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April 11, 2021: Put a little Ha-Ha in Your Life

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing humor, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on April 11, 2021| 2 Comments »

 Cancer is no laughing matter.  And as we’ve discovered, neither is the continuing presence of COVID-19.

Yet if you happened to pass by a meeting room in a cancer center or overhear the Zoom sessions where I lead writing programs those living with cancer, laughter is something you’ll hear.  Even though we’re writing about the emotional impact accompanying a cancer diagnosis, laughter is always part of our sessions.  Counterintuitive perhaps, but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that laughter is good medicine, just as Norman Cousins described in his 1979 book, Anatomy of an Illness.  Cousins wasn’t the first to advocate for the healing power of laughter.  Mark Twain had already done so, writing, “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that’s laughter,” he said.  “The moment it arises, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” 

I grew up in an extended family who loved telling humorous stories and sharing laughter together.  Losses were mourned, yes, but soon afterward, the funny stories that were associated with the relative were told regularly at our family holiday gatherings.  And more than anything, I remember the fun of sitting among my aunts and uncles and sharing the memories and the laughter.  Life became brighter; there was no time for a bad mood, and somehow, the humor seemed to bind us more closely together. 

The power of laughter to help us heal is so great that some time ago, reading a 2015 issue of CURE Today Magazine, it didn’t entirely surprise me that, according to author Jeannette Moninger, many hospitals across America offer laughter programs for cancer patients, no doubt inspired by Norman Cousin’s experience and the research on laughter’s benefits. Moninger described a few: 

At North Kansas City Hospital, patients can watch funny movies…Duke Medicine offers a Laugh Mobile, a rolling cart from which adult patients in oncology wards can check out humorous books and silly items like whoopee cushions and rubber chickens.  And the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Program sends…clowns to 16 children’s hospitals nationwide to help put smiles on the faces of ill children… 

But Cousins wasn’t the first by any means. Even as far back as the 13th century, surgeons used humor to distract patients from the agony of painful medical procedures.  (Given the absence of anesthesia, laughter had to be good medicine!)  Those early surgeons were on to something, borne out since by many research studies since.   Laugh, and not only the world laughs with you, and your body releases endorphins, the “feel good hormones that function as the body’s natural painkillers,” Moninger states, the same hormones that create the “runner’s high.”  Endorphins also decrease the body’s levels of cortisol, the hormone associated with chronic stress.  Cortisol has a number of negative effects on our bodies, compromising our immune system, tensing up our muscles, elevating blood pressure—all of which laughter helps to counteract. 

We all need a little laughter in our lives, no matter if we’re dealing with cancer or in this extended time of COVID—whether in person or, as many of us are now, on Zoom with friends and family.  Laughter helps to overcome loneliness and the mild depression that many of us are combatting in these extended lockdowns.  We need to laugh just as much as sometimes, we need to cry.  As cancer survivor Jim Higley wrote in a 2012 issue of the magazine, Coping with Cancer, laughter became invaluable during his treatment and recovery:

…when you are raised with the gift of laughter, as I was, it can’t stay suppressed forever. It’s too powerful. Thank goodness for that. I eventually could see bits of “ha-ha” in my own life. Certainly not in the cancer, but in the mind-blowing circumstances that suddenly consumed my life. And laughing at parts of those experiences made me feel a little more alive.

The funniest part of it all was that the more I allowed myself to laugh, the more therapeutic my tears became.

(“Finding Humor in the Midst of Cancer,” Coping with Cancer, March/April 2012)

Try it. It’s good to find something—even a small thing—to smile or laugh about.  Yesterday, my husband and I recalled the humorous story of my first—and last—blind date.  My grandson, age 12, has decided he can cheer up his grandparents by sending us emails from Japan, filled with various memes and online games, ones I have tried and failed to win, which amuses him and, of course, me.  Just the fact he has written with so many “resources” for humor counteracts the greyness of our COVID lockdown life.  It’s an email full of smiles.

Writing Suggestion:

Find a little laughter in your life this week.  Dig back into your memories this week—the fun times, when you laughed so hard, tears ran down your cheeks.  Take a break from writing about and instead, try writing a little humor.  (Even a medical experience can have humor at times.  I was once diagnosed as having a “loose screw” after suffering swelling and pain in my forehead, where I do have a steel plate.  It wasn’t a loose screw, as it turned out, just a need for taking antibiotics before dental work.  But the diagnosis gave us a good laugh, helped relieve the worry and got me to another specialist for a second opinion—one who provided the solution to my forehead discomfort).

