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November 14, 2019: The Necessity of Habit

Posted in healing arts, life writing, poetry and healing, writing and spirituality, writing as a way of healing, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on November 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »

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?

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

We are packing up our lives again:  the third time in less than three years.  Boxes are being filled, once again, with our belongings.  In a little over two weeks, we will leave our current apartment and move up four floors to another of identical size and view.  More upheaval is the last thing I desire, but after two episodes of water leaking into our living and dining area from the forgetful tenant living above us, we began to worry if another next leaking episode might occur when we were out of the apartment.  Fortunately, another unit has become available in two weeks’ time, and we have jumped at the chance to re-locate.  But for the moment, my daily routine–the small rituals that keep me grounded– has been completely undone.

In times of transition, our daily habits, ones that calm and center us are often disrupted.  The irony is, of course, that in times of upheaval, we need them most.  Quiet, meditation, time alone, a solitary walk –whatever habit nurtures our inner lives is a kind of spiritual re-fueling,  something essential to navigating the ups and downs of life.  When I cannot find time or space free of interruption or distraction, not only is my creative work is compromised, but my disposition suffers.  I become irritable, tense, and overwhelmed by all that needs doing.  I have to remember to hit the pause button and take the time I need to simply be quiet, find a little space of solitude so important to the mental and emotional space that feeds my spiritual and creative life.

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.—Virgina Woolf

Not only do everyday habits or little rituals calm and feed us, in the face of life’s passages, passages, like birth, puberty, marriage, and death, we create rituals.  Not only are they a way of honoring transitions from one life chapter to the next, but they do even more for us.  In times of uncertainty and change, our rituals help us cope.  They minimize the helplessness or depression we might feel without them.  They allow us to acknowledge and express our deepest feelings, offer a sense of meaning and connect us to what is sacred.  They also remind us of our need for connection to others, for community.  Our rituals, whether more formal or the everyday habits we have, help us navigate difficult times, providing some sense of the familiar, of constancy.  In that sense, they are healing.

What habits or “small rituals”  feed your inner life?   Whether a morning walk or run, a warm bath, meditation, a quiet time to write or simply gaze out the window, listening to music or sitting quietly in a park, we find comfort in our daily routine.   Our modern world is full of noise, rushing, busyness, and constant interruptions, competing demands.   Quiet, solitude, a space of one’s own:  all offer a different kind of nourishment and healing, no matter what change, turbulence or challenges life throws at us.

“Everybody should be quiet near a little stream and listen.”  (From the children’s book,  Open House for Butterflies, by Ruth Krauss, 2001, illustrated by Maurice Sendak)

Your little rituals and habits are also important in creating a sense of safety and comfort in a life turned upside down by cancer.  In Rituals of Healing (1994), Jeanne Achtenberg and her colleagues discussed how rituals act as outer expressions of inner experiences, helping you relax, re-connect with yourself and the little pleasures in everyday life.  They  help you calm your mind and concentrate on positive thoughts, all important to the healing process.

Ted Kooser, poet and cancer survivor, began a routine of morning walks during his cancer recovery.  In the introduction to his book, Winter Morning Walks:  One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison (2000), he described the unexpected benefit of his daily walks:

“In the autumn of 1968, during my recovery from surgery and radiation for cancer, I began taking a two-mile walk each morning…hiking in the isolated country roads near where I live…During the previous summer, depressed by my illness, preoccupied by the routines of my treatment, and feeling miserably sorry for myself, I’d all but given up on reading and writing…  One morning in November, following my walk, I surprised myself by trying my hand at a poem.  Soon I was writing every day… I began pasting my morning poems on postcards and sending them to Jim…”

Kooser’s habit of walks in the early morning was not only important to his recovery, but to his life as a poet.  He began, again, his routine of writing daily.

This morning, as I write this post, sitting amid boxes, packing paper and a living space that seems to be unraveling a little more each day, I’ve found solace in carving out some time to write.  It was a time to pause, to re-set, be quiet and  gaze out the window–despite winter’s early blast of cold and snow–and feel a little oasis of calm.  And it showed.

“How is the day going so far?” my husband asked as he quietly made his way to the kitchen for coffee.

“It’s full,” I said,” but before I began the tense litany of my growing list of “must be done by…”  I managed to laugh. “Brace yourself,” I said.

He patted my shoulders, grateful, I think, to see that my tension had eased a bit by having a little time of solitude and quiet, enjoying my coffee and writing — my daily ritual that calms and nurtures. Today’s “must be done by” list seems a little more manageable somehow.

