Writing Through Cancer

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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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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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 24^th— 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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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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