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For the Week of February 26, 2012: “And the Oscar goes to…?”

February 26, 2012 by Sharon Bray

I’ve been spending a lot of time in movie theaters this past month, trying to view as many of the Oscar nominated films as I can before tonight’s annual Academy Awards ceremony.  Despite my frequently expressed annoyance at the quality of entertainment coming out of Hollywood, I’m just as eager as any other film devotee to sit in front of the television for hours on end one night each year, my paper ballot in hand, and root for my favorite films or actors.  Sometimes they win.  Other times, I tear up my ballot in disgust, and vow that I won’t watch the awards next year.  But I do, because I love film, good acting, and good stories, and there is still the flicker of that old enchantment that was Hollywood.

It was a fascination I  once shared with other wide-eyed pre-teen girls.  At our grade school slumber parties we ate popcorn, pored over movie star magazines, sent one dollar bills in stamped envelopes to buy our autographed black and white glossy of a favorite Hollywood heart-throb.  Some of us even dreamed of being on the big screen  one day.  We had no idea what it meant to be an actor, much less the combined effort and talent necessary behind the scenes to produce the films we loved (even if we preferred those movies starring Elvis Presley, Bill Haley or Sal Mineo, our idols at the time!).

Oscars: Not who will win, but who should win is today’s headline of the featured article in Sacramento Bee’s online “Wire Lifestyle.”  There’s reason for cynicism.  Many regard The Academy Awards as little more than a popularity contest, dominated by publicity and backroom campaigns.  Who should win?  I’d vote for Uggie, the adorable canine co-star The Artist, but he doesn’t qualify.  I’m fairly certain that several of my choices for the prestigious award of best actor or supporting actor may not be shared by the Academy this evening.  Does it matter?  Not so much.  It ‘s Hollywood, after all.

Now imagine that the stage is set a little differently–a film adaptation of a difficult period in your life, the story of pain, suffering or disaster,  and the strength that the actor, you, portray in overcoming the odds, all the obstacles thrown in your way.  And the Oscar for the best actor goes to…?  You, of course, but who were the players in your supporting cast?  The ones who made your victory possible?  This list is long, difficult to name, as we’ve seen when the Oscar winners pull those folded papers from their pockets and read off a list of names, people without whom your performance might have gone unnoticed.  It’s not always the obvious ones who make the list either.  Actress Michelle Williams, receiving a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn, paid tribute to her six-year-old daughter, Mathilda:  I consider myself a mother first and an actress second, and so the person I most want to thank is my daughter, my little girl, whose bravery and exuberance is the example that I take with me in my work and in my life.

Think about it.  Our lives always involve a supporting cast, even if their role is small, their presence temporary.   In the poem, “Finding God at Montefiore Hospital,” Lorraine Ryan describes one such person important to her cancer recovery.  During her hospitalization from a bone marrow transplant, Ryan noted that  doctors stopped by only momentarily, but “this sweet man, Juan, was one of the few people…genuinely interested, who showed he really cared,” she said.

…Pine and ammonia rose like incense.

 

With every move he looked up:

“How’s it really going?”…

 

Sometimes when I couldn’t lift my head

Off the pillow—

When vomiting and mouth sores

Wouldn’t let me speak—

The swish of his mop

Bestowed the final blessing

Of the night.

(In The Cancer Poetry Project, Karin Miller, Ed., p. 20)

None of us can make it through the dark times life hands us without the support of others, even, as Ryan shows us, an unassuming janitorial staff member.  Think about your life.  You’ve come this far in your life, surmounted obstacles, weathered life-threatening or debilitating illness, losses, or other trauma.  Your life story is as poignant and inspirational as any of the stories  rendered on the big screen.  Surely you surely deserve an Oscar for your performance—finding courage, determination and resilience in yourself at a time when so much seemed insurmountable.   But who helped or was at your side?  Who would you honor as your best supporting actor?  Or, if you wrote an acceptance speech for your Oscar, who are the people you would name with gratitude for their supporting role in your achievement?     How have they made a difference in your life?  What would you say to show your gratitude or appreciation for their role as  a “best supporting” cast member?

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For the Week of February 19, 2012: Writing from the Fault Lines

February 19, 2012 by Sharon Bray

Earthquakes are a familiar physical occurrence in my home state.  California is riddled with fault lines, the sliding boundaries, which define the earth’s tectonic plates. California has many of these faults, and it’s normal for them to move past one another a couple of inches each year.  But like everything in life, the movement is not predictable.  Sometimes the plates lock and do not move for years, and stress builds along the fault. When the pressure exceeds the strain threshold, energy is released, causing the plates slip several feet at once.  The fault line movement sends waves out in all directions, and we experience them as tremors, or at worst, a damaging earthquake like Loma Prieta, Sierra Madre or the Northridge quakes that struck the state between 1989 and 1994.