Writing Suggestions:

  •  What daily routines offer you some sense of solace?
  •  What has helped to calm or comfort you  in the midst of doctors’ appointments, treatment or recovery?
  • What habits or routines have helped to ease feelings of stress, pain or  suffering–or sustain you?
  • Write about your habits or “small rituals,”  the ones that feed your inner life.

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October 28, 2019: Writing the Heart

Posted in cardiac conditions, expressive writing, healing arts, heart disease, heart failure, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on October 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »

The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone it loved, the heart cannot forget.  (Joyce Sutphen, from:”What the Heart Cannot Forget”)

As someone who experienced breast cancer and now lives with heart failure,  I am more aware of the physical life of my heart than ever before.  Every morning I check my blood pressure, heart rate and weight, entering the information in “Medley,” the app on my iphone developed by the team at Peter Munk Cardiac Center.  I am grateful for Medley; it keeps me attentive and more aware of heart health.  However, before my heart failure diagnosis, matters of the heart were predominantly emotional and poetic.  And even yet, those metaphors and associations are the more frequent way I describe what I’m feeling.  Think about it:  how many times do we refer to our hearts when we’re describing emotions?  Consider a few like “my heart is filled with joy; heavy with sorrow; a broken heart; a heart full of love…

The heart is a long-standing and dominant aspect of poetry and prose across cultures and most often used to describe human emotion.  Author Gail Godwin, writing the prologue to her book, Heart, quotes a number of heart references, for example:  Yeats: “the rag and bone shop of the heart,” St. Francis:  “a transformed and undefended heart,” Tony Bennett crooning, “I left my heart in San Francisco,” Jesus Christ: “Blessed are the pure in heart,” and Saul Bellow’s comment, “More die of heartbreak than radiation,” among others.  I think of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz:  “If I only had a heart…”

Well, I have a heart, and it’s still beating, with a little help from an ICD and a regimen of daily medications.  What’s more, I continue to refer memories and emotions that, as e.e. cummings described, I “carry in my heart.”  It’s no surprise, then, that one of the writing exercises I use in the expressive writing groups I lead for cancer patients is inspired by the heart; the heart, as Joyce Sutphen describes, “that cannot forget.”

Begin with a large image of a heart.  You can draw a large valentine-shaped heart or, as I prefer to do in the workshops, use an image of the human heart.  The task is to answer, in three separate steps, the larger question, “what do you carry in your heart?” Take the image and next to it or on it, write your responses to these three questions, giving a few minutes to write between each.

  1. What people, living or dead, do you carry in your heart?
  2. What places do you carry in your heart?
  3. What events or happenings in your life do you carry in your heart?

Simply list as many names or labels as you can for each question.  Once you’ve answered all three, take some time to read what you’ve written on your heart.  Now, choose one thing–person, place or event–that seems to hold the most pull or power for you.  Take a clean sheet of paper and for 15 – 20 minutes, begin writing about that person, place or event–whether a narrative or a poem or just free association, it doesn’t matter.  Keep writing for the allotted time.  Do not stop to edit or re-read until the time is up.

The stories that are written in  this exercise are often emotional, yes, but they are also more “alive,” descriptive and engaging, coming “straight from the heart.”  Even the most reluctant writer, the one who says, “but I’m not a writer,” will surprise herself with the writing that emerges from the heart exercise.

If you are one who would like to write but doesn’t know how to begin, this exercise can be a great way to get started and a way to begin to capture the stories of your life.  Writing about what matters, what has shaped and defined you, is also a way of release, often a way to express difficult events and emotions that are sometimes bad for your health.  Everyone has stories to tell.  As I often say to those who’ve attend my cancer writing groups, often shy about writing, “if you don’t tell your story, who will?”

…I have learned that story assuages grief, and it also grants the chaos of our emotions some shape and order…Even as I watch my mother become more and more distant from the lives around her…I am doing what I have been preparing all my life to do:  listening again to the old stories and committing them to memory in order to preserve them.  I am still doing my work in terms of what I have come to believe defines immortality.  Being remembered.  (From:  The Cruel Country, by Judith Ortiz Cofer, 2015.)

I’ve had a few medical experiences in my life, just as you have–near death, neurosurgery, breast cancer–and now I live with heart failure. Sooner or later, we “get” that we are not immortal. My cancer experience was so very treatable, compared to those who come to my groups, and yet, I think whether you live with  cancer or with a heart condition or other serious illness, it makes you more aware of what matters most in your life.  As Judith Cofer described, I am aware that the stories of our lives, the places, events and people who were helped to define and shape who I have become is the legacy I have to pass on to my daughters and grandchildren.  To remember.  To be remembered.   “Death, as Jim Harrison wrote in his poem, “Larson’s Bull,” steals everything but our stories.”

