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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 »

For December 25, 2011: Holiday Wishes

December 24, 2011 by Sharon Bray

To all of you who regularly read the posts on “Writing Through Cancer,” this week’s writing prompt will be posted Monday, December 26th, as this writer pauses to celebrate the holidays with her family–and delight in her newest granddaughter’s first experience with Christmas celebrations.

My warmest wishes to everyone for a Merry Christmas and a very happy holiday season.

Sharon

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

For the Week of December 18, 2011: Winter Lights

December 18, 2011 by Sharon Bray

We put up our Christmas tree last night, waiting until our five month old granddaughter, Flora, arrived with her parents so that they could share in our annual holiday tradition.  Long after everyone went to bed, I sat alone in the dark, staring at the colored lights and remembering dozens of Christmases past.  Finally, exhausted from the day’s tasks and the additional effort necessary to keep a five month old entertained, I reluctantly unplugged the lights and wend to bed.  This morning, I recalled a poem by George Bilgere featured on The Writer’s Almanac in 2009 that captured those same sentiments I felt last night.

I check the locks on the front door
and the side door,
make sure the windows are closed
and the heat dialed down.
I switch off the computer,
turn off the living room lights.

I let in the cats.

Reverently, I unplug the Christmas tree,
leaving Christ and the little animals
in the dark.

(“Going to Bed,” in Haywire, Utah State U. Press, 2006)

Our holiday lights captivated little Flora.  Her mother held her close to the tree as  her eyes grew big with fascination.  She reached out with her two pudgy hands to finger the branches, softly cooing with delight at the colored lights while we looked on, remembering how her mother was once as captivated by the sparkling lights as her daughter.  Even decades later, the colored lights on our Christmas tree  fills me with nostalgia and warmth–as they no doubt do for many of you this time of year.

I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.

Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.

(From:  “Toward the Winter Solstice,” by Timothy Steele, in Toward the Winter Solstice, Swallow Press/Ohio State U. Press, 2006)

The tradition of holiday lights had its beginning in the medieval winter solstice celebration, “Yule,” which involved the lighting and burning of a giant Yule log.  The Yule log offered welcome light during the dark winter days and believed to ward off evil spirits and summon the return of the sun.

Think about it.  Many of the holiday customs celebrated around the world involve lights:  Christmas trees, candles in windows, luminarias in the Southwest, or the traditional ritual of the Hanukkah Menorah, each lighting winter’s nights and infused with beliefs as the Yule log was for the medieval people.

Our strings of lights and lighted candles are a little like bringing the heaven’s constellations inside.  Nothing is more breathtaking that the beauty of a cold winter’s night ablaze with stars–a view that is greatly diminished for those of us in urban areas.  And yet we city folk are just as likely as those with more impressive night skies to cast our eyes up at the night sky and experience a sense of awe and mystery in the sight of the distant stars. Bilgere captures the feelings ignited by Mother Nature’s light display in the final lines of his poem:

The last thing I do
is step out to the back yard
for a quick look at the Milky Way.

The stars are halogen-blue.
The constellations, whose names
I have long since forgotten,
look down anonymously,
and the whole galaxy
is cartwheeling in silence through the night.

Everything seems to be ok.

For those of you who practice the Christian tradition of the holidays, the significance of one bright star is a story  told and retold for centuries.  A single bright star in the night sky still seems to offer hope, no matter what our religious traditions might be.  Remember Jiminy Cricket’s song, “When You Wish Upon a Star?”

When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you.

(“When You Wish Upon A Star,” Lyrics by Ned Washington, 1940)

Perhaps that same sense of warmth,  tradition, and hope, even in a world as beset by problems as ours, is rekindled in the sight of the twinkling stars at night or the colored lights on a family’s Christmas tree.   I know I felt a sense of peace—and  gratitude—as I watched my granddaughter’s first encounter with the colored lights on our tree.  And for a time after everyone else had gone to bed, I sat in the darkened living room, staring at those lights and remembering other Christmases gone by.  Everything, in those treasured moments of solitude, was okay.