In 2009, California geology officials released an updated seismic map including more than 50 new fault lines discovered in the previous two decades, bringing the estimated number of fault lines in the state to 15,000.  Although most of California’s fault lines are small and do not generate major earthquakes, those of us who live here are accustomed to feeling the earth move beneath our feet from time to time.  According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there have been 462 (and counting) earthquakes in the California and Nevada regions in this past week alone, although most were too small to be detected by the residents.  Still, the level of seismic activity garnered attention on the nightly news.  I watched as a map of the west coast flashed on the television screen, red dots pulsating to show the strongest of the tremors.  ”Might this mean,”  the newscaster asked, “that a ‘big one’ is about to occur?”

Life has its fault lines too.  Day after day, we deal with the little upsets, the small upheavals:  a parking ticket, a child’s scraped knee, the favorite vase shattering on the floor, an argument with a spouse, or a sore throat and sniffles that mean we cancel our weekend plans.  Little tremors, nothing too upsetting.  Life goes on, and we cross our fingers that we’ll be spared from “the big ones”–the natural disasters, losses or suffering portrayed every night in the evening news.

But life gives us no guarantees, and it can take a turn for the worse without warning.  We experience a  big upheaval, the one we didn’t expect, a kind of emotional earthquake, when everything we hoped for and took for granted is torn asunder.  “Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that change when it comes cracks everything open,” Dorothy Allison said. Whether cancer,  sudden death,  job loss, marital breakup, or other trauma, our psyches’ landscapes are  vulnerable and exposed.  We’re “cracked open,” and other, older wounds sometimes resurface to create tremors of old feelings, emotional earthquakes.

I received a diagnosis of early stage breast cancer several years ago; it came during a difficult chapter of my life.  I wrote, filling  page after page of my journal with disbelief and feelings of  guilt.  Had I  brought my cancer on myself?  But it didn’t take long before my writing shifted.  Memories of old wounds–loss, hurt and betrayals–I’d soldiered through and buried.   In the months before my diagnosis, there were little tremors from time to time.  I was often irritable, easily upset, and, if I admitted it, depressed.  The wounds might have been buried, but they hadn’t healed, and years of stress accumulated along my psychological fault line.  It took a cancer diagnosis to release the pressure and make those old, unresolved wounds visible.   I resigned from a job I admitted I hated, and little by little, I embarked on a journey of  healing.

A cancer diagnosis often unearths other pain or trauma suffered in someone’s life; it’s something I witness frequently in my writing groups.   Od, painful memories are triggered by the most benign of writing prompts, and yet, the stories that get written are as vivid and emotional as if the event happened recently.  But isn’t it human suffering that so frequently provides the impetus for writing?  William Carlos Williams, poet and physician, once stated that writing often begins out of “a disaster or catastrophe…By writing,” he said, “I rescue myself under all sorts of conditions…it relieves the feeling of distress.” According to Ted Kaptchuk, Harvard professor of Medicine, “Healing is not something we do only when we are sick; it is part of the process and journey of life,”

By writing I rescue myself…   Emotions can inspire us or hold us hostage.  Negative emotions–anger, fear or feelings of unworthiness–accumulate, just as the pressure along the earth’s plates.  They weaken our ability to fend off illness, depression or disease.  Writing can help us  translate our emotions into words, connect what we feel to why, and  begin to make sense of our lives.   Writing allows each of us a way to rescue ourselves, to affirm, as Philip Levine describes,  the meaning of our lives.

…my jaws ache for release, for

words that will say

 

anything.  I force myself

to remember

who I am, what I am, and

why I am here.

(Philip Levine, “Silent in America”)

 

Write from your  fault lines this week.  Write about what “aches for release.”  Explore how writing can “rescue” you from feelings of distress or sorrow, or how writing helps you affirm who you are, why you are here.

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For the Week of February 12, 2012: “I’m Gonna’ Sit Right Down & Write Myself a Letter…”

February 12, 2012 by Sharon Bray

“Breathe in,” my yoga teacher spoke softly as she led us through a closing meditation.  “Fill yourself with gratitude,” she said.