I am the only one who can tell my stories and say what they mean.  (Dorothy Allison, in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.)

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October 15, 2019: The Stories in Our Food

Posted in expressive writing, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on October 15, 2019| 2 Comments »

It all leads to a story… The more powerful the story behind the food, the more it evokes the memory, which in turn enhances the flavour. (From: “Food with a Story to Tell,” The Guardian, Sept. 2013)

 

Take some flour. Oh, I don’t know,
like two-three cups, and you cut
in the butter. Now some women
they make it with shortening,
but I say butter, even though
that means you had to have fish, see?

You cut up some apples. Not those
stupid sweet ones. Apples for the cake,
they have to have some bite, you know?
A little sour in the sweet, like love.
You slice them into little moons.
(From:  “My Mother Gives Me her Recipe,” by Marge Piercy, Colors Passing Through Us, 2004).

Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving, and for several days in advance, food and recipes were on my mind…  Despite abandoning our dining table, one with extra leaves, and the roomy kitchen of our former home for a city apartment and small dining room table, I invited both sides of our extended Toronto family to share our holiday dinner.  I would come to question my sanity multiple times between issuing the invitation and preparing the meal, but late yesterday afternoon, seven of us sat around a configuration of our small dining table and another folding table to share the Thanksgiving meal.

At any holiday meal shared with family, there are new recipes to try and some old favorites from many years.  While I like to try out new dishes often, there were two perennial favorites on the menu.  One had to be on the table, a  family favorite, a casserole, named “Broccoli Soufflé” and given to me by my mother-in-law when I was a young bride.  The other, a yam casserole with marshmallow topping–a dish my grandmother and aunts served every Thanksgiving, was requested by my 8 year old granddaughter.  She eagerly helped prepare it, meticulously placing the miniature marshmallows one by one on top of the yams.  Neither my husband nor I eat broccoli soufflé or yam casserole at any other time–our dietary habits changed long ago.  Yet not surprisingly, the old recipes are laden with history and memories of people and Thanksgivings of the past.  And yesterday, just as happens at every family holiday dinner, the stories ignited by those traditional dishes were shared once again.  It’s no surprise that food stimulates everyone’s memories and stories.

Food plays a part of our history, as individuals and as a people. Food we consider “traditional,” no matter our heritage, triggers memory; stories are rediscovered and retold,  memories of long ago relatives, traditions that were so much a part of who we once were as children, the lives we took, in our youth, for granted.  During my childhood, every holiday included large family gatherings with aunts, uncles and cousins of all ages.  Fast forward to my adulthood when, intent on adventure and fulfilling dreams, my husband and I first moved to Canada, separated by well over 2500 miles from my huge extended family. I woke up filled with  nostalgia and longing on more than one Thanksgiving.  Making some of the dishes I knew so well helped ease the sense of loneliness, and gradually, as my husband and I had two daughters, we began to create our own family holiday traditions, but ones that also incorporated food of our childhoods.

“Recipes can help bridge generations, reveal unexpected characteristics of a culture, or simply fill an afternoon.” This statement appeared in the introduction to a writing prompt featured a few years ago in The Time is Now newsletter published monthly by Poets & Writers’ Magazine.

Think about it.  Food enlivens many of our senses, so it’s little wonder that a well-loved meal can stimulates so many memories.   Sometimes, even food we love can become unpleasant to us because of the associations we have with it. In fifth grade, I abruptly turned against my favorite “Thousand Island” salad dressing after a severe concussion from a bicycle accident a short time after I’d eaten a salad doused with it.  I never ate it again, the memory of the nausea in the aftermath of the concussion too vivid.

Try as I might–and I have many times–I’ve never managed to duplicate the same delicious oatmeal raisin cookies my grandmother made and I happily ate.  She lived across the street from my kindergarten classroom, and daily, I went to her house to wait for my father to pick me up after work.  Those afternoons, of all my food-related memories, just might be my favorite.  Every afternoon, a glass of milk and an oatmeal raisin cookie waited for me at her kitchen table.  We sat across from each other. She, sipping a cup of creamy coffee and telling me stories of my father.  Her kitchen was always filled with the aromas of cake, pie or cookies, ready for my father, uncles and aunts who loved her baking as much as I did and often dropped by for a visit over something delicious.   But the after school time was reserved for the two of us, sharing stories, an oatmeal cookie and time together.   While she told stories about her life and my father’s, often exaggerated and always colorful, I listened with rapt attention.  Not only was I was learning about my family’s history, I was developing a lifelong love of story.  It was time I cherish even now, with grandchildren of my own.