Perhaps you have a remembrance, stories or poems  triggered by the spectacle of lights, whether colored ones on trees, the candles in a Menorah, the stars that shine against the night sky.  Maybe you have a wish for the coming year, one you silently offer to one bright star above you.  Whatever it is, why not write about it?

Happiest of Holidays to each of you.

Posted in expressive writing, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal | 1 Comment »

For the Week of December 11, 2011: The Cycle of Life

December 11, 2011 by Sharon Bray

I live in a place where the advent of winter is less noticeable than in other places I used to call “home.”  The succulents that dot the slopes of our property, the silk oak and palm tree standing in our backyard, are green and unchanged in this winter season.  There are buds on my bird of paradise plants and a riot of fuchsia blooms on the Bougainvillea.  I gaze across the canyon and see only the occasional tree that’s shed its leaves, barely noticeable among the abundance of palms, eucalyptus and pepper trees that are everywhere.  Even the weather has been relatively mild this week, although the nights demand a sweater.  But the light has changed.  The angle of the sun has shifted; the hours of daylight shortened, and when I awaken in the morning,  darkness  greets me as I open the window blinds.  Winter is here, and even in a mild climate as ours, I realize another year is ending, flown by in a dizzying speed of events.  Even now, I’m wondering how I can complete the preparations for my daughter and granddaughter’s arrival later this week, traveling here from Canada for the Christmas holidays.

No matter what our religious heritage or beliefs, the advent of winter brings with it a tradition of holiday celebrations around the world.  In the Northern Hemisphere, many holiday traditions have their roots in the winter solstice, when, because of the earth’s tilt, our hemisphere is farthest from the sun.  The daylight hours are the shortest of the year, and the sun has its lowest arc in the sky.

Our ancestors associated the winter solstice with death and rebirth.  As the days grew shorter, people feared the sun might disappear completely as it sank lower in the sky.  Without the sun, they feared an existence of permanent bitter cold and darkness.  The solstice, occurring around December 21 or 22, marked the return of sun and the promise of warmer seasons to come.  Even though winter was far from over, the solstice was seen as a turning point and celebrated.  Their celebrations took place a few days after solstice, the time that many of us now celebrate the Christmas holidays.

Imagine the primitive fear that accompanied those dark winter mornings, echoed in the first stanza of “Winter Solstice,” by Jody Aliesan.

When you startle awake in the dark morning
heart pounding breathing fast
sitting bolt upright staring into
dark whirlpool black hole
feeling its suction…

Yet Aliesan reminds us there is comfort in remembering the beauty in darkness:   stars close together, a winter’s moon rising, and an owl in the distance.  Out of that beauty, a sense of rebirth emerges:

already light is returning pairs of wings
lift softly off your eyelids one by one
each feathered edge clearer between you
and the pearl veil of day…

The poems concludes with the statement:

you have nothing to do but live.

(From:  Grief Sweat, Broken Moon Press, 1990)

As winter solstice approaches this month, take time to remember nature’s cycle of life–birth, death and rebirth.  It is mankind’s ritual too, and part of what underlies many of our holiday celebrations.  Winter solstice may also offer a metaphor to describe your experience of cancer, serious illness, or another difficult time in your life, when hope seemed to fade and you feared little more than darkness.  You have nothing to do but live.  Using the metaphor of the winter solstice, write about your own journey through of a kind of “death” and rebirth, moving from darkness into light, and discovering a sense of your life renewed.

Posted in expressive writing, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal | 3 Comments »

For the Week of December 4, 2011: Forgiveness

December 4, 2011 by Sharon Bray

My parents died several years ago, and in the aftermath of their loss,  the dynamics between the siblings in my family were turbulent and hurtful.  Grief, which all of us experience, is complex.  It sometimes emerges as anger or resentment directed at others, and in the death of a parent, with one family member striking out at another in his or her pain.  That’s what happened to our family, and while I knew—intellectually–that the loss of a parent sometimes pulls families apart, that knowledge was scant solace for the shock I experienced as family relationships disintegrated.

Our negative dynamics compounded the sorrow I felt  over the loss of my parents.  I experienced a sense of betrayal and even greater loss as my younger siblings, consumed by their grief, dug up old perceived  unfairness from our family history, directing the anger and bitterness at me.  The chasm between us grew despite my many attempts to bridge the divide, and as it did, a pervasive sorrow inhabited my body,  manifesting itself in a host of vague physical ailments.

