Many years ago, I was thrust into an unlikely environment for my doctoral research:a professional school of landscape design.I was conducting a study of instructor thinking during the teaching act, and my insightful dissertation supervisor had quietly thrown me into a setting that would challenge my assumptions and force me to reconsider some of what I had taken for granted, ultimately sending me back to the drawing board to re-think and ultimately, re-design, my research study.The end result was far superior to my initial plan, although there were moments I was tempted to abandon the entire project.I’m glad I didn’t.It turned out to be an extraordinary time of my life:I learned a lot about my subjects, a lot about research, teaching, and even landscape design.The task of designing something different than I’d first intended led to a variety of professional opportunities I otherwise might not have encountered.
In her poem, "There's Not a Book On How To Do This," Sharon Doyle uses as her metaphor for designing a new life thesketching out the composition of her fall garden. She offers us the idea that having cancer does not come with a set of instructions.We have to figure out ourselves what to do about it.
There's not a book on how to do this, but there is an emphasis on composition.
The trucks that slug by under our window hold trombones, mirrors, dictionaries. It's not my fault they invade the calm of trees like cancer. I
don't have cancer anymore...
...I rarely remember the uterus I don't have. One of my sons said, "You were done with it right away, right, Mom?" I guessed so...
Doyle lets us see how the loving gifts from her family--birdsong and flowers--offer encouragement and hope,.She symbolizes those things in her garden design. As she completes her sketch, among the flowers and colors we find her celebration of being alive:
I left vacant fourteen trellis lightscapes for balloons.
(from The Cancer Poetry Project, p. 52)
It's unlikely you were handed a book of instructions when you first heard the words, “you have cancer,” instructions that might have helped you navigate an altered body and a changed life. Where did you find the resources and knowledge offered you the chance to live with hope?How have you composed a new life out of the devastation of a cancer diagnosis?
photo credit: Elinor Bray-Collins
For the Week of August 22, 2010: What You Believe
Beliefs: the acceptance or conviction of something as true; the confidence or trust we place in ourselves and another. An opinion. A conviction. A principle. Something we believe in. Our beliefs are the filters through which we see our worlds, others and ourselves. They influence decisions we make; the actions we take. Our beliefs make a difference. When we’re struck down by cancer, tragedy, or other difficult life events, the beliefs we hold can help keep us hopeful and determined or hopeless and pessimistic.
I’ve been thinking about beliefs this past week after hearing how my sister-in-law was preparing herself for surgery after months of chemotherapy, an exhausting regimen that has not, in her case, been successful in treating her type of cancer.She sounds more optimistic than I’ve ever heard her, and she’s making plans for projects she wants to undertake once she has recovered.She’s chosen to believe that this surgery will give her a few more years of life.Whether the medical prognosis is as favorable as she believes doesn’t matter right now.What matters is that her belief is helping her cope during this trying and difficult time.
Author Barbara Abercrombie, writing about her journey through breast cancer, wrote: “I want to believe that an upbeat attitude will keep my immune system perking away so that cancer won’t spread or come back….I believe that animals and nature offer comfort and solace and are as close as you can get to God….I believe it doesn’t hurt to pray. I don’t believe for one instant that I needed or created or deserved this disease (Writing Out the Storm, p.56).
It’s not just the beliefs we carry during cancer that matter in life.Even the little ones, those deeply engrained beliefs we have about ourselves, whether positive or negative, or the bigger ones we hold about life, peace, justice or death, for example, inform the actions we take. If you’re a National Public Radio listener, you may be familiar with the program, “This I Believe," a national media project that invites people from all walks of life to write, discuss, and share the core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives. Here are a few samples from contributors’ essays:
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…I believe in the power and mystery of naming things. Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learned patterns of behavior and redirect our thinking. -–Eve Ensler, Writer and Activist
I believe in pastrami -- well-marbled pastrami. Hot, thinly sliced, piled on fresh rye bread with dark mustard and a crisp dill pickle. I believe that pastrami is a metaphor for a well-lived life, for a well-designed institution and even for healthy relationships.—Lee Schulman, Educational Psychologist
I believe that memory is never lost, even when it seems to be, because it has more to do with the heart than the mind… I believe there is a difference between memory and remembering. Remembering has to do with turning the oven off before leaving the house, but memory is nurtured by emotion. It springs from a deeper well, safe from dementia and the passage of time. -–Christine Cleary, Communications Manager, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
I have gained a surprising belief from hearing about so much agony: I believe in the power of human resilience. I am continually inspired by the ability of the emotionally wounded to pick themselves up and keep going after enduring the most traumatic circumstances imaginable….-- Joel Schmidt, psychologist, Veterans Affairs
How can we therefore speak, unless we believe that our words have meaning, that our words will help others to prevent my past from becoming another person's — another peoples' — future. Yes, our stories are essential — essential to memory. I believe that the witnesses, especially the survivors, have the most important role. They can simply say, in the words of the prophet, "I was there.”-- Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize-winning author, imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps for 11 months as a teenager (to read more "This I Believe" essays, go to: www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138)
What do you believe?This week, I invite you to think about beliefs, what you believe in, what you don’t believe in, or what you wish you could believe it—and why. How have your beliefs influenced the way you have navigated your cancer journey?How else do your beliefs—or non-beliefs—inform your life? Write about your beliefs.