In the yellow kitchen her pink hands
play with creamy dough. Squares of sun frame
things that shine; spoons, cups, hair…

She boils water, opens wine, puts vegetable in pots.
Lights click. Smells blossom.

Everything feels suddenly invited.

(From “Pasta,” by Kate Scott, Stitches, 2003)

Writing Suggestions:


This week, think about food and the recipes that have been a part of your family’s traditions.

  • Begin writing whatever you can remember of a recipe from your childhood or another time in life, and any memories emerge, explore them.
  • Write about the memory of a meal, of life around the dinner table, of the smells or objects in a grandmother’s or mother’s kitchen.
  • Perhaps you traveled to a country or place where the food was new to you. Write about the experience.
  • Have you had an experience that turned food you loved into food you cannot stand?  What happened?  Write it.

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September 30, 2019: Room to Write

Posted in expressive writing, life writing, writing and spirituality, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on September 30, 2019|

For the first year after we returned to Toronto, I was lucky enough to have a room of my own for writing.  Our first apartment, a rambling, spacious three bedroom in a turn of the century building, allowed me to have the space I was accustomed to for my writing practice.  The only downside was that it was a third floor walk-up, and after several months, I developed Achilles tendonitis and a persistent pain in my right knee.  We acknowledged that our days of climbing three flights of stairs several times a day could not continue.  We moved once again last year, but the new apartment, although more expensive, offers an elevator and is located within easy walking distance to trails, shops and the subway.  However, it has only two bedrooms unlike the three in the old apartment.  Ever optimistic, I thought we would have enough space for our work habits and ourselves.  Once moved in, however, the realities of a smaller living space quickly became apparent.  My husband and I had to figure out how to share the smaller bedroom for our workspaces.

Despite Virginia’s Woolf’s famous statement, that “A woman must have money and a room of her own,” it is neither a requirement nor may it be feasible, nor is it required.  Hemingway wrote standing up; Ben Franklin apparently preferred the bathtub for writing, while Patti Smith wrote in a favorite coffee shop at a particular table.  As a mother, Toni Morrison wrote in a little motel room when her children were small, yet Jane Austen wrote her novels amid her family life. (Poets & Writers, 2008)  I was lucky, I suppose.  My writing habit was honed in a room to myself with a window that looked out to treetops and a canyon–a far cry for what I encountered when we moved to our current Toronto apartment.

My writing practice took a nosedive.  I sought refuge in the front room, but my once quiet and solitary morning routine was constantly interrupted by my husband, passing through the room to the kitchen for coffee and breakfast.  “How’s the writing going?”  He’d ask as he passed my chair.  His question and the interruption only served to highlight how poorly my writing time was progressing.  Frustration became a frequent theme of what was written in my notebook.  I felt unsettled and irritable.  Little wonder, I suppose, since I’d written in a “room of my own” for the better part of thirty years.  How could I offer writing advice to the men and women participating in my groups if, in truth, I wasn’t writing as I had always done for so many years?

My husband came up with the solution, no doubt weary of my irritability and complaints about my writing–or lack of it.  For the third or fourth time in a year, we rearranged the shared office space, and again, thanks to IKEA, created a little nook in the corner where there is a narrow floor to ceiling window.  I found a comfortable chair that fits in the small space and happily resumed the early morning writing routine I’ve enjoyed for much of my life.  Now I look through the window at the treetops and Toronto’s cityscape in the distance.

A little over a week ago, I led several sessions on journaling as part of the Camp Ooch/POGO (Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario) “Life after Cancer” conference.  While the writing I do with cancer patients and survivors has been in a group format, journaling had been a lifesaving practice for me after my first husband’s sudden death.  I am well aware that writing alone also has similar health benefits as writing together, improving mood and quality of sleep, reducing fatigue and helping gain insight into personal struggles and emotions.  During the workshops,  we discussed the healing benefits of writing and the many different forms journaling can take, for example,  the gratitude journal, an art journal, a writing journal (where you’re creating something like poetry or memoir), or dream journal, among others.    While there is no one way to journal, however, you need a quiet place that is comfortable and private in order to write honestly and without interruption.  I now knew too well how difficult it was to try to write without that sense of privacy.