Perhaps you have a few memories of times that made you smile, even laugh aloud whenever you think about them.  Write one, that funny story, and let a little “ha, ha” brighten your day..  After all, as Charlie Chaplin said, “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”

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February 24, 2021: Still Waiting…

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on February 22, 2021| 2 Comments »

I admit it.  The months of waiting, of social isolation, the greyness of winter, and more waiting for the promised vaccines have upended any of my resolve to remain calm, positive, and creative.  I wrote about “the long wait” earlier this month for my “writing the heart” blog, and this morning, searching for inspiration, I perused several of my blog posts for the past year, particularly those concerning the initial fear as COVID-19 became a daily reality for all of us, and life began to be defined by social distancing and “shelter in place.”  The summer months brought a kind of reprieve, although my husband and I, both in the “higher risk” category, remained cautious in our movements and interactions. 

Now, approaching a year later, I feel increasingly like I’m living some version of the Bill Murray film “Groundhog Day,” awakening each morning to a kind of mental sludge, reminding myself of what day it is, and yet attempting to maintain some semblance of normal routines…making the bed, sweeping the floor, planning what to cook for dinner, and even yet, writing every morning in the quiet.  That’s where my real mental and emotional state are expressed.  I can barely fill a page in my notebook some mornings.  Any attempts at creativity are more often futile than not.  Occasionally I manage a silly, rhyming poem that, at the least, can make my husband laugh, but even those efforts have become less frequent.  So I was strangely pleased to discover an article in the British newspaper, THE GUARDIAN, this weekend with the title, “Writer’s blockdown:  after a year inside, novelists are struggling to write.”

Well, I’m no prize-winning novelist, but writing is a significant part of my life, so I read the article immediately, feeling some sense of “oh thank goodness, it’s not just me” as I did.  “Drab days, author William Sutcliffe remarked.  “Last night I had a dream about unloading the dishwasher.”  “I can’t connect with my imagination,” Linda Grant, a prize-winning novelist said  “My whole brain is tied up with processing, processing, processing what’s going on in the world.”  She described “waking up in a fog and not wanting to do anything but watch rubbish TV.”  Well, I will now admit I have all but exhausted every British crime drama on Brit Box over the many months of our COVID pandemic life.  It’s just an example of what another author calls “pandemic fatigue” that is affecting everyone.  “Life,” Grant said, “is just a sea of greyness, of timelessness,” sentiments I often share.  Even my reading list has become populated with “easy” reads, like detective novels, a genre I rarely indulged in before COVID, just pure escapism.  And the creative cooking I did for several months?  Gone.  My motivation for trying new recipes, those once weekly batches of scones or even the occasional cake has completely vanished.  Worse, my morning writing is top heavy with greyness and anxiety before I finally settle into “healthier” prose, sometimes the occasional inspiration for one of my workshops or a silly poem for a friend or family member. 

Of course, it doesn’t help my anxiety that my U.S. friends and family members have cheerfully announced they’ve gotten their vaccinations, unaware, perhaps, of Canada’s vaccination delays.  Where we were hopeful toward the end of 2020 that we’d also have ours by now, it’s less and less likely we’ll feel that needle jab in our arms before April. That only feeds my anxiety as the delay persists, and we read reports of more infectious variants. As a “higher risk” candidate, I find I am driven to compulsively read the national and provincial COVID-19 updates daily, despite the fact I know it rarely helps my mood.  We also worry for those who’ve lost their jobs, their shops and businesses as the pandemic lockdowns continue.  What will life be like when this is over? It’s hard to find much that’s uplifting in all of this, and my daily mantras and meditations aren’t helping much at the moment. 

 It’s cold comfort, perhaps, but I am hardly alone in this–far from it. So many people are suffering far more than we are.  So while I allow my worry to surface or write a rant sometimes to let off steam, I am fully aware how important it is I don’t end up in self-pity for more than the briefest of periods.  I’ve learned to close my notebook and turn to other pursuits when I realize I’m heading down the rabbit hole.

“This too shall pass,” my mother would say at any time we had an upset in our childhood…we grew tired of her pat phrase, but now, I can hear her voice in my mind, those same four words repeated again and again.  While I never found them very helpful in relieving whatever angst or youthful heartbreak I was feeling, I now find variations of that same theme in the words of poets I have long admired.  I guess there’s some truth in my mother’s mantra.

Wait for now.

Distrust everything if you have to.

But trust the hours.  Haven’t they

Carried you everywhere, up to now?

Personal events will become interesting again.

Hair will become interesting.

Pain will become interesting

Buds that open out of season will become

     interesting…

(From “Wait,” by Galway Kinnell, in Mortal Acts; Mortal Words, 1980)

Writing Suggestions

–Fed up with waiting?  Set the timer for 15 minutes.  Try writing a rant, just “dumping” all your worry and frustration on the page.  When time is up, stop.

–Re-read what you’ve written.  What stands out? Now, start with the one thing that seems most important and, setting the timer again for another 15 minutes, explore what’s beneath the frustration.

–How are you coping with the extended period of social isolation and lockdown?  What helps?  What doesn’t?  Write a humorous “prescription” for coping with this extended wait.