I inhaled, filling my lungs with air, and then exhaled slowly, trying to clear my mind–a perpetually challenging task.  “Gratitude.” I silently repeated the word to myself on each inhale, until it seemed I had actually filled my body, my entire being with gratitude.  I drove home smiling, feeling lighter than I had two hours earlier as I’d combatted traffic and stop lights to get to my class on time. When I reached my house, I sat at my desk, opened my notebook and made a gratitude list.  The page was quickly filled with the names of people who, because of their love, kindness and friendship, have enriched my life.

It wasn’t until this morning that it struck me: my gratitude list was incomplete.  For as often as I’ve tried, over the years, to cultivate a practice of letting the people in my life know how much I appreciate them–with letters, little gifts, thank you notes, or, as February 14th nears, even valentines–I am remiss at remembering to appreciate  someone in particular.

That someone is a person much like you.  She’s has struggled at different times in her life and sometimes won, grieved but often rejoiced, loved (often too well), and sometimes lost.  Her body has weathered surgeries, early stage breast cancer, heartache and heart failure but it still serves her well, doing its yeoman’s work day in and day out.  Her face shows the tell-tale signs of age, and her joints often broadcast her age when she tries to do a new yoga pose.  But that someone is more often greeted with an exasperated sigh as she looks in her magnifying mirror to put on her makeup.  She sometimes wilts under the harsh words of a fierce internal critic, who trounces all over her writing at regular intervals.  She often forgets to be grateful for the person who stares back at her from the mirror.  Her face, with all its evidence of a life lived, her body, her unique gifts.  That person is me.

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

“Love after Love,” by Derek Walcott, in Sea Grapes, Noonday Press, 1976

“I’m gonna’ sit right down and write myself a letter…” For those of you old enough to remember, the song was first written in 1935 by Fred Ahlert and Joe Young but has since been recorded by many different vocalists.   I awakened today remembering my teen-aged self, singing along to Sam Cooke’s recording after being spurned by a teen-aged lover.  My dog eyed me with alarm as I danced around the kitchen performing my much older rendition.  Call it crazy, but thinking about gratitude and appreciation for the person I am—despite all those mishaps and imperfections—triggered the memory of those long ago lyrics.

Perhaps we all need a reminder,  especially after cancer, aging or life hardships, to express gratitude and compassion for ourselves.  What better time than right now?  Valentine’s Day is Tuesday,  traditionally a time we express  love and affection for others.  Why not add yourself to your valentine’s list? Write a gratitude letter to yourself. You could address it to the wounded child who never received the love she needed, or to the adult, weathering a difficult chapter of life, or to your body, struggling to heal from illness or surgeries, even the older, aging body.

Why not sit right down and write yourself a letter?  And while you’re at it, get out the construction paper, the lacy doilies, scissors and glue. Make yourself a valentine and place it over your desk.   Let it be a reminder of your gratitude and compassion  for yourself, for all you have endured and become.   Sit.  Feast on your life.  

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For the Week of February 5, 2012: Yes, Yes, Yes

February 5, 2012 by Sharon Bray

As the eldest child in my family, I grew up with an exaggerated sense of responsibility, a host of must do’s and should be’s drummed into my head by my over-conscientious mother, and more attention paid to etiquette, what was proper and what wasn’t, and scholastic achievement than I felt, rightly or wrongly, was demanded of my younger siblings.  Guilt doggedly followed me whenever I erred, behaved badly or came home with a report card less than the stellar one my mother expected.  It’s been years since my mother died, but the remnants of her strict upbringing left its imprint, although I have managed to loosen its grip somewhat over the years.  Yet once in a while, like this past week, I realize I’ve managed, yet again, to pile my life high with commitments and responsibilities scarcely leaving me time to breathe.

“All I want to do today is play,” I whined to my husband over our morning coffee.  “I don’t want to read another student’s paper, teach another class, or go to another meeting.  I just want to walk through Balboa Park—without the dog—linger in the art museum, sit alone in a café and read a novel.  I want to play hooky.”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “What’s stopping you?”

“Well, I…”  I was ready with my standard arsenal of excuses, but I hesitated.  What was stopping me?

As children, we had a familiar repertoire of games, hide and seek, tag, dodge ball, but a perpetual favorite was “Mother, may I?”  Why create a game that was all about getting permission to do something?  “Mother, may I” was a familiar litany for all of us.  We asked permission to be excused from the dinner table, to go out and play, or cross the street.  If we didn’t’ we were subjected to reprimand or punishment.  But the whole point of our child’s game, “Mother, May I?” was to try to get away with something without asking permission to do it.

Mother, may I? Even as adults, those old internalized prohibitions from childhood clamor for attention, keeping us, unconsciously or consciously, from doing things we dream of doing with our lives.  It often takes a whack on the side of the head, like cancer or sudden loss, to make us reassess and change.

