenging times.

And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear.  What we need is here.

From: “The Wild Geese,” by Wendell Berry, The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999)

Writing Suggestions:

  • Reflect on what nourishes your spiritual life.
  • What practices or rituals have helped sustain you during cancer, other hardships, losses or struggle?
  • Where have you found your solace, your strength, your source of “spiritual antibodies?”
  • In this time of the corona virus pandemic, write about the spiritual practices most important to you.

April 2, 2020: No Going Back

Published on by Sharon A. Bray, EdD4 Comments

It could happen any time, tornado,

Earthquake, Armageddon.  It could happen.

Or sunshine, love, salvation.

 

It could you know.  That’s why we wake

And look out—no guarantees

in this life…

(From “Yes,” by William Stafford, The Way It Is, 1998)

 I’ve been wondering how the Corona virus pandemic will change our lives—not just now, staying home,  social distancing, but the longer-term impact.  For many, there is or will be grief over the loss of loved ones, that a sorrow takes a long time to dissipate, if it ever completely disappears.  There is the sobering realization that no one, anywhere in the world, is immune to pandemics and other global disasters.  The longer-term impact on our economy weighs heavily in our consciousness.  How will we recover?  But the larger question, for me, is what will we have learned and  will it change in the way we act on our world, relate to others, and care about ourselves and others.  How will this change us–or will it?

You will walk toward the mirror,

closer and closer, then flow into the glass…

You learn what you are, but slowly,

a child, a woman, a man,

a self often shattered and piece

put together again till the end:

You halt, the glass opens—

A surface, an image, a past.

(“Your Life,” by William Stafford, (The Way It Is, 1998)

Several years ago, after I’d been leading expressive writing groups for cancer patients and others for a few years, my husband took a teaching position in a doctoral organizational psychology program.  For the first two years, we commuted between the Bay area and San Diego to spend time together,  but ultimately, I relocated to join him.  As a new “faculty wife,” I was introduced to some of his academic colleagues, most of whom still consulted with the private sector.  As we chatted, I found myself recalling the years I spent as an executive in a New York-based international consulting firm. His colleagues were surprised; it was a past self I had all but pushed aside, a career I no longer felt any connection with, one that had kept me running on adrenalin and stress for years.

“How did you end up writing and leading these groups?”

“Cancer,” I replied.  “Everything changed after that.”

“Would you ever consider consulting again?”

I shook my head. “Absolutely not ,” before explaining why the experience of the writing groups meant so much to me: the inspiration from patients’ who shared their experiences and lives so openly and profoundly in story and poetry,  and the extraordinary community created in the process.

“Does it pay well?” One of his colleagues asked.

“Pay?”  I think I laughed a little. Leading these groups was not a business.  It was a practice, work of the heart, and the majority of my time creating and leading programs was often volunteered, given freely–a sharp contrast to the salary I once earned as an executive.  Yet I could never imagine going back to it.  The cancer writing group work offered  a sense of meaning and authenticity my consulting work  never somehow did.  My life and my ambitions had changed in profound ways.

It’s funny how clarity happens.  An an innocent question, a paragraph in a book, an expression of kindness from a friend, or a telephone message left on the answering machine…anything can  force us to pay attention, get outside of ourselves and our complaints, take another look at the familiar reflection in the bathroom mirror and see it differently, albeit kindly.  To realize, as Wendell Berry reminds us, “there is no going back” to the self we once were.

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were…

That same evening, my husband and I returned home to see the message light  flashing on our answering machine.  I paused to hit “play” and listen.  It was a call from the spouse of one of the writing group members. It had been just two weeks since she had said good-bye to the writing group as they left to live in a city two hundred miles away, something she described as a decision “for closure.”  As she prepared to leave, I’d asked how she was feeling and she had responded by quoting her oncologist: “He says I’m dwindling.”  Now, listening to the message on the answering machine, I understood the full meaning of “dwindling,” and “closure.” Death and loss is among individuals in my cancer groups is sometimes happens, and while it’s painful for everyone, each person, each life lost, has touched my life in ways I never could have anticipated.  Their memories linger in the writing shared in the weeks together.

More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you…

Those men and women who have let themselves be vulnerable, who write so honestly, and whose words linger in my memory long after they’ve been shared in the groups have taught me what it is to be human, to be present in the world, and to put my own life and minor complaints in perspective. It’s little wonder why I could never turn back to that old self, the woman whose spacious windowed office overlooked Park Avenue in New York.  None of that, by comparison, matters anymore.

The men and women who come to write with me, share their lives and, in some cases, death, have taught me that life is worth living, no matter what we suffer.   I am constantly humbled by their courage, the beauty and power in their stories and poems, and how they so openly share their sorrows, struggles, joys, and fears. In the sacred moments of dying, I have experienced grace.  Each person’s presence has changed me in some small way, and I am all the better for it.

 As for this post, I have struggled to write anything this week; the constant anxiety and concern that one cannot avoid has taken its toll on my motivation and ideas.  I’ve tried to minimize my anxiety and, and the same time, fend off boredom in this period of relative isolation. It is more difficult to write as I have always done–my morning quiet and solitude have disappeared as my husband awakens shortly after I do.  I am acutely aware of how very small a two-bedroom apartment has become in these past three weeks.  Instead, I have resorted to silliness at times,  turning out ridiculous rhyming poems that, at the very least, makes my husband laugh.

For solace, I’ve turned to poets and poetry, finding others’ words to express some of what I am feeling about life, suffering, gratitude, giving, finding new poems and re-reading old, much loved ones.  And quite unintentionally, I’ve even joined the thousands who have taken comfort in stress-baking!  I’ve been working on making the “perfect” scone for the past two weeks, and yesterday, I think I came close. There’s an aspect of meditation in creative activity–and I’m including baking as one of those.  Your attention is on the recipe, following, measuring, adding, kneading and checking the progress as you wait for the finished product.  It’s calming and quiet time.  Whatever helps us find activities or practices to help to quiet the mind and open the heart, are all more important now as we ride out this crisis.

I  have missed my writing groups; they are always a source of inspiration, but all my scheduled workshops had to be been cancelled.  But Gilda’s Club has asked if I’d be willing to try an online version later this month of the “Writing Through Cancer” program. I am not a fan of online groups, but I didn’t hesitate to say “yes!”   The internet, social media, all of it, does offer some positive ways to  stay connected with each other, and our social connections are more important than ever.  I’ve been routinely checking in with friends, sending cards and notes by mail, email and  notes and cards, even checking in with some health care professionals on the front line to say  “thank you,” and “how are you?”   Those efforts are  appreciated and it keeps me from succumbing to the pit of worry or anxiety so easily ignited by the constant barrage of COVID 19 reports and commentary.  This is what is important right now:  expressing my concern, love and gratitude to the people who matter to me and have made a difference in my life.  Nurturing the generosity to reach out to others at any time matters, but right now, there’s all the more reason to do it.

Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
uniting in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

(“No Going Back,” by Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir:  The Sabbath Poems, 1979 – 1997)

Suggestions for Reflection and Writing:

What does the phrase, “you can be generous toward each day/ that comes” mean for you?

We all experience difficulties and challenges out of our control, times that are painful and difficult.  But what do we learn from them?  Think of difficult chapters in life you’ve already experienced.  What did they teach you?  What lessons do you want to take from this pandemic experience?

In this world where we are all  experiencing how our lives can change in an instant, what have you learned about yourself in this uncommon time?  What matters most?