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January 31, 2021: Life and Loss

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on January 31, 2021|

I’ve been thinking about loss and losing things as I and my long-time friends grow older, although it seems to on my mind more often in this long year of living with the COVID-19 pandemic.  There are many months ahead before we might be able to declare an “end” to it, but a return to something called “normal” life is likely to take even longer.  What will we have lost?  What will we have learned?  What will “normal” be like?

I think of the losses—not just the deaths suffered—but all the other losses suffered by so many:  large and small businesses going bust; jobs lost by so many people; the loss of freedoms during these necessary lockdowns that we took for granted…and so much more.

In the coming week, I’m beginning another expressive writing workshop for Gilda’s Club here in Toronto, and as I think about the sessions and the men and women who will attend, I think of the losses of cancer brings with it and how COVID-19 may add to the stress of living with a cancer diagnosis and the fear of loss.

What do you lose when you’re diagnosed and treated for cancer?  There are physical loses and emotional ones.  Some permanent; some temporary.  I thought back to one of my earlier writing groups a few years ago. A dozen people, all living with cancer, seated around the table with their notebooks open as I offered a short “warm-up” writing prompt at the beginning of the session..    

“What’s on your mind this morning?  What thoughts or concerns have accompanied you to our group?”  Within seconds, only the rustle of paper and pens could be heard, as everyone bowed their heads and wrote.   A few minutes later, I sounded the chime and asked, “Who wants to read what you’ve written?”  One woman, her head covered by a brightly colored scarf, quickly raised her hand. 

 “I’m angry about losing my hair,” she began.  “It was always long and full, and it’s was my signature.”  She looked up from her notebook, eyes red and teary.  Several of women nodded sympathetically.  I recalled my own embarrassment when, as a teenager, I sported a bald head twice after two neurosurgeries.  I had no choice but to cover my bare head and the ear-to-ear scar with brightly colored scarves as I returned to school after surgery.   I remember how vulnerable I felt without my hair, how embarrassed, and how I prayed no one would make fun of me.  

It grew back, of course, just as the young women’s hair did, becoming full and long again over time.  She was one of the lucky ones, just as I was; her hair loss was temporary.  She recovered and regained a full head of hair and an active life—in contrast to other group members, who’d lost far more than their hair. 

When I invite the participants to write about loss, temporary hair or diminished energy during treatment aren’t at the top of the list.  Bodies are altered by surgeries and scars.  Dreams are lost. Friends are lost.  Loved ones are lost—whether by death or by the dynamics of families unable to come together in crisis.  Although many may return to a so-called “normal” life, their lives are rarely the same as they were before cancer.  

Being human demands that we come to terms with different losses at different times in our lives, small or large. We all experience them.   Life requires our continual adjustment to the changing seasons of being alive and learning to let go of old ways of being that no longer serve us or are possible. It’s not easy, this business of loss and losing.  Yet, it is the thing we all are challenged to master—and learn from.

Then we couldn’t help expressing grief

So many things descended without warning:

labor wasted, loves lost, houses gone,

marriages broken, friends estranged,

ambitions worn away by immediate needs.

Words lined up in our throats

for a good whining.

Grief seemed like an endless river—

the only immortal flow of life.

After losing a land and then giving up a tongue,

we stopped talking of grief

Smiles began to brighten our faces.

We laugh a lot, at our own mess.

Things become beautiful,

even hailstones in the strawberry fields.

(From: “Ways of Talking, “by Ha Jin, in Facing Shadows,  1996)

Writing Suggestion:

Write about loss this week, about losing something—small or large—whether from cancer, life changes, unexpected tragedies or challenges.    Write what you felt.  Describe how you came to accept and move forward from the losses you suffered. 

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One Word for 2021: Gratitude

Posted in expressive writing, life writing, poetry and healing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on January 1, 2021|

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.

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December 21, 2020: Not Giving Up on Santa Claus

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on December 21, 2020|

I’ve been trying to summon up something that resembles the “Christmas spirit,” muted by this time of social isolation and continuing lockdowns.  For years, our holidays were filled with family traditions, memories, and the excitement of Santa’s arrival during the night of December 24th— all re-experienced years in the wide-eyed excitement of our grandchildren.  Now they are old enough to know that Santa Claus isn’t “real,” but their joy and excitement are as fresh as ever, and sharing the holidays with them, re-kindles our own memories of our childhood Christmases.