“Change, when it comes, cracks everything open,” Dorothy Allison wrote in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.  And change comes when we’ve been given a real wake-up call, when our lives seem to shatter. Life-changing events can be an opportunity take action—to do the very things we’ve always wanted but never gave ourselves permission to do.  If we really pay attention, we might learn to live, now and presently.

… cancer is a wakeup call

that resonates to the cell level…cancer teaches that snorkeling

coral reefs pays greater dividends than a savings account

and mowing summer grass can be postponed

for bike rides past wild flowers and country streams,

and vacuuming the carpet and washing the windows

are low priority items when a friend drops by to visit…

(“The Lesson,” by Judy Rohm, in The Cancer Poetry Project.)

So what’s stopping you?  Maybe you just need a nudge, a bit of permission, as Kaylin Haught’s poem,  “God Says Yes to Me,” reminds us.  Here’s an excerpt:

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

And she said yes

I asked her it if was okay to be short

And she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

Or not wear nail polish

And she said …you can do just exactly

What you want to…

What I’m telling you is

Yes Yes Yes

(From Poetry 180, edited by Billy Collins)

Yes, yes, yes.  Well, I’m giving myself permission to take a break and play today.  What about you?  If you could give yourself permission to do anything you’ve wanted to do for a long time, what would it be?  Try beginning with the words, “yes, yes, yes” and see where it takes you.   What in your life would you really like to change or do?

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For the Week of January 29, 2012: “How It Felt to be Me”

January 29, 2012 by Sharon Bray

My husband and I began the annual task of cleaning out our garage.  Despite our best efforts to minimize our accumulated possessions, we faced, yet again, stacks of used baby paraphernalia (purchased for grandchildren’s visits), old clothing, books and boxes filled with odd collections of items transferred from household shelves to the garage.  I have to admit that most of the boxes in question belonged to me:  keepsakes no longer with a reason for being kept, flower vases I might use again, old course materials, drafts of my books, and, since I’m a habitual journal keeper, dozens of notebooks, the pages filled with evidence of what my life has been this past year.  In them I’d written ideas for workshops, sketched cartoonish commentary, tried out rewrites for the novel I’m trying to finish, mused on past events in my life, and even written several “to do” lists.

What’s in My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer.  Mean

things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.

But marbles too.  A genius for being agreeable.

Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous

discards.  Space for knickknacks, and for

Alaska.  Evidence to hang me, or to beatify…

Pages you don’t know exist

but you can’t find them.  Someone’s terribly

inevitable life story, maybe mine.

(By William Stafford, in  Crossing Unmarked Snow)

I admit that I didn’t make much headway in our garage cleaning, perching myself on the stairs for a while and reading random passages from one notebook or another.  I remembered another box, stored on the shelves and containing my journals from the early eighties, when my life was defined by loss and grief following the drowning of my first husband.  I pulled a notebook from 1983 out of the box and read a few entries from it, comparing what I’d written then with the notebook entries of this past year. How different they were:  one written during trauma and loss, the other a hodge-podge of creative (and not so creative) notations.  Both, however different, are testimony to the life I have lived.

Why did I write it down?  In order to remember, of course.  But what exactly was it I wanted to remember? … the point of keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking…how it felt to me:  that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook. (Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”)

How it felt to be me.  I’ve kept journals since I was a teenager.  They were called “diaries” then. Mine had a blue, faux leather cover, pages gilded with gold leaf, and a small lock and key, impossibly easy to break–something my kid brother did on more than one occasion.  I no longer remember what I wrote in that diary, but I still have a scar on my right leg from the summer I chased my brother as he ran through our campsite near Medicine Lake, California,  laughing and waving  my diary in the air.  He got away, because I sliced my leg on a steel tent stake and was rushed to the nearest town to have it stitched up.  I returned, limping in pain from my bandaged leg, to find my diary lying on my sleeping bag.  My brother was nowhere in sight, hiding behind my father’s pickup truck in tears.

