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For the Week of November 1, 2014: Turning Back the Hands of Time

Posted in writing prompts for cancer survivors, writing to heal, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 2, 2014 | 2 Comments »

I awakened with the light this morning, at first, thinking I’d overslept, but then remembering the time change.  For weeks, I’ve been waking and dressing in darkness before taking our terrier, Maggie, out for her morning walk.  But this morning was already light as we went outside.  Maggie trotted happily along, stopping to pick up seeds and stones to toss and chase as I smiled as we welcomed the sunrise.  Around us, the houses were quiet as neighbors slept, happy for an extra hour this Sunday morning as clocks everywhere were turned back an hour.

Cher’s voice, belting out the lyrics “If I could turn back time,” played in my mind as we began walking.  It made me wonder, as I do each autumn, how it might be to have a “do-over,” to really turn back time and live events in my life differently…like taking the other road at the fork Robert Frost wrote about, a different set of choices than the ones I made so long ago.  Maggie romped and I followed, indulging my daydreams, the “what ifs” of my life.  What if…I’d chosen a different university that the one I did, or if my first husband and I had taken the offer in Colorado instead of the one in Canada…  Or if I’d stayed in Halifax for graduate school instead of going to Toronto, or if my present husband and I hadn’t decided to return to California …or if…

I’m not alone in those lazy daydreams, wondering what life would have been like if I’d chosen or acted differently.  Ben Franklin may have been responsible for introducing daylight saving time, but novelists, filmmakers, singers, science fiction writers, and poets have long been intrigued with the idea of turning back time. Think of H.G. Wells’ 1895 novella, The Time Machine, adapted for film, radio and television many times since its publication, Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future, or Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.  Fox’s character traveled to the past in an attempt to influence the outcomes of life in the future.  Murray’s arrogant, self-absorbed news reporter was doomed to repeat the same day over and over until he learned to care about others’ lives.  Ken Grimwood’s protagonist in his novel, Replay dies of a heart attack in 1988 and awakens as an eighteen year old in 1963 with a chance to relive his life, although his memories of the next twenty-five years remain intact.  He replays his life and death, each time awakening in 1963 before he realizes he can’t prevent his death, but he can change the events for himself and others before it happens.

When Neil Sedaka wrote and recorded his signature tune, “Turning Back the Hands of Time,” in 1962, it quickly became a hit, the lyrics capturing the longing many of us experience as we look back over our lives.

Turning back the hands of time

To see the house I lived in,

To see the streets I walked on…

 

To touch the face of friends and loved ones,

To hear the laughter and to feel the tears,

What a miracle this would be,

If only we can turn the hands of time…

If only we could turn back the hands of time…Let’s face it, we all daydream about it from time to time, but when we open our eyes, we’re still faced with the life we have now.  How many times have you begun a sentence with the words, “if only I had…” and wished you did something differently, could rediscover that “simpler time,” a place you loved, see old friends, a deceased parent or grandparent, or have a chance to choose differently that you did, return to a time before illness or loss dominated your daily life …if only you could turn back time.

Next time I won’t waste my heart
on anger; I won’t care about
being right. I’ll be willing to be
wrong about everything and to
concentrate on giving myself away.

Next time, I’ll rush up to people I love,
look into their eyes, and kiss them, quick…

and I will keep in touch with friends,
writing long letters when I wake from
a dream where they appear on the
Orient Express. “Meet me in Istanbul,”
I’ll say, and they will.

(“Next Time” by Joyce Sutphen, from After Words. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2013.)

Imagine, this week, that you were given free rein to that longing, write about what you would do if you could turn back time?  What events in your life would you replay?  What might you do differently, knowing what you know now?  Write about it—without constraint or apology, beginning with the line “If I could turn back the hands of time…” and let it take you into that memory or longing.  Once finished, read what you’ve written and then write again—but this time, with an eye to discovering the gratitude for the life you have.

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For the Week of August 21, 2014: The Different Worlds We Live In

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , writing and spirituality, , , on August 31, 2014 | 1 Comment »

Every morning, when we wake up, we have 24 brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these 24 hours will bring peace, joy, & happiness to ourselves & others.– –Thich Nhat Hanh

“How different my life is now,” I thought as I sat in silence this morning, taking pleasure in the stillness, the chatter and chirp of the birds, my terrier’s head resting on my thigh.  I remembered a time when the morning was never still, when I rarely did anything but jump in the shower, dress quickly, stop at Peet’s Coffee and grab a latte to drink as I joined the bumper to bumper traffic in the morning rush to the office.  My outer life seemed prosperous, successful, but stressed.  My inner life was all but neglected, parched and dying of thirst—I rarely had time to “feed” it as I ran from meeting to meeting.  By night, exhausted, I re-entered the world of family, wife and mother, occasional writer, the day’s demands already growing distant.  Rarely did my various worlds intersect.

We humans are complex.  Unlike other members of the animal kingdom, our lives involve much more than basic need.  We have the unique capacity to live more than one life at a time, inhabiting several different “worlds.”  As Patrice Vecchione describes in her book, Writing and the Spiritual Life, we live our lives on many planes.  Although we may not always be aware of it, our inner and outer lives interact; affecting and informing each other as we move between the different worlds we inhabit each day.  In the busy lives we often lead, it’s easy to move through one world and another, and ignore the needs of our inner lives.  Sooner or later, it catches up with us.

