Writing Through Cancer

My granddaughter and her parents left for their home in Toronto this morning, and in the wake of their departure, I face not only the predictable heartache of good-byes, but the more difficult and immediate task putting our house back together after Christmas holidays:  decorations, bins of playthings meant to occupy a three-year old, guest bedding, laundry, boxes of household items to donate–all in an effort to restore our home to order just in time to bid good-bye to 2014 and welcome the new year.

It’s a time of remembering and reflection, looking back over the past many months, taking stock of accomplishments and disappointments, and looking ahead to the promise in the coming year.  It’s also a time of choices, deciding what we will carry with us into 2015 and what, because it no longer serves us, we leave behind.

What we leave behind…Every new year involves elements of choice, letting go of old ways of being, discarding items no longer needed, re-designing our lives.  It’s also a time of healing—leaving the difficult or stressful events behind, firmly parked in 2014.  I think about my expressive writing groups and classes as I think about letting-go and healing.  So much of writing for healing is about leaving the pain or sorrow of the past behind, and through writing we begin to make sense out of those difficult chapters of life and grow from them.  As the Danish philosopher and theologian, Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.”

In an independent, 2009 award-winning film The Things We Carry, the viewer follows the story of two sisters, who, in the different ways they chose to deal with an addict mother, were pushed apart.  The story explores their journey through the San Fernando Valley to a dingy motel in search of a package left for them by their deceased mother.  Their old sibling wounds exposed and recounted,  the sisters finally achieve peace with themselves and each other.  “The key to moving forward,” the film’s tagline reads, “lies in the past.”

“Cancer has been,” one writing group member remarked, “a great teacher.”  She had been writing about her life before and after cancer,  lessons learned, and  understanding gained that she intended to carry into her “new” life.  She made a choice, not to “carry” the pain and suffering of cancer into life after recovery, but rather, to use that experience to shape a new life for herself.

I think of C., who died of metastatic cancer in 2008.  It was only mid-way through our Scripps Cancer Center workshop that she revealed she was a sculptor.  She created sensuous and striking forms from stone, treasured and displayed by collectors across the country.  In her obituary, her husband quoted C.’s description of her artistic process:  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 …something akin to giving birth and seeing your creation change from a gawky adolescent to a sensuous adult…

I think of C.’s words each New Year, how they are a metaphor for how we re-shape our lives after serious illness or other life hardship.  At first, it may be difficult to imagine shaping a new life or chapter for ourselves, but like a sculptor wielding the chisel, each choice we make begins to change us—the way we see our worlds, our hopes and dreams.

It’s a bit like those old New Year’s resolutions, I suppose, but richer.  Why?  It requires time to reflect and remember, to define and incorporate the lessons of experience, then make our choices:  what to carry into the New Year, what to leave behind.  Only then do we truly begin to discover new creativity or strength, the resilience residing within us.

C.’s words and the poem, “I Am Running into a New Year,” written by Lucille Clifton serve as the inspiration for this week’s writing.  Think about the life you want to shape for yourself in the coming year.   Consider Clifton’s lines, “I beg what I love/ and I leave to forgive me.”  As you run into 2015, ask yourself how you intend to shape the life you want out of the material of your past and present.

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.

(From: Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980)

I wish you a very happy and healthy 2015.