Despite those invasions of privacy, I was undeterred in recording my most important thoughts, often hiking up the hill behind our house to sit under an old oak tree to write.  I suppose I dreamed of emulating Henry David Thoreau, but adolescence interests soon took over, and my attentions shifted from the meaning of life to which boy I “liked” and which boys “liked” me.  In college, my notebooks changed again, full of my musings on  poetry, politics, psychology and theology. When my first child was born, I noted  her every developmental achievement.  But during those tumultuous years after my husband’s drowning, my journals were my refuge, a port in the storm, and I filled the pages with emotional outpourings or questions I could not answer.  I gradually wrote my way out of  sorrow, and as I did, my writing changed once more.  I enrolled in doctoral studies, and my notebooks became my repositories for ideas and observations noted in my research.  They were  invaluable tools as I wrote  my dissertation, and I hung onto them long after I’d finished and earned my degree.  They were evidence I’d found my way out of grief and despair into a new and different life.  Writing, whether through pages of emotion, poetry or even research notes, had helped me find my way out of pain and sorrow.  I wanted to remember how far I had come.

“How it felt to be me.” I’ve  replayed Didion’s words so many times.  Isn’t that–to remember–part of the reason we write?  And isn’t that one of the most important reasons for keeping a journal or notebook?

Journals are … intended to be private: … they are the place where [the writer] is not performing, not showing off. In his or her journals, the writer is… unbuttoned, unguarded… (Mary Gordon, New York Times, October 6, 1991.)

Our journals offer the freedom to write without censoring ourselves.  We write about where we’ve been or what we’ve done; we try out new ideas, or we grieve, write an angry rant, even, sometimes, whine.  It doesn’t matter.  We’re writing for ourselves, and no matter what we write, we are witnessing our lives on the page,  remembering and creating testimony to what we have experienced, felt and endured at different times in our lives.   Writing helps us to make sense of our lives, to write, as author Patricia Hampl described, “ourselves into knowing.”

How has writing helped you write yourself into knowing–into insight and understanding?  Have you turned to a journal during painful and difficult times in your life? If you re-read earlier entries, what changes do you observe in your writing?   What do you learn about yourself?   Write about a time that writing helped you make sense of a difficult life chapter.  Or write about why you keep a journal.  Why do you write?

If  you’d like to refresh your journal habits or begin keeping a writer’s notebook?  Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

  • If you’re writing your way through a difficult or painful life experience, it’s important not to keep ruminating (as I did for several months after my husband died, making myself feel worse instead of better), but instead, after you’ve written for fifteen or twenty minutes, put the journal aside.  Come back to it later, maybe in a day or two and re-read your entry.   Underline words or phrases that stand out for you.  Start with a fresh page and one of those underlined phrases, using your own words as a prompt.  Chances are, it will take you someplace worth writing about.
  • Get in the habit of writing for five to fifteen minutes a day, giving yourself the freedom to write anything.  May Sarton, who published two of her journals, advised, Remember to be alive to everything, not just what you’re feeling, but…your pets, to flowers, to what you’re reading…what you are seeing every day.  Noticing the world around us sometimes helps us stumble into  insight or a specific memory, something timportant to what we are feeling.
  • Use a journal to record or document important events—joyous as well as painful, for example,   surgeries, recovery, a grandchild’s birth, pregnancy, a marital breakup, or a child’s first words.  Journaling is about writing from your life—and our lives are not only made up of pain—although it might feel like it at the time.  Capture the happy moments, the celebrations and achievements too.
  • Combine visual with verbal:  photographs, ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, even quick sketches of places or people combined with writing about them.  I do this from time to time, and I admit that these are my favorite journals to return to and read.
  • Use your journal to respond to writing prompts, using this site or others on the web or, if you prefer, some of the many published collections of writing prompts, like Judy Reeves’ A Writer’s Book of Days.

Posted in art and writing, expressive writing, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors | 4 Comments »

For the Week of January 22, 2012: The Small Islands of Sanctuary

January 22, 2012 by Sharon Bray

For the past week or so, I’ve been embracing solitude, honoring the need to pull back and retreat from the busyness of my past many weeks of travel, family visits and non-stop activity of the holidays.  I’ve rediscovered the joy of the quiet routine that nourishes my writing life, re-created a place of sanctuary in my study (which served as a guest room for visiting family and friends), and re-acquainted myself with nature’s gifts, ones just outside my back door.  I love the peace, the sense of self-renewal that solitude offers.

I love the stillness of the wood.

I love the music of the rill.

I love to couch in pensive mood

Upon some silent hill…

Here from the world I win release,

Nor scorn of men, nor footstep rude,

Break in to mar the holy peace

Of this great solitude.

(“Solitude,” by Lewis Carroll, `832-1898)

 Our human need for solitude, inspiration or spiritual renewal has a long tradition, whether for religious reasons, to retreat from the demands of the world, or to fully experience nature, as Thoreau did at Walden Pond, or to deepen our understanding of our own lives.