Yet this year, with COVID cases rising again at a disturbing rate, we will, like so many others, be spending our Christmas alone. Isolated from my daughters by distance or the pandemic, the usual magic of Christmas tree trimming, colored lights everywhere, holiday carols, and the remembrance of Santa Claus seem like distant memories.   At times we struggle to quell our anxiety and cling to hope—as so many others in a time time that has unended our sense of well-being, community, and hope.  The vaccine can’t come soon enough—but even as it begins to arrive, then what will “normal” life look like?  What losses are yet to be fully realized?  There are challenges yet we will all face.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmases past—those that were joyful; others that were accompanied by losses and difficulties.  I’ve remembered childhood, when Christmas was a magical time, and I, like all the children my age, believed in Santa Claus.  Those memories also reminded me of the time I discovered Santa really didn’t exist…

Third grade. I was eight years old, and it was early December, shortly before our Christmas break. I arrived at school morning and was hanging up my winter coat in the cloakroom when my two best friends came in and pulled me aside.  “Guess what,” they whispered, “There is no Santa Claus!” I stood stock still, trying to take in what they were telling me.   Santa, they said, was made up.  He was something for little children, not for 8 year old girls like us.  “It’s your mom and dad,” they whispered conspiratorially. They buy all the presents and put them under the tree.  Santa Claus isn’t real. He’s just for little kids!”  They smiled smugly, watching to see my reaction.

 “I know,” I said quietly. I didn’t want to appear stupid, but I was embarrassed, because the truth of the matter was this: I still believed in Santa Claus, even in third grade.  Besides, I had a younger sister and brother, so Santa Claus was very much alive in our home.  I returned home after school that day with the weight of an awful secret on my shoulders. Should I should tell my parents I knew there really was no Santa after all?  In the end, I said nothing and a day or two later, my sister and I came down with the chicken pox, just days before the Christmas break.  There would be no visit to sit on Santa’s lap that year.

Shortly after dinner, Christmas eve, a loud knock sounded at the front door and we heard a deep voice saying, “ho, ho, ho.”

“I wonder who that might be,” my father said, winking at my mother as he went to open the door.  Santa Claus, somewhat slenderer than I had imagined, stepped into the front room.   “Ho, ho, ho,” he said again, then took his big bag of presents from his shoulder and sat in the chair my father offered, telling us to come close to Santa. I could only stare, the secret told to me by my friends burning in my brain. Was this really Santa or just someone pretending?

There’s an old black and white photograph from that long ago Christmas eve:  my little brother sits on Santa’s knee, my wide-eyed sister next to him, while I am seated farthest from him, doubt clearly etched on my face.   I still remember how much I wanted to believe it was really Santa Claus sitting with us, but I couldn’t. I was now old enough to know better.

Early the next morning, , I tiptoed to the living room before the rest of the family awakened, eager to see the presents which had appeared under the tree during the night.  Our colored tree lights had been left on and the were drapes open to make them visible to passers-by.  I knelt at the big picture window and looked out:  snow had fallen during the night, frosting streets and sidewalks a sparkly white.  That’s when I saw him—Santa Claus. He was opening the gate to a neighbor’s house just three doors down from ours and walking inside.   For an almost magical moment, the possibility of Santa Claus’s existence lingered that Christmas morning, snow glistening in the morning sunlight, as I watched a bearded man in a red Santa suit disappearing inside, an empty burlap bag slung over his shoulder.

I stopped believing in Santa for good after that year, but the memory of that last glimpse of him, remained for a time–the faint hope he might exist. It was about what it meant to grow older and be conflicted: not wanting cling to childish beliefs, and yet, reluctant to let go of the magic of Santa Claus for just a bit longer.  There would be similar life lessons repeated many times in my life—broken dreams, discovered truths that were hard but necessary to accept, losses of people and beliefs I thought never could happen.  But that’s life, isn’t it?  We all come to terms with the difficult parts as well as the good, and somehow, we still find hope, good, and love in the midst of life’s most challenging moments–maybe even magic or miracles… just like that earnest eight year-old gazing out the window on a Christmas morning, the first snow glistening, while a man in a Santa suit disappeared into a house and rekindled a hope that maybe, just maybe, Santa existed.

It is probably why I still love the famous letter written by Francis Church, then a writer for the New York Sun, responding to eight year-old Virginia O’Hanlon’s letter asking, “Please tell me the truth.  Is there a Santa Claus?” Church was given the task of responding to her.  He wrote:

     Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.

     We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.  (From: “Is There a Santa Claus?”The New York Sun,September 21, 1897)

I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to give up on the spirt of Santa Claus, of the generosity, kindness, courage and gratitude I have for the gifts of life I have experienced during my lifetime. It’s those memories and qualities that keep me going and give me courage and hope.

To all those reading this blog, I wish you a holiday season that includes the warmth of friends and family, however far apart we must be this year, and for year ahead, hope and healing.

Happy Holidays.

Writing Suggestions

The December holidays are full of memories. Whatever your traditions, write about some of the most “alive” memories you have of this time of year–what stands out for you?

Did you believe in Santa Clause when you were a child? When did you stop? Was it any specific event that changed your belief? Write about it.