I made an appointment with my doctor a few months later.  After a thorough physical examination, she sat down.  “Let’s talk,” she said.  “Tell me what is going on in your life.” You can guess what happened next.  Within moments, I was sobbing, the dam of grief broken and spilling out as I tearfully began to tell my story.   She listened patiently all the while, offering me the box of tissues as I talked and cried.  “I think you’re depressed,” she spoke gently as I sniffled and dabbed at my eyes, “and it’s affecting your health.”

It’s not a surgery; it’s not a medical treatment or a new medication, but this is a new healing process that doctors are convinced has many hidden benefits, something you can’t get in a pharmacy.  The process is forgiveness.  And more doctors believe that it heals. 

I copied these words into my journal a year after that doctor visit.   I discovered them in the introduction to a medical television program produced by the UC Davis Health System several years earlier as I searched the internet for information on wellness and healing.  Forgiveness was obviously on my mind as I was trying to heal from my  lingering pain and sorrow.

“The human mind,” psychologist Loren Toussaint said, “is sometimes an instrument of misery.  When you’ve done wrong…and regret it, it bubbles up again and again.”  But it’s not only forgiveness of others that makes a difference, however.   The health benefits of forgiving ourselves for our past mistakes or wrongdoings can also be considerable.

Forgiveness—for self or others–is a virtue embraced by almost every religious tradition and yet, if we’re honest about it, forgiveness is sometimes hard to truly embrace.   In the struggle of cancer, forgiveness is can be important.   In a study reported in the Canadian Journal of Counselling, “forgiveness therapy” helped cancer patients attain catharsis and a greater sense of peace (v. 23, pp. 236-251, 1989).  Another group of researchers found that a self-forgiving attitude contributed to less mood disturbance and a better quality of life among women with breast cancer (J. of Behavioral Medicine, v. 29, pp. 29-36, 2006).  In fact, a growing body of research, much of it initiated at the Stanford Forgiveness Project, directed by Dr. Fred Luskin, suggests that forgiveness may be good medicine for the body.  In a variety of “forgiveness interventions,”  health benefits included improved cardiovascular function, diminished chronic pain, relief from depression and an overall improved quality of life among the very ill (in an article by M. Healy, L.A. Times, Jan. 12, 2008).

In the shock a cancer diagnosis, a sudden loss or other painful life experience, it’s not just others who may become the targets for our anger.  We can  turn it in on ourselves, blaming ourselves for our illness or situation. I recall that when I was first diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, I told a friend I felt I had been partly responsible for it.  After all, I’d been operating under severe stress for years in the continuous pursuit of career success.  Apparently I wasn’t alone.  I’ve since heard so many other cancer survivors ask, “What did I do to cause this?  What if I had only done this instead of that?  I feel like I’m partly to blame …”

How then, do we embrace forgiveness?  Perhaps we begin with ourselves.  The poet Maya Angelou put it this way: 

I don’t know if I continue even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self.

“We can’t see our own glory in the mirror…”  Angelou’s words echo those of the poet, Galway Kinnell,  in the poem, “St. Francis and The Sow:”

Sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness
to put a hand on the brow of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely,
until it flowers again from within,
of self-blessing.

Think about forgiveness this week.  Are there aspects of your life for which you feel regret or self-blame?  Do you have old wounds that continue to bleed, ones that you might blame others for?  Why not write about them?  Set the timer for twenty minutes and keep the pen moving.  Don’t worry about what makes its way onto the page.  When you’re done, re-read what you’ve written.  Underline those phrases that stand out for you, ones that seem to invite you into deeper exploration.  What do you learn about yourself, your thoughts and feelings?

Perhaps, in this season of celebration and gift-giving, forgiveness is one of the gifts you can give to yourself.  Perhaps we can all flower from within, from forgiving others as well as ourselves this holiday season.

Posted in expressive writing, healing arts, life writing, writing as a way of healing, writing for wellness, writing prompts for cancer survivors | 9 Comments »

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