In a world where our lives are bombarded by busyness,  the constant ring of cell phones, crowds of people in shopping malls or on city streets, “breaking news” of natural or man-made disasters, political campaigns, and advertisements for some new hot consumer item, it’s easy to lose ourselves in the melee.  Worse, we begin to feel stressed, dissatisfied, rushed or unhappy with our own lives and not know why.  How do we reclaim ourselves?

Whether in the demands of daily living or in the aftermath of a difficult  life event, it’s easy to become overwhelmed   by the many different choices we have, the expectations of others, and the voices of our internal critics, whispering “but you should be…” in our ears.  It’s hard to make time for ourselves, difficult to admit that we just might march to the beat of a different drummer and that we need space and solitude to reclaim ourselves.

Even in the recovery from cancer or other traumatic events, we hear many and sometimes conflicting messages about what it means to be a survivor.  There’s actually something called “survivor guilt,” when we can feel guilty about surviving traumatic or painful events while others have been less fortunate.  We feel lucky, yes, but guilty too, and we drive ourselves to take on goals, to accomplish more than we might normally do.  That’s not necessarily bad, but sometimes, we wake up and wonder how we got back on that treadmill when what we desire is a sense of peace, quiet or simplicity to discover what we really want our lives to be like.

Nancy, a writer from the Stanford Cancer Center group, described her feelings after treatment and recovery:  In the beginning, it was comforting to think of fighting to survive…  I believe that I should have a powerful drive to accomplish something…a goal for which I need to survive.  But I don’t find that drive in me. 

“I should have…a goal for which I need to survive.”  She dismissed the feelings of “should,” and rather than chaining herself to a goal that didn’t honor her true feelings, she found renewal in the ordinary and commonplace elements of her life:  I love the things I do day by day.  I hike with one beloved friend.  I spend time in the wonderful garden of another.  I meet others for coffee and conversation. I meet these friends with pleasure and leave them with a joy and benefit to my mind and spirit…

In a poem entitled “Directive,” Ann, a poet living with cancer, reminds us of those ordinary moments in our lives that offer a kind of sanctuary,  a refuge from the demands  of a busy world that sometimes threaten to overtake our lives:

Remember the commonplace, the wooden chair on the white planked deck,
trees kneeling in the rain and deer prints
leading into elegant rushes. A kinder place
cannot be found: where you sit at the top
of shadowy stairs, the window lifted.
Consider the slight breeze, almost erasable,
the boundless oscillating atom, its radiance
tactile, in the mirror your shining hair.
Let me speak for you: there’s comfort
to be found in fatigue, in letting principles
fall like stones from your pockets.
Let the flesh of your breath relax,
overlook not the spacelessness of
monogamous self-love. Fall into the ordinary,
the rushes, the deer looking up into your heart,
risen, full in the silver hammered sky.

This week, consider the importance of solitude and sanctuary in healing.  What little islands of sanctuary, those common and ordinary moments of life, that have helped you heal and find renewal?

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal | 5 Comments »

For the Week of January 15, 2012: Lost and Found

January 15, 2012 by Sharon Bray

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

Loss.  It’s often synonymous with cancer.  Loss of hair, parts of the body; loss of self-image, of dreams, or loss of loved ones.  We feel overwhelmed as we face a landscape defined only by losses, hopelessness and grief.

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

–from “Kindness”, by Naomi Shihab-Nye in The Words Under The Words ©1994

When cancer strikes, life, as we once knew it, will never be the same.  The landscape between those “regions of kindness,” does appear desolate.  Our bodies are forever altered, and the self we took for granted feels like a distant memory.   But hope somehow finds a way back to us, solace is given, and in those small moments of kindness, we begin to heal and find our way back to life.  As Shihab-Nye says,

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore…
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

During times of loss and grief, when we least expect it, we discover kindness.  We make  new friends, build new dreams, and discover gratitude for small gifts life offers us, ones we overlooked or barely noticed before.  We find new facets of ourselves to explore, strength or resilience we never imagined possible.  Perhaps we even discover we haven’t lost as much as we thought.  The kind of loss that comes from cancer or other serious illness is often fertile ground for new knowledge and understanding.

Writing helps us articulate– even mourn–what we have lost in the difficult chapters of life,  but it offers us much more.  When we write, we have a blank page, an unblemished open space upon which to reclaim lost stories, create new ones, reclaim our voices and ourselves.  We discover new insights, new possibilities.  Our words have the power to touch others.  We find new realms of creativity we never realized we possessed.  We find ourselves again.