What, in this year’s holiday season, will be different for you? How are you making it–or not–a time of celebration, even without the usual activities,family or friends as part of it?

What’s most important for you to remember this holiday season? Why?

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October 28, 2020: When Death Comes…

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on October 28, 2020|

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut…
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

(excerpt, “When Death Comes,” by Mary Oliver, in New & Selected Poems, 2004)

This morning, the newspaper headlines announced Canada’s COVID-19 death numbers had surpassed 10,000, clear evidence of the continuing second wave of this pandemic in our lives.  I try not to spend too much time reading about the COVID-19 statistics now; to do so only increases my anxiety and more, is a stark reminder that we are far from an end to this current state of social distancing, lockdowns, and face masks as a necessary part of our daily attire.  My husband and I are both high risk—he, a cancer survivor, me, living with heart failure, and both of us older. In these times, that fear of mortality can easily creep into my thoughts, usually late at night, a shadowy presence that is the evitability of life. 

This past weekend, I gave a Zoom session on journaling at the National Symposium for Ovarian Cancer Canada. After introducing a short writing exercise on fear, one attendee offered to read what she’d written:  an emotional admission that the fear of death that is constantly in her thoughts—echoing what many of those attending the session were feeling—and in a time of a pandemic, the prospect of death, of grief, seems to be much nearer. 

We haven’t lost any of our friends or family to COVID-19, but we have lost some people dear to us from cancer recently, which forces the topic of mortality and grieving out in the open.   My husband and I have talked about the grief of a friend’s partner in the past weeks, even though his death was expected as any further treatment options for his cancer had been exhausted.   His death and his wife’s loss reminded me of the death of my husband’s brother-in-law a few years ago, and his sister’s grief.  His death was not unexpected either; he’d endured an agonizing four year battle with bladder cancer, but his wife’s grief had been held in abeyance as treatment after treatment failed, the medical expenses increased, and he clung to life and hoped for a miracle. 

But the dam broke after he died.  I telephoned my sister-in-law the morning my husband boarded the airplane to fly to Seattle for Ed’s funeral.  It rang several times before Joan answered.  She had been crying and quickly apologized.  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I just went into his room and saw how empty it is, and…He’s gone, Sharon,” she said, her voice heavy with sorrow and exhaustion.  “He’s been my life for sixty-four years.” 

It is hard to give up after months of making lists,

phoning doctors, fighting entropy.  But when the end comes,

a bending takes over, empties the blood of opposition

and with a gentle skill, injects a blessed numbness…

(From “Numb,” by Florence Weinberger, in The Cancer Poetry Project, 2001)

There’s a great deal written about dealing with the loss of a loved one from cancer, and while some may think of grief as a single instance or short time of pain or sadness in response to the loss—like the tears shed at a loved one’s funeral—as the American Cancer Society reminds us, the real process of grieving lasts much longer and involves the entire emotional process of coping with the loss.

This morning, I plan on touching base with the friend whose husband died a few weeks ago from prostate cancer.    I check in with her every couple of weeks, remembering too well that emptiness after a spouse’s death, after the calls, sympathy cards, and flowers, and the the reality of living without one’s loved one—the unexpected emptiness in the home, the silences, and diminishment of calls from acquaintances.  The loneliness.   In our last conversation, she described what she’d been doing to keep busy.  She and her husband, like my husband’s sister, had been together for sixty plus years.  “I haven’t cried yet,” she remarked.

 It’s hardly a surprise.  According to the American Cancer Society, studies have identified emotional states that people may go through while grieving. The first feelings usually include shock or numbness. Then, as the person sees how his or her life is affected by the loss, emotions start to surface. The early sense of disbelief is often replaced by emotional upheaval, which can involve anger, loneliness, uncertainty, or denial. These feelings can come and go over a long period of time. The final phase of grief is the one in which people find ways to come to terms with and accept the loss.

Perhaps this surrender foreshadows my own old age

when I have raged to exhaustion and finally have to go.  For now,

the numbness wears off.  I drive to the market, cook my own food,

take scant note of desire

with no one to consider or contradict my choices.

Something in me will never recover.  Something in me will go on.

Life, death—these are the shared human experiences.  I know that, for me, the death of a family member or a close friend stays with me longer now—partly because death seems to be more with us in the time of a pandemic and partly too, because autumn, that final burst of color before winter sets in, is a time of looking back, remembering, being more aware of life—and of death too.   

Writing Suggestion:

This week, consider grief and mourning.  What memories come up?  Have you lost loved ones to cancer, unexpected death or other serious illnesses? Write about the loss of a spouse, family member or friend. Try to articulate the feelings of grief you experienced. What was it like? What helped you work through your grief?

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September 28, 2020: Waiting…Again.