Writing can be done anywhere, it’s true, but it needs to be done in a space that is free of interruptions and distractions.  You can create that “sense” of a room of one’s own, as many writers have demonstrated in all kinds of spaces, a space you shape for yourself: one a bedroom corner, a nook in a shared office, a library, even a table at a coffee shop.   Bonni Goldberg , author of Room to Write, a favorite little book of writing invitations, explains her book title as not necessarily about  “a” room to write in, but rather,  “creating room for your writing,” meaning you make  time and space in your life to have room to write.   “Making room in your life to write,” Goldberg adds, “generates even more room for your writing.” How you make that room is as unique to you as your writing is.

Writing can be an attempt to make a room where you can fully live, even if that room is imaginary, invisible to anyone who doesn’t bother to read your work.–Sandra Newman, author

You have to create and protect the space you need to write, whether your writing is a kind of meditation, a prayer, for healing or to nurture your creativity.   Without a place free of interruptions and distractions, your ability to write freely and honestly–so important to all kinds of writing–is compromised.  In reclaiming a “space of my own,” and my morning writing  routine, I rediscovered the mental and emotional space needed to nurture my creative life.  It is good to have a place, a nook, however imperfect or small, because it helps me ensure there is room in my daily life to write.

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.—Virgina Woolf

Writing Suggestions:

  • This week, think about how and why you write.
  • Do you make room to write regularly?  Do you have a favorite spot or a place of your own in which to write?
  • What role does writing play in your life?
  • How have you created a  “room of your own” that lets you bask in quiet and solitude, even briefly.
  • Write…about writing.

 

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Changes in Seasons; Changes in Life

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, poetry and healing, writing and nature, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on September 10, 2019| 2 Comments »

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted…

(“Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season),” Songwriter:  Pete Seeger)

When the song, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” was recorded released in 1965 by the rock group, The Byrds, it quickly captured the sentiments of the time and rose and to number one on Billboard’s “Hot 100.”  The Byrds were not the first to record the song.  Their version was preceded by a 1962 recording by the Limelighters and by Pete Seeger on his album, The Bitter and the Sweet.  Over the next several years,  other artists also recorded the song, including Judy Collins, Joe Cocker, Dolly Parton and Nina Simone.  Is it any wonder?  The words from Ecclesiastes describe life’s journey, the inevitability of its cycles and seasons, the story of the entire lifespan.

There’s something about the approaching autumn, for me,  that invites more quiet reflection, a daily tumble of memories triggered by the shift in temperature, trees beginning to turn color, the scent of the air.  “The other side of spring,” a character called autumn in a long ago French film.  It’s an apt metaphor for aging, which we all become more aware of as the years pass.  I think of my own life now as synonymous with autumn, reminding me of how human life is so intimately connected to Nature’s seasons–metaphorically and physically.

Henry David Thoreau, famous for his book, Walden, saw the seasons as symbolic of human life.   Just as plants go through stages such as bud, leaf, flower, and fruit, or seed, seedling, and tree, he observed that man, too, experienced similar stages of development throughout the life span.  However, his observations were not entirely novel.  The  ancient Greeks also saw seasons as metaphors for life’s different stages.   Childhood was synonymous with spring and youth with summer.  Autumn described adulthood and winter, old age.   The Seasons of Life:  Our Dramatic Journey from Birth to Death,  by authors John Kotre and Elizabeth Hall, also explored how our life journeys mirror Nature’s seasons.  Using biographical sketches of real people at all life stages or “seasons,” they demonstrated how our lives are influenced by them, as well as  the times of day, circling of the planets, phases of the moon, and  growth and harvesting of crops.

It’s hardly a surprise that seasons also affect our  health–something I’m reminded of as I’ve felt a dull ache in my fingers these past couple of weeks as I write.   Whether allergies during spring and summer, colds and flu in the winter, or even the discomfort of arthritis as weather cools, many of us have experienced these common health issues many times over.   The BBC reported a study where researchers analyzed blood and tissue samples from more than 16,000 people living around the world.  Of all the genes they scrutinized, they were most interested in the ones involved with immunity and inflammation. Not surprisingly, during the cold months of winter, those genes were more active for people living north of the equator.

Yet there’s more. Have you ever found yourself feeling a little out of sorts on those days that winter weather keeps you indoors?  While I complained of “relentless” sunshine when my husband and I lived in Southern California, preferring, instead, four distinct seasons, I’ll admit to feeling glum now and then when winter seems to be especially harsh or unending.  I’m not unusual.  Seasonal can changes affect our moods.   I used to attribute those grey days to my being “weather sensitive,” but that was long before I learned about “seasonal affective disorder” (SAD).  According to Psychology Today, some people do experience a seasonal depression that doctors feel may be related to changing levels of light.  SAD can range from mild to debilitating for several months at a time.