Once I moved between my different worlds—professional, volunteer, friend, mother, student—as if they were separate, without giving much thought to the way in which those different aspects of my life, the roles I played each day, interacted with one another.  I was on a virtual elevator, constantly in motion, and racing between floors.  Push a button, the elevator moved up or down, stopped and the doors opened:  “Second floor, family life.”  “Third floor, workplace.” “Fourth floor, Business lunches and dinners.  Fifth floor:  Volunteer committee meetings.” There were many floors to stop at every day:  my social life, even the classroom, where, for a few hours each week, I left my family at home, changed from the professional business suit to comfortable slacks and shirts, and pushed the elevator button, and got off at graduate school.  Once in a great while, the elevator would stop at my spiritual world, but for many years, those stops were brief and far apart. In my very busy and important life, I moved between those worlds quickly, and most times, one floor seemed distinct and separate from another.

“I know I walk in and out of several worlds every day,” poet Joy Harjo wrote in her essay, “Ordinary Spirit.”  Harjo was referring to her mixed race, in part, and the struggle to “unify” her different worlds.  That struggle to unify my different worlds, my inner life with my outer one, was something I truly didn’t address, at least not with any sustained effort, until I heard my doctor say “cancer,” and then again, as I was gradually slipping back into an “old” way of being, when an unexpected episode of heart failure left me unconscious on the sidewalk, my dog’s still leash in my hand.

I paid attention.  I took steps to change my life, to blur the boundaries between my inner and outer life, and the different worlds I inhabited each day. As Harjo expressed in her essay, I realized that it was “only an illusion that any of the worlds we inhabit are separate.” This “new” world, the one where I had suddenly become a heart patient, living with the knowledge of how abruptly one’s life can end, indeed, how capricious life can be, affected all other “worlds” of my life in deep and significant ways.

Any predictability and routine in my life was scattered to the wind.  Where I once felt I had some control over the course of my life, I now felt as if I was in free fall, an unwilling passenger in a wayward elevator, moving randomly between floors.  Fear and depression colored my days, despite my cardiologist’s reassurances.  I sported a bump just to the left of my breastbone, a defibrillator underneath the skin, a constant reminder of what had happened and the need to change my life.    Unbeknownst to anyone, I began praying each night, silent pleas to some higher power, struggling to find hope where fear resided.  It took time.  It took change. I was forced me to think differently about my life and what, above all else, really mattered to me.

It’s an experience I find similar to what I witness among the men and women in my expressive writing groups.  Cancer.  The crises it ignites in everyone’s life who reels from the words they never wanted to hear:  “You have cancer.”  Every part of their lives is affected.  They move, numbly at first, through second opinions, treatment decisions, treatment regimens, appointments, and always, lurking in the background, that demon fear.  All that they are—who they have thought themselves to be–mind, body, and spirit–is thrust into upheaval.  They no longer inhabit the different worlds in their lives with the same assumptions they once did.  What was once familiar now seems strange, and when the elevator finally ceases its terrifying ride, the doors open, and they look out to a new and often confusing world.  Their challenge, as mine was, is to try to make sense of it, to find the path to wholeness and healing.  For each of us, the routes are different:  faith, meditation, yoga, writing, music, art—it hardly matters.  All of us are seekers, working hard to inhabit this new world and integrate it into all the other worlds that have shaped us into the people we are.

I look back to that self of more than a decade ago,  the one for whom stress was a steady diet, caught up in the world of a career I didn’t even like and yet, striving to climb the ladder of success like so many of my colleagues.  I pushed the knowledge of my unhappiness aside, until one day, as a corporate executive with a spacious office overlooking Park Avenue in New York, I caught a glimpse of myself in a store window as I walked from my apartment to my office.  Grim-faced, briefcase held tight against my body, shoulders hunched forward, stress oozed from every pore.  “Who have I become?” I remembered thinking.  It was a time when the different worlds I inhabited were as separate from one another as they could be.  But change wasn’t immediate.  I fumbled on for a few more years until cancer and heart failure delivered the whack on the side of the head I needed.  I stepped off the elevator and choose which worlds I truly wanted to inhabit in my life—but more, how I could make my life harmonious and whole.

Her first steps, though cautious, began immediately to reinforce her faith in greater possibilities.  –George MacDonald

 What about you?  What different worlds do you inhabit each day?  What are the many roles you play in your life?  How were your “worlds” affected by cancer, loss or another unexpected hardship?  What changed?  Write about how you’ve moved in and out of different worlds or the many roles you have played before and after your life was altered in unexpected ways.

 

 

 

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For The Week of August 17, 2014: When Life Doesn’t Come With Instructions

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 18, 2014 | Leave a Comment »

I bought a portable stand up desk last week, part of a series of actions I’ve taken to manage the bouts of pain associated with my damaged tailbone.  It came, as so many of our household accessories do today, in several pieces, along with various sized screws, bolts, a small (highly ineffective) screwdriver and a set of instructions.  Instructions I tried my best to follow, since I tend toward the “plug and play” mentality and have, on numerous occasions, put together various sections of Ieka furniture backwards before reading those instructions with a more careful eye. 