Posted in expressive writing, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on September 28, 2020|

As balmy as these last days of September have been,  the signs of autumn are visible everywhere.  The lush canopy of green that has blanketed the so much of the city is rapidly changing color—the trees dappled with orange red, and gold.  Even as I walked our dog along neighborhood streets this past week, the sidewalks were strewn with pale yellow leaves from trees already shedding.  Autumn, usually my favorite season of the year, seems to be accompanied by a somberness in the air that is inescapable.  Our brief reprieve from the COVID pandemic has ended.   Canada, like many other countries in the world, is experiencing an increase in new cases—and even as I began writing this post, the local  newspaper headlines ago reported “Ontario sets record-high with 700 new COVID-19 cases…” Sobering and worrisome.

We all have been reading the daily reports, and COVID-19 has crept into our conversations again. “I’m worried,” a friend admitted to us as we sat in her back garden the other evening (appropriately distanced from one another).  She voiced what we all were feeling.  As much as we had been hearing of  the likelihood of a “second wave,”  seeing the numbers increasing each week was troubling, signaling the potential for a return of the lockdowns we endured earlier in the year along with that nagging low level anxiety that accompanied them.   My husband and I had already begun to pull back, even missing our daughter’s 50th birthday party, unwilling to risk socializing with a group of her close friends and their children.  We’ve promised a delayed celebration once all this is over, but how much longer will this pandemic persist?  How serious will this “second wave be?  How long will this last? When will there be a vaccine?  Will it be effective?  What long-term impact will it have on every aspect of life as we once knew it? 

Now we have little choice but to wait and to be cautious.  Like you, I  have waited—patiently or impatiently– on many things in my life:  the births of my daughters, and later, waiting up for them to arrive home well past curfew.  I’ve waited in lines for tickets and performances, for doctor’s appointments and medical tests,  for my husband, arriving late for a dinner with friends.  I don’t like waiting; few people do, but the waiting we’re experiencing now is different.  Remember the film, “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray, who played a TV weatherman who kept waking up and reliving the same day over and over?  It feels a bit like that with the advent of a second wave of the Corona virus, only we’re waiting, worried,  waiting for the “all clear” signal, for the return to a normal life, yet fearful of what “normal” might be, waiting for a vaccine to be available…waiting.

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting…

(From “Wait” by Galway Kinnell, in: Mortal Acts; Mortal Words, 1980)

Perhaps.  This kind of waiting we all are experiencing  is more than familiar to those who have been diagnosed with and treated for cancer.  My husband lost one of his  kidneys to cancer a year and a half ago, and he is now waiting for the results of his latest CT scan.  Even though he’s been doing well, the test—the wait for results—rekindles his worry of possible recurrence.   

Waiting—and the worrying that accompanies it–can dominate our daily lives, whether it will be more long months of COVID-induced isolation and lockdown or as cancer patients wait and hope to hear “no evidence of disease at this time.”  Even now, I feel my own niggling anxiety rise along with a sense of spiritual malaise and boredom as this second wave of COVID gathers strength, and trying, again to learn to accept and find new ways to master this state of waiting and to learn from it.  The colors of autumn seem to pale as I look out the window now, then I remember T. S. Eliot’s words from The Four Quartets (1943):

 I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

His words remind me to reconsider why life seems to make us wait.  I am still learning, despite my age, to accept what I cannot control, to let things unfold as they will…but sometimes?  It’s just not easy.

Writing Suggestions:

Write about waiting.  Describe a particular time waiting was difficult for you.  What was the situation?  How did you feel?  What happened when the wait was over?  What did you learn—if anything—from the experience?

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August 31, 2020: Writing in the Time of Covid-19

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on August 31, 2020|

A friend sent me the title of a new book this past week:  Write It Down: Coronavirus Writing Prompts.” Written by Mary Ladd, a San Francisco writer, it’s a compilation of activities meant to help writers, amateur and professional, during the weeks of social isolation that has been the product of the Corona Virus pandemic.  Ladd is no stranger to understanding the benefits of writing during tough times.  Diagnosed in 2013, with breast cancer, she wrote about her experience on a blog, and since, has contributed to two other books of writing prompts and starts for those who need a little inspiration to write.

Ever on the lookout for new ideas and inspiration for my writing groups, I did a quick search on writing during the Covid pandemic, finding dozens of  prompts, and articles on COVID-19 writing in newspapers, magazines and on radio shows.  Not surprisingly, they all echo a common theme:  writing helps us navigate difficult times, something articulated for many years by writers and researchers alike, particularly since the ground-breaking research of James Pennebaker, PhD, first gaining recognition in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, has been replicated dozens of times across many difficult populations and in many different situations.  The bottom line?  Writing about difficult situations and emotions can not only relieve stress and anxiety, but also has many health benefits.  Pennebaker’s research, coupled with my love of writing and personal experience of an early stage cancer diagnosis in 2000, was the impetus for me to initiate my very first writing group nearly 20 years ago.  I’ve never looked back.  Since then, expressive writing groups and therapeutic journaling methods have multiplied dramatically.  It’s no surprise then to see another “explosion” in the popularity of journaling or diary-keeping in this time of a world pandemic.