Seasonal changes can also affect a number of other, potentially more harmful, health conditions.  A  2017 article in the Huffington Post, reported on research studies from the NIH that found “autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular events, acute gout, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, hip fractures, mental health disorders, migraines, and emergency surgery and even mortality rates affected by the seasonal changes.

Fitzhugh Mullan, MD, writing in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1985, described his discovery of a malignant mass in his chest and as an outcome of his personal experience, defined what he termed “the seasons of  cancer survivorship:”  acute (diagnosis and treatment); extended  (post-treatment); and permanent  (long-term survivorship).  Several years later, Kenneth Miller, MD expanded Mullan’s original seasons to four distinct phases or “seasons” of cancer survivorship, building from observations not only of his patients’ experiences but also his wife’s.  In an article published by Cure Today magazine, he compared her stages of cancer and recovery to the seasons of nature, writing:

I have learned just as much about cancer and the seasons of survivorship in my work as a medical oncologist as I have alongside my wife, Joan, he wrote, who was treated 10 years ago for acute leukemia and more recently for breast cancer. Her diagnosis was certainly like the cold, bleak winter, and transition like the rebirth of spring. And while each season was different than the others, each was beautiful in its own way.

Nature’s four seasons have always been a predominant theme in poetry, and  inspire the poetry of cancer.  Marilyn Hacker’s 1994 collection of poetry, Winter Numbers, invokes the darkness and cold of winter as she details the loss of many of her friends to AIDS or cancer as she, too,  struggled with breast cancer.  Dan Matthews, poet, chronicled the journey of his wife’s terminal breast cancer in his collection,  Rain, Heavy at Times: Life in the Cancer Months (2007), while John Sokol invoked summer in his collection, In the Summer of Cancer (2001).  Barbara Crooker, in her poem, “For a Friend Lying in Intensive Care Waiting For Her White Blood Cells to Rejuvenate After a Bone Marrow Transplant,” used springtime to signal her friend’s renewal and rejuvenation:

The jonquils. They come back. They split the earth with

their green swords, bearing cups of light. ‘

The forsythia comes back, spraying its thin whips with

blossom, one loud yellow shout.

The robins. They come back. They pull the sun on the

silver thread of their song.

The iris come back. They dance in the soft air in silken

gowns of midnight blue.

The lilacs come back. They trail their perfume like a scarf

of violet chiffon.

And the leaves come back, on every tree and bush, millions

and millions of small green hands applauding your return.

(From:  The Cancer Poetry Project, Volume 1, 2001)

We’re moving toward the “other side of spring” now.  Even my potted plants on the balcony are showing signs of submitting to a change of season, looking a little less vibrant by the week.  While I’m reluctant to bid summer good-bye, I’m eager to see the tree-lined streets alive with colors of gold, yellow, and scarlet and feel the crispness in the air as I walk. Each season has its unique qualities, and each stirs up memories of people, places and experiences in our lives. “Aren’t we lucky the seasons are four…?”

Writing Suggestions

Explore how seasons influence your life or cancer journey. What seasonal metaphor best describes the stage of life or cancer survivorship you are experiencing?  Here are some suggestions help you get started writing:

  • Write about the different seasons in your life, whether the cancer journey, a marriage, loss and grief, adulthood– any of life’s seasons important or significant to you in some way.
  • If you are a cancer survivor, explore how Miller’s “Seasons of Survivorship” apply (or not) to your journey. Which “season” has been the most difficult to endure?  Why?
  • Explore cancer in a poem, using seasonal metaphors to describe your experience. You might begin by “exploding” as many images of that season on the page before you begin to shape a poem.  Be as descriptive as possible.

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Surviving? It’s Not Only About Cancer

Posted in expressive writing, heart disease, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on August 15, 2019|

She is alive.  Although her doctors said

there was nothing to be done, she is home,

planting her summer garden, is not dead,

and plans to eat everything she has grown…

She will live

beyond the harvest and what will not grow

is her tumor…

this is her time

to cultivate and seed.  She is alive.

(From:  “Seed,” by Floyd Skloot, in The Cancer Poetry Project, 2001)

You’ve finished your treatment.  The doctor’s words are something like “cancer free” or “no evidence of disease.”  You’ve beaten the odds.  You’re a survivor.  You celebrate.  But little by little, you find you’re riding on an emotional roller coaster some days, and you can’t seem to get yourself going and doing all you promised you’d do if you survived cancer.  “Why,” you ask a friend or a partner, “do I feel so bad?”