Here’s a suggestion for writing.  First, take a blank sheet of paper and list  all that you have lost.  Don’t stop there.  Turn the page over.  Now list the acts of kindness that you remember, the ones that made a difference. And gave you hope, rediscover what you thought your lost or help you see things in a new light?  Explore what you’ve lost and what you’ve found

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors | Leave a Comment »

For the Week of January 8, 2011: Waiting

January 8, 2012 by Sharon Bray

What you do with time

is what a grandmother clock

does with it: strike twelve

and take its time doing it.

You’re the clock: time passes,

you remain. And wait.

(From:  “Mother,” by Kurt Brown)

I admit it. Waiting is something I don’t do well, whether I’m waiting in line in at airport security, for an appointment in a doctor’s office, a ticket at the movie theater, or, as has been the case for the past few weeks, on my daughter, whose perpetually last-minute style is even more pronounced as she juggles dressing herself and her six month old daughter.  Despite giving her all the help I can, much of my time during the holiday season has been punctuated by trying to tame my impatience, the restless tapping of my foot, as I wait to go somewhere together with my daughter and granddaughter.

In Worcester, Massachusetts,

I went with Aunt Consuelo

to keep her dentist’s appointment

and sat and waited for her

in the dentist’s waiting room.

(From “In the Waiting Room,” by Elizabeth Bishop)

Waiting.  We seem to always be waiting for something to happen, and we’ve done it most of our lives. Remember how eagerly you waited on Christmas eve, hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa?  Or that first crush you had on a boy or girl, waiting and hoping they might notice you?  Ironically, as an expectant mother, I waited for my overdue daughter to be born, the one who continues to keep me waiting today.  But waiting is something that sometimes seems to dominate an entire day of my life.  I’ve sat in restaurants or stood in subway stations waiting for loved ones or friends, and waited on the sidewalk as my dog relieves himself.  I’ve thumbed through outdated magazines and checked my watch a dozen times, waiting for an appointment  scheduled for an hour earlier.  I’ve waited for calls or letters from loved ones, for acceptances to schools, and results of dozens of medical tests.

I’ve waited with hope; I’ve waited with dread, but all too often, I’ve waited impatiently, unable to concentrate on anything but the waiting, a trait inherited from my father, whose impatience was manifested in the nervous twitch of his foot, his fingers drumming quietly on the kitchen table, or the constant flick of his cigarette in an ashtray while he waited for someone (usually my mother) or something to happen.

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting

And the letter you wait for won’t come,

And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray

And the letter I wait for won’t come.

(From “Caboose Thoughts,” by Carl Sandburg)

It does no good to pace the hallway or sit at the table, foot tapping restlessly, willing something or someone to speed up.  Time—and events—move as they will.  If I allow impatience to be my master, then how much of life have I failed to notice?

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.

(From “The Four Quartets,” by T.S. Eliot)

The faith and the love and the hope are … in the waiting.  These words make me reconsider why life makes us wait.  I am still learning, even after all these years, to accept what I cannot control, to let things unfold as they will, even if it’s as simple as waiting for my daughter to meet me at the door and say, “I’m ready to go now.”

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?

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

What do you wait for?  When has waiting kept you from noticing, from appreciating those small moments of beauty that Stafford describes? Do you remember a particular time when your life seemed to be consumed by waiting?  Write about waiting.

Posted in expressive writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal | Leave a Comment »

For the Week of January 1, 2012: Shaping A Life

January 1, 2012 by Sharon Bray

Last night the sound of celebrations echoed through our neighborhood, amplified by one of the many canyons that cut through San Diego.  Fireworks, songs and shouts announced the departure of the old and the arrival of a new year, and perhaps for many, a list of well-intentioned resolutions: exercise more, lose those extra holiday pounds, put old anger or sorrow aside, take those yoga classes you’ve managed to avoid the year before.  It’s like shaping our lives into something new, improved, even better than before, as if 2012 is our chance to begin anew.

I admit that I look forward to a new year with mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I welcome the possibilities that a shiny, new year seems to signal.  On the other, time moves by much more quickly as I age, and I look at years past with sentimentality, even the occasional twinge of “if only I had …”

2012 aside, the fact is that  new beginnings are not so much defined by calendar dates as the events that truly alter our lives.  The tough events that can come at any time of the year:  job loss, natural disasters, the loss of a loved one, a debilitating illness like cancer.  In those moments, the world seems hostile and unforgiving, and yet, and yet:  we survive, even shaping a new life from the rubble of the old.