Yet, keeping a diary or journal can have much more impact  than being  therapeutic.  As Amelia Nierenberg reminds us in  a recent article appearing in the New York Times, we’re reminded that “the history of our present moment is taking shape in journal entries and drawings.” (“The Quarantine Diaries,” New York Times, March 30, 2020.)

As the coronavirus continues to spread and confine people largely to their homes, many are filling pages with their experiences of living through a pandemic.  Their diaries are told in words and pictures:  pantry inventories, window views, questions about the future, concerns about the present. Taken together, the pages tell the story of an anxious, claustrophobic world on pause.

“The time we’re living through will one day become history,” Morgan Ome writes in a recent issue of The Atlantic.  And it’s compelled many people to begin writing to capture their quarantine experiences for posterity.  One researcher at Cornell University in New York gave her students a journaling assignment as stay-at-home orders became widespread and Cornell University closed.  “This is a pivotal moment in history, Janis Whitlock said. “We’re in it right now.  We have an opportunity to chronicle it.”  She expanded her virtual classroom assignment into a global project, “Telling Our Stories in the Age of COVID-10,” which she launched in March, and together with her team, have  received responses to email journal prompts from over 500 people around the globe.  Whitlock is planning to compile these into a “snapshot” of pandemic life from around the world.  But she’s not the only one gathering physical and digital journal entries written during the pandemic. Universities, historical societies, and local publications are also capturing these personal accounts, acknowledging them as a rich source for historical records and offering insight into the minds and experiences of ordinary people like you and me (The Atlantic, August 6, 2020)

CBC Radio, in a recent broadcast of “The Current,” also reported on the growing efforts of historians around the world who are requesting diary entries, photos, videos and more from those cooped up during the pandemic.   Catherine O’Donnell, a co-founder of A Journal of the Plague Year:  A COVID-19 Archive, underlines the importance of gathering experiences of the pandemic, no matter how unimportant or mundane they might seem.  In a time defined by isolation and fear, she says, these memories help people feel connected—and the offer a reprieve from the stress and anxiety that comes with living in a period of uncertainty (‘We want it all’:  Keeping a COVID-19 diary? April 23, 2020 broadcast).

Our stories matter.  Not only is writing beneficial for us but so is finding a way to capture and preserve our experiences and memories, whether of cancer or other serious illness, of love, life, sorrows, people, places… Writers have always known this.  I remember Joan Didion’s words about why she writes:  “To remember what it was to be me…” And to remember the times, and experiences that defined our lives.   “Death steals everything but our stories,” Jim Harrison wrote in his poem, Larson’s Holstein Bull.  Our knowledge of history is grounded in the stories and experiences of those who lived before us—and that includes our personal history.  Again and again, I find I wish that I had documented the oral stories of my father,  his childhood and my homesteading grandparents—only fragments remain—or that I’d asked more questions of my more secretive mother, whose childhood remains, in large part, unknown, and yet, with the hint of shadows.  No one else can tell our stories, as Dorothy Allison famously wrote in her memoir, Two or Thing Things I Know for Sure:  “I am the only one who can tell my story and say what it means.”

Writing, whether about the experience of cancer or COVID, can help us not only document, but help improve our emotional well-being, even aspects of our physical health.  The task is to write honestly, translating your feelings into words and writing as descriptively as you can, making connections between what you feel and what you’ve experienced.  You can add to your writing with art, photographs, sketches, cartoons—all ways to express and understand your experience.  I don’t keep every journal or notebook that I use for my daily writing practice, but I do re-read them and, often, I clip out sections that seem more important or meaningful to me than other pages.  In this protracted period of “sheltered-in-place,” my notebooks contain boredom, anxiety, worry, irritability and not infrequently, humor. Sometimes I work on a story idea; sometimes I write poetry.  Sometimes I fill the pages with old memories.  Sometimes I complain.   It hardly matters. What matters is simply that I write—COVID or not.  Maybe that’s why you write too.

 

Writing Suggestions:

  • Write about living with cancer—and being treated in the midst of the COVID lockdowns. Did the pandemic increase your anxiety or fear?
  • Has writing helped you deal with the uncertainty of living in a time of a world pandemic? How?
  • Prompts for writing about life during COVID?  A sample of Suggestions for writing from: familysearch.org/blog
    • Did you learn anything about yourself from this experience?
    • What is one aspect of your life that was harder during the pandemic?
    • What is one aspect of your life that was easier during the pandemic?
    • How has this experience changed you or those around you?
    • In what ways, if at all, do you think the world will be changed because of COVID-19?
    • And here’s a link to the New York Times with twelve ideas for writing—and more—during COVID.l You might find a little inspiration from one of them.