For August 15, 2010: A Friend is Someone Who...
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A friend is someone who likes you. It can be a boy… It can be a girl…
These are the opening pages to Joan Walsh Anglund’s beloved little book, A Friend is Someone Who Likes You, first published in 1958, one that sat on my parents’ coffee table for years, and one I read aloud to my class in my first year as a teacher.It popped into my head this past week after we returned from visiting two of my oldest friends in Seattle, people with whom I’ve enjoyed over fifty years of friendship.They are people who know me well, who are closer to me than my own siblings, and who have stuck by me through good times and bad.
I’m lucky, in fact, to have many dear friends scattered around the world, from one coast of North America to the other.We may be separated by miles, but our friendships endure.That’s a good thing, apparently.Friendship, according to Rebecca Adams, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, has a bigger impact on our psychological well being than our family relationships. Besides better health, a more positive outlook, a longer lifespan and a more hopeful attitude towards life are benefits of friendships. Not convinced?Take a look at the New York Times article, “What Are Friends For?A Longer Life,” published April 20, 2009.One ten-year study of older people found those with a large circle of friends were less likely to die during the study than those with fewer friends.Harvard researchers found that strong social ties may promote brain health as we get older.There’s more.In a 2006 study of nurses with breast cancer, the women without close friends were four times as likely to die from it as those with ten or more friends.Proximity and amount of contact were not important; just having friends was protective.In a six year study of 736 Swedish men, friendships was more important in lowering the risk of heart attack and coronary heart disease than attachment to a single person.
The good thing about friends,Brian Jones writes in his poem, “About Friends,”is not having to finish sentences. That’s true for me too, but there’s so much more to friendship than the comfort of sitting quietly together. Our friends make our lives happier and richer; they are there to lend a hand and offer comfort when we need it, to laugh and share stories of the past, to help us remember what it was like to be us at a particular time.I can’t imagine a life without friends.Can you?
Write about friendship this week.Perhaps it’s someone who has offered a hand to you during your struggle with cancer.Maybe it’s a childhood friend you’ll recall or the roommate you had in college who became your best friend.Maybe your friend is someone who can finish your sentences for you, someone who’s been in your life for decades. You could even begin with the phrase, "A friend is someone who..." Without a doubt, your friends are those who makes your life a little better. Write about them.
For the Week of August 8, 2010: Your Bucket List
This past weekend, my husband and I traveled to Seattle to visit his sister, Joan, and her husband, both suffering from advanced cancers:she, from inflammatory breast cancer and he, from colon and bladder cancer.It was the kind of visit we arranged with heavy hearts, and yet, once there, were reminded of how important it was to simply show up, sit at their table, recount the stories of a shared childhood and memories of parents long deceased.Laughter and affection punctuated our conversations, and yet, the reality of their illnesses was never minimized nor avoided.
“The doctor says that if this treatment works,” Joan, said as she responded to my question about her most recent test results, “she’ll give me five more years.”
A kaleidoscope of faces played in my mind:family members, friends, men and women who have attended my writing groups, all cancer survivors who were given similar prognoses.Some had five years, some less, some more. “Five years is great,” I said.
She agreed, nodding her head.“It is.” “What are all the things you want to do with the life you have left?”I asked.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” she replied.
“Think about it,” I said, telling her the stories of Mimi and Rosalie, members of my Stanford and Scripps writing groups, both dying recently after waging extraordinary courageous battles with cancer.Each of them faced a terminal diagnoses with the determination to live the time they had left to the fullest:travel, family gatherings, community action, writing and sharing their stories. They inspired everyone who knew them.
Joan, Mimi and Rosalie were on my mind this morning as I unpacked my bags and replayed the conversations we had this past weekend.What would I do if I was given just five years or less to live?I remembered the 2007 film, The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two terminally ill cancer patients who embark on a road trip together to accomplish a wish list of things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.”It was a touching film, made even more memorable by the unlikely pairing of Nicholson and Freeman as friends. Their bucket list included a long list of wishes, including:
Witness something truly majestic
Help a complete stranger for the good
Laugh till I cry
Kiss the most beautiful girl in the world
Skydiving
Drive a motorcycle on the Great Wall of China
Sit on the Great Egyptian Pyramids
Find the Joy in your life
All this has gotten me to thinking.I collapsed on the pavement a couple of years ago—a diagnosis of heart failure—and was told repeatedly that I was lucky to have regained consciousness.The incident has not, thankfully, been repeated; I am monitored routinely by a cardiology team, and I’m doing well.The shock of that day lingers though; I was put on alert:pay attention.Live life as you intended to live it.Make each day matter. It’s harder than I thought it would be.I still get caught up in the minutia of daily life, wasting time on things that don’t matter and not spending time on some things that do.But I have a list—my own bucket list—to remind me of what I still want to do before my time on this earth is up.Fantasy, I tell myself, is the beginning of action.My list forces me to remember just how precious life is, as Mary Oliver challenges us to remember in “The Summer Day:”
I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (From: New and Selected Poems) This week, think about your own bucket list—all the things you would do if you were given a terminal diagnosis, or, if you have been given one, then all the things you want to do while you still can.Make the list. What is it you still want to do with your one wild and precious life?
