“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