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August 3, 2020: COVID: A Time for Reflection

Posted in cardiac conditions, expressive writing, healing arts, heart failure, life writing, literature and healing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on August 3, 2020| 4 Comments »

(Illustration by Maurice Sendak, From:  Open House for Butterflies by Ruth Krause)

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?…

For the month of July, I took a month-long hiatus from writing my blogs–something I haven’t done in the 14 years since I first began my “Writing Through Cancer” blog.  But in this unusual time created by COVID, I felt the need to break from my self-imposed schedule of posting and instead, have the freedom to let my mind—and my pen—wander where they would.  It was a necessary period to simply reflect and be, in the sense of writing, quiet for a time.

I kept my daily writing routine—a habit indispensable to my day.  Some days my notebook pages were half empty, as though my muse had gone into hiding; on other days inspiration would strike, playful, serious, or lead me into a re-examination of past writing—it hardly mattered.  I simply let whatever emerged on the page, be.  I began re-reading pages and pages of old posts, books of poetry, and others about writers and writing.  I questioned whether to continue my blogs or to let them gradually fade away from inactivity. I questioned the writing of separate posts for cancer and heart failure as I’d initially done.  The two had already begun to converge in recent weeks, and not surprisingly.  Writing about serious illness, trauma or suffering is less about the illness itself and more about the human experience.  It is writing about life.

The upending of what was normal, months of social isolation, social distancing, closures, and virtual everything has been sobering.  During the early months of COVID, I had celebrated another birthday, less welcomed this year as my birthdays before COVID and when I was much younger.  My past birthdays signaled a new year, one that held promise, opportunity, new plans and dreams, while this most recent one was punctuated with questions:  How long will this continue?  Will my life be shortened by this virus?  What will the coming year hold for all of us?

Of course, there were always some years I was happy to bid farewell–ones marked by personal tragedy, loss and illness–but even then, the passing of another year signaled the possibility for something better.  Looking back, I realize that my “crosshairs” were firmly set on what Wallace Stegner once described as “the snow peaks of a vision” in his Pulitzer Prize novel, Angle of Repose, (1971).   I was always looking ahead to the “what’s next? “What’s possible?”   Before COVID, I still had that “looking ahead,” the hope, possibilities of something “new” to look forward to, a new goal to achieve, a trip to another country, some “better thoughts” that might turn into something significant on the page.   COVID, like cancer and heart failure temporarily did, foisted a “hold” on those future possibilities, and the longer our lockdowns and restrictions have continued, the more I realize we—all of us– are unlikely to return to the same world we knew—and took for granted—just six months ago.  What, then, I wondered, do we look forward to now?

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?

The little respite from the blogs that  I granted myself has helped me realize that this strange and unusual time has given me a chance to look back, reflect and have gratitude for the life I’ve been fortunate enough to live thus far, even if I sometimes regret I haven’t accomplished all I set out to do.  It’s also helped me clarify what matters most to me and how and where I want to expend my energies as life moves forward.

I am more aware than ever of the fragility and uncertainty of life.  I take nothing for granted.  My brushes with cancer and heart failure, the experiences of the men and women who write with me from the experience of life-threatening and terminal illness continue to remind me how precious life is and yet more, how challenging and difficult it can also be at times.  None of us is immune from illness or hardship. No one escapes.  Cancer, heart failure, a pandemic of COVID:  serious illnesses remove any pretense or assumptions about ourselves we may have—a time, perhaps, when we need to pause and reflect, gain insight and discover so much more of who we are and have the potential to be.   Maybe that’s one important lesson I will take from this time of pandemic—and use it to continue to inform how I want to live and engage with others.

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 –

From: “You Reading This, Be Ready,” by William Stafford)

Writing Suggestions

  • What has been your COVID experience? Write about the concerns, reflections or insights about life as you’ve known it—and how it may change.
  • Do you agree or disagree: “Writing about serious illness is really writing about life.” Why or why not?
  • What new glimpse of life and living have you discovered out of hardship or serious illness?
  • Begin with the line, “Starting here, what do I want to remember?” and keep writing for ten minutes.  Re-read.  What stands out?

 

 

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A Brief Hiatus

Posted in cardiac conditions, heart failure, writing as a way of healing, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on July 1, 2020| 6 Comments »

Dear Readers of “Writing Through Cancer,”

As you might have guessed from my last post, I’m in need of a little respite to refuel and re-energize.  I’ll be offline until August, but please do use the archives during this time…there’s well over a year’s worth of bi-weekly posts and prompts to help ignite your writing.

Stay well and stay safe…a friend of mine wrote about being a “good masketeer,” and for a good time yet, I’ll be wearing my mask anytime I’m out and about in Toronto.

Warm wishes,

Sharon Bray

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