The good news about cancer, according to a 2011 article by Ann McDonald appearing in Harvard Health, is that “nearly 12 million Americans—4% of the population—are still alive after a cancer diagnosis.  While that’s encouraging news and “a testament to improved diagnosis and treatment…survivorship comes at a psychological price.”

McDonald describes three major and common reactions to survivorship:  1)  becoming emotionally paralyzed by the specter of cancer and unable to re-engage with normal life activities, 2) fears of recurrence, when follow-up medical visits and tests or unexplained pain or other symptoms produce worry and anxiety, and 3) feeling guilty when other friends or acquaintances have not survived.  It’s no wonder really.  As Alice Hoffman, novelist and cancer survivor, described it,

These are the chapters of your life that wallop you and teach you and bring you to tears, that invite you to step to the other side of the curtain, the one that divides those of us who must face our destiny sooner rather than later.– NYT Times, August 2000.

Yet, what other choice to do you have but to learn how to survive the crises life sometimes presents to you, whether cancer or some other hardship?   When you are undergoing treatment, surgeries and chemotherapy, the prospect of survival dominates your life.  You want to be a survivor, one, as the Oxford American Dictionary defines as “a person remaining alive after an event in which others have died,” such as those 9/11 survivors or those who survived the sinking of the Titanic.  It is also a term the Oxford defines as “a person who copes well with difficulties in… life,” something that seems virtually synonymous with being human.

What ignites your will to survive and helps you cope and keep going?  It’s different for all of us and yet, so much the same.  Hope is surely one of those things that keeps us going.  The support and love of friends and loved ones are also important to our will to survive–even, at times, those who have yet to be born.

A., a beloved writing group member who died from metastatic breast cancer, demonstrated extraordinary determination to live fully for as long as she could, filling her days with family, friends, travel, and joy. Her oldest daughter was pregnant, and she was determined to survive to be present for her first grandchild’s birth, even though the odds were very much against her.  She died a month after he was born, but she lived to be present at his birth and hold him in her arms for the short time she had left.  I have no doubt that his impending arrival strengthened her will to live and experience the joy of his arrival.

J., another of my former writers, given a terminal diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, evidenced a strong will to survive from the moment I met him.  Not surprisingly, he underwent a bone marrow transplant and intent on living as long as he possibly could, lived for another  five years before dying.  He engaged fully with living during that time, and he wrote poignantly, humorously, and honestly about his cancer struggle in the group and later, on his personal blog. Shortly before he died, he sent me a copy of an essay, entitled “What I’ve Learned,” summarizing the lessons of  his cancer experience.  Among the many bits of wisdom he expressed, he reminded us all that survival, no matter how brief or lengthy, is about living fully, for as long as we have.  Among  J.’s survival tips were:

  • Work at what you love…
  • Travel light.
  • Do what the doctors tell you.
  • Offer support when you can and it will come back to you when you need it.·
  • Cherish the ones you cherish.
  • In the end, all your physical beauty and prowess will leave you. You must still love that person in the mirror
  • We all will die eventually, so find a way to face death without fear. Don’t dwell on death, but enjoy each day as best you can.

He gave us good advice, because in life, we are all survivors of something.  Life is sometimes challenging, and you may face tough chapters to navigate through. Surviving–and surviving well– is something we all have to learn–and relearn–multiple times in our lives.  As your life continues to change, another challenge or difficulty can make you feel uncertain, clumsy or tentative.  But surviving isn’t about giving up.  It requires you learn new ways of being–and that is not always easy or pleasant.

Whether cancer, the effects of aging, unexpected life transitions, from time to time you have to remind yourselves that you’ve  proven, again and again, that you can adjust and move on.  As your life continues to change–in subtle and not so subtle ways–you learn the new movements, necessary strategies and behaviors.  Even better, you may learn how to move beyond “just” surviving and rather, fully embracing the life before you–changed and different perhaps, but yours.  After all, it is the only life you have, and you need to care for it.

…and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,

determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save. 

(From:  “The Journey,” by Mary Oliver, in Dreamwork, 1986)

Writing Suggestions:

  • How do you think of or define “survival?”
  • As a cancer survivor, what advice would you offer others newly diagnosed?
  • Describe a different time, cancer excluded, when life knocked you down.  What got you back on your feet?  What helped you survive?
  • After you were designated “cancer-free,” did you experience any difficulty in learning to live fully again?  What helped you re-engage?