I am always inspired, even humbled, by the men and women who share their lives—and their cancer experiences—in my writing groups.  They are, without a doubt, my greatest teachers.  As I considered a new year’s day writing today’s prompt, I remembered Carol, diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, who was part of my Scripps writing groups for two years.  She wrote with raw honesty and beauty, but her real art was in sculpture.  She carved and shaped sensuous, breathtaking forms from blocks of stone, work she continued until her death in 2008.  Carol described her artistic process this way:

At first the stone seems cold and hostile. As the shape emerges, the stone becomes warm and alive. The joy and pain involved in the carving process is, to me, both cyclical and strangely predictable, something akin to giving birth and seeing your creation change from a gawky adolescent to a sensuous adult. The whole process is deeply satisfying.

Carol’s words offer a metaphor to us for how we re-shape our lives after we’ve been dealt one of life’s blows.  Our world may also seem like the cold and hostile stone she describes.  At first, it’s difficult see the shape and form our lives can take, but as we take those first steps into the unknown, we begin shaping a new life, incorporating the lessons of the past and working them into the life that lies before us.

I am running into a new year
and the old years blow back like a wind…
that I catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what I said to myself
about myself
when I was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even forty-six but
I am running into a new year
and I beg what I love and
I leave to forgive me.

(“i am running into a new year,” By Lucille Clifton, in Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980)

As you run into this New Year, think about how you want to shape or re-shape your life.  Re-readClifton’s lines, “I beg what I love/ and I leave to forgive me.”  What in the years past do you want to leave behind?  What do you want to retain in the coming year how will you shape the life you want out of the material of your past and present?

I wish you all a very happy and satisfying 2012.

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal | 4 Comments »

For the Week of December 26, 2011: Firsts

December 26, 2011 by Sharon Bray

It’s been a week of firsts:  my granddaughter’s first visit to California, her first encounter with a dog, first taste of solid food, and first sunset over the Pacific Ocean.  Yesterday we celebrated her first Christmas, although at only six months of age, it’s unlikely she’ll have any memories of the day, but we–her parents and grandparents—will recount those moments many times over in the years to come, adding to the stories in our family lore.

Watching her eyes grow big as her mother held her up to the tree, sparkling with lights and the ornaments collected since my childhood, we recalled her mother’s first Christmas, the rubber hedgehog that became her favorite toy, the red felt stocking her grandmother sewed by hand to hang among the others on the fireplace mantle, hearing her coo happily as she awakened in her crib that Christmas morning, as if she somehow realized it was a special day.  I repeated those “firsts” stories, as I have done nearly every Christmas of my daughters’ lives, and even though they’ve heard them countless times, it has become a Christmas tradition, a ritual of shared experiences, a way to reaffirm our history and belonging to one another.  It is a remembering of the past that grows even more poignant as their father and I grow older.

I was witness to other firsts too, watching my granddaughter’s parents forming their own traditions as a family.  My firstborn daughter, who, just a year and a half ago, was the country director for Alert International in Lebanon, has transformed herself into a mother, something I found at once surprising and yet natural.  I caught myself staring at her so many times as she nuzzled her baby, tears unexpectedly filling my eyes, my mind flooded with memories of her as an infant, when I was a new mother and when, just as she had with her child, I held her up to a decorated Christmas tree to see her smile with delight.   Where had the time gone?

It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone…

(From “Courage,” by Anne Sexton)

Our stories—pieced together from time and experiences—define us.  They remind us of what it means to be “me.”  We tell and re-tell them; we write them into memoir, poetry or personal essay.  They even become the inspiration for novels.  We carry our stories in our heads, yes, but also in our hearts.  I teach a week-long course in writing and healing at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley each summer, and the first day of the class, I begin with an exercise that asks “What stories—people, places, events—do you carry in your heart?” Not surprisingly, most of the stories written are memories of “firsts,” those unforgettable moments, whether joyous or painful, that offer new learning and insight.  They are memorable in the indelible marks they leave, because they are the stories that ones that shape our understanding of who we are, how we are unique.

You may have had the opportunity, during the holidays, to recall “firsts” of your own with friends and family. “Remember when…?” you might say as you tell one another the stories of shared experiences.   Write about one of those “firsts.” Begin by allowing three or four minutes to make a list of “firsts,” for example, a first kiss, a first haircut, first pet, a first big holiday celebration, the first time you fell in love, the first time you experienced death, the first time you remember being ill, even the first day of school…   Write quickly, noting as many firsts as you can.  When you’ve finished your list, choose one “first” and, for the next twenty minutes, write about it with as much detail and description as you can recall.  When you’ve finished, read what you’ve written and reflect on it.  What meaning does it hold for you now?

Posted in expressive writing, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors | 2 Comments »

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