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For the Week of August 1, 2010: The Choices We Make
Every day of our lives, we’re faced with choices.Most of the time, they are relatively simple:what to wear, what to cook for dinner, what color to paint the bedroom, choices that don’t change the flow of our lives in any significant way.Other times, it’s a process of deciding between equally attractive choices:acceptances into more than one college, one vacation destination over another, rocky road or cherry Garcia ice cream.But there are other times, when the choices we must make are difficult ones, forcing our heart to wage war with our heads, our dreams with the reality that stretches before us and still, we have to decide between one thing or the other.
Many years ago, when I was much younger and saw the world only as a place for exciting possibilities, I chose, together with my first husband, to leave the United States and move to Canada.We were caught up in the fervor of the sixties, the Vietnam War protests, and a relentless desire for adventure.Neither of us could foresee what would happen.In truth, we barely considered anything but the excitement of moving to Ottawa.Looking back, I now see that our choices irrevocably altered the path of our lives, and the consequences can be felt even today, over forty years later.At the time, I chose what mattered most:a new marriage, independence from my family, adventure.Twenty-three years later, I returned to California, a widow, estranged from my immediate family, shaped by my Canadian years in ways they could not understand.Although I didn’t consider it, there was no going back, no chance to re-do.I had to accept that what I’d chosen so many years before had costs as well as gifts, and all I could do was continue forward along the path I’d chosen.
…two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
(From “The Road Less Traveled,” by Robert Frost)
We all familiar with Frost’s poem, it’s one of our national favorites, and what he describes is a universal theme of life. Frost’s traveler debates with himself and ultimately, makes the decision to take the road "less traveled by."
Whether less traveled by or well-worn, our choices have consequences:some welcomed, some not.
A cancer diagnosis is also a time of our lives when we are forced with many choices and decisions: physician, surgeon, oncologist, treatment, how to deal with the aftermath of treatment, even how we choose to live our lives going forward.Cancer or other difficult periods of life demand hard choices, and we’ll face many more forks in the road, many more moments when we hesitate and wonder which way to go, what decision to make.
In the poem, “Decision," Jane Hirshfield writes,
There is a moment before a shape hardens, a color sets. Before the fixative or heat of kiln. The letter might still be taken from the mailbox…
We make our decisions and step onto the path we’ve chosen.Hirshfield describes it this way:
Yet something … looks around, sets out in a new direction, for other lands.
…Simply changed. As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road: it cannot be after turned from.
(From: Poetry, May 2008, p.110)
What difficult choices have you had to make in your life? What diverging roads have you faced and decided to travel along one instead of the other? Write about choices this week, the difficult ones, the ways in which those choices have affected your life today.
For the Week of July 25, 2010: Writing Our Way Home to Ourselves
PSR, Berkeley, CA
Each year, I teach a week long summer session course at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA. Entitled “Writing as a Healing Ministry," it's part didactic and part experiential. In it we explore the historical traditions of the healing power of writing, key research that affirms writing’s healing benefits, and its uses in many situations and settings.
The week was intense and full, and the participants experienced the different styles and work of several poets and writers who create healing space through writing for veterans, cancer patients, prisoners, victims of sexual trauma, and many others.For the entire week, I ask the students, all of whom are professionals—teachers, clergy, therapists, and writers-- to engage in a process of self-reflection, examining how writing heals each of them in some way, their desire to write and to use writing in ministry or service to others who have suffered pain, trauma, illness or losses.
It’s a powerful experience—not only for those who attend the class, but for me, as the leader. I am humbled by and grateful for the willingness of the participants to risk, reflect deeply and express themselves so honestly in their writing and the daily small group discussions. Inevitably, we discover the spiritual journey inherent in writing, going deeper and deeper into ourselves, to truly “hear” ourselves--listening with the “ear of the heart”—exploring the meaning of our lives and discover the ability to be “at home” within ourselves.
There are many poets and writers who express the interior journey that writing, as well as other expressive arts, helps to foster, but one that I particularly love is “A Spiritual Journey,” by Wendell Berry.
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.
(From: The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957 – 1982) This week, reflect on your own journey and how writing has helped you learn to be at home.