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July 29, 2019: “But I Didn’t Ask to Join”

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, literature and healing, poetry and healing, writing as a way of healing, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal on July 29, 2019| 2 Comments »

A few years ago, I received a note from Sister Anne Higgins, author of the blog, “Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky” a blend of narrative, photographs and poetry. 2011, when   Her blog posts continue, more oriented today to current issues, but in 2011, when she first wrote me,  she was going through cancer treatment, and a line from one of her poems, “At the Gettysburg Cancer Center,” still lingers in my mind:   “Here is the club you never want to join…”

Sister Anne’s words reminded me of a phone call I once received from a cancer survivor several years ago soon after she learned I had been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer.  “You’ll find you belong to a private sorority,” she said, “one you never knew existed until now.”  I appreciated her call, but even during my university years, I was never one to join clubs or sororities, and I rang off certain I didn’t want to belong to any “private” cancer sorority or club.  However, I was in denial, a state of numbness and disbelief that would last more than a few days.

I didn’t have a choice, as it turned out; life had forced me into the cancer club.  Many weeks later, during the seven weeks of radiation treatments, I acknowledged my membership when, responding to a writing prompt–one single sentence, “the hospital corridor was dimly lit,” I wrote: “I turn left into the waiting room; a montage of faces greets me:  men, women, a teenage girl, a grade-school boy.  Some with hair; others without.  We are all members of a private club.  We meet each day at 3 p.m., wearing the pale blue hospital gowns, the uniforms of anonymity, as we sit in silence…”

Cancer isn’t the only circumstance or time in your lifes that you may be labeled by hardship, trauma or illness.  In those moments, it’s as if life is dealing from a deck of cards  in game we never even wanted to join, as one former kidney cancer patient described:

Hit me.

Two cards down.  Two more dealt and…the wild card, stark in your hand…the cancer card…you want your discard back; you want to fold…you were so certain you didn’t belong here, in this neighborhood, playing this game, but Oh-Yes-You-Do.

These are the life cards no one wants to be dealt, the memberships and labels you didn’t choose:  cancer survivor, heart patient, war veteran, single parent, homeless, refugee, widows or widowers, living with disability, on and on.  The list is endless, and sometimes, without warning, you suddenly find a new label is thrust upon you. You feel vulnerable, exposed, and even violated, as Molly Redmond describes in her poem, “The Cancer Patient Talks Back,”

It has made me public property, like being largely pregnant.

People invade—an assault of connections—

for reasons fair and foul.

Strangers on elevators. Acquaintances.

The medical cadre too.

Either way,

I am covered with fingerprints, with labels…

(From:  The Cancer Poetry Project, Vol. 1, 2001, Karin Miller, Ed.)

You protest, even try to deny this new reality, as Kathleen Rogers’ poem, “A Woman Argues with the Casting Director,” portrays:

I don’t, don’t want the part.

I really don’t what this part.

I don’t, I don’t believe it will be glamorous.

It won’t be opera, no swooning diva,

No Violetta, no burst of aria…

I told you—didn’t I tell you?—

I don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t want

this part…

(The Cancer Poetry Project, V. 1)

Well, you’ve gotten the part; you’ve drawn the card; you’ve been given the label.  You find you’re in the club you never asked to join.  Now what?

That new label is where you begin. “Cancer patient,” “living with cancer:” these are new identities that introduce new memberships but also strong emotions.  For example, those who attend my expressive writing groups quietly identify themselves as “living with cancer,” and they often express feelings of loneliness and fear as our meetings begin.  As the weeks progress, however, I witness a growing sense of community, support for one another and special understanding that comes from experiences openly shared in their writing.

It is not just face-to-face groups where this happens.  With the growth of online support communities, many newly diagnosed cancer patients turn to the Internet for information and for the social connections formed online.  Social media and online support group opportunities can also be beneficial for those diagnosed and living with cancer.  For example, a randomized controlled trial involving breast cancer patients suggested that “a Web-based support group” could “be useful” in reducing depression, cancer-related trauma and perceived stress.”

While being diagnosed with cancer may introduce you to a private “club” you may be reluctant to join, you may well discover the support of others, similarly diagnosed, helps to diminish your diminish feelings of loneliness, fear and isolation:  that’s a powerful form of medicine that can help you heal.

Writing Suggestions:

This week, think about a time that life circumstances forced you into a category, stuck you with a new identity, or “forced” that unwanted membership upon you.

  • Describe how it felt.  How did you deal with it?
  • Did you find your self-concept challenged?
  • Did it spur you into action or change the way you thought about your illness or situation?
  • Did you join a support group?  Writing group?  Online support group?
  • Did you find a sense of community, of others who understood what you were going through?
  • Write about the experience finding yourself in that club you never asked to join, what you did, and the impact it had on you.

 

 

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