Although compact, the desk took longer to assemble than it probably should have.  I made several trips to the garage to find other tools to help me put it together, since the small disposable screw driver was only minimally functional.  But I finally succeeded, and the desk sits in my home office, providing me with a way to vary and relieve the pressure of sitting while continuing to work.

Unlike “assemble-it-yourself” furniture, life doesn’t come with a set of instructions.  I remember devouring Benjamin Spock’s books on child-rearing when my first child was born, but a year later, quickly discovered that what worked with one baby didn’t necessarily have the same results with the younger one.  Several years later, as I was “getting” the hang of marriage (or so I thought), my marital status changed so quickly from “married” to “separated” to “widow” introducing an entirely new set of life circumstances, the best I could do was “play it by ear.”  It all worked out, of course, but then my daughters’ adolescence turned my apple cart upside down again, and I discovered life rarely remained neat and tidy for long.  Fast forward another ten years, and a diagnosis of early stage breast cancer did more than interrupt life; it changed mine forever.

In her poem, “There’s Not a Book On How To Do This,” Sharon Doyle reminds us that a cancer diagnosis, like so many of life’s difficult chapters, does not come with a set of instructions.  Sure, there’s treatment, but our lives are entirely disrupted and forever altered.  We are left to figure out things ourselves, hopefully with a little help from our friends and family, just what to do with this changed life.  Doyle uses the act of sketching the composition of her fall garden as a metaphor for creating new life and beauty after cancer:

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 plans her garden, but in the process, lets us see how loving gifts  –family, birdsong and flowers–offered hope, recovery and are symbolized in the design for her garden.  As the poem concludes, the design is completed, but among the flowers and colors, she leaves space to celebrate life:

I left vacant fourteen
trellis lightscapes for
balloons.

(from The Cancer Poetry Project, p. 52)

This week, think about your cancer—or another difficult and challenging–experience.  It’s unlikely you were handed a book of instructions for any of it.  What helped you navigate an altered body, a changed life?   Where did you find the resources, the knowledge, that offered you hope and new life?

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For the Week of August 10th, 2014: Take One a Day & Smile

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on August 10, 2014 | Leave a Comment »

…when you are raised with the gift of laughter, as I was, it can’t stay suppressed forever… I eventually could see bits of “ha-ha” in my own life. Certainly not in the cancer, but in the mind-blowing circumstances that suddenly consumed my life. And laugh­ing at parts of those experiences made me feel a little more alive.The funniest part of it all was that the more I allowed myself to laugh, the more therapeutic my tears became.  ( “Finding Humor in the Midst of Cancer,” By Jim Higley, In: Coping with Cancer Magazine, March/April 2012)

 

“You’re a lot perkier since you’ve gotten your dog,” a friend remarked last night as we sat together at an outdoor concert in a local park.  I laughed and said that my husband made the same observation a week or two earlier.  She laughed too as I described Maggie’s daily antics that keep me smiling– even laughing out loud–several times a day.  When I adopted her two months ago, it was soon after I had damaged my tailbone and right shoulder in a fall.  I was in pain, unable to sit for more than a few minutes and unable to participate in the African drumming classes I have come to love.  Worse, I was turning 70 and feeling as if overnight, I had joined the ranks of the aged and infirm.  Thankfully, it was only a temporary descent into “ain’t it awful,” but my funny little terrier helped pull me out of the doldrums.

The thing is, I like to laugh.  A lot.  On a class conference call with my UCLA writing students earlier this week, someone asked about teaching online vs. the classroom.  “I miss the classroom,” I said, adding that online is great; I can teach from anywhere at any time, but “I laugh more when I’m in the classroom.”

It’s true.  Whether it’s a writing workshop for cancer survivors or a regular creative writing class, a good deal of laughter is shared between us.  Shared laughter breaks the ice; it relaxes people and builds community.  We learn not to take ourselves quite so seriously, and more, even in the midst of something as horrible as a cancer diagnosis, there can still be things that make us smile.  Laughter brightens the day and our outlook.  We feel better.

Laughter is good medicine.  Author Norman Cousins used it to cure himself of a debilitating illness.  And long before Cousins, Mark Twain wrote, “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that’s laughter. The moment it arises, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.”

We all need a little laughter in our lives, no matter if we’re dealing with cancer, an over-busy and stressful life, remembering those who’ve passed on, or simply sharing time with friends and loved ones.  We need to laugh just as much as sometimes, we need to cry.

It’s one reason I like being around children.  Last night I watched toddlers and kindergarteners frolic together on the grass at the outdoor concert.  I found myself smiling, laughing as they laughed, wishing my grandchildren were not as far away as they are.  Frankly, the laughter they bring to my life is  the primary reason I even check Facebook.  I love to read the funny and imaginative accounts of what comes out of their mouths.  Nathan, my five-year old grandson, offers regular doses of that particular brand of child humor  I find so delightful.  Several times a week, I read what he’s said and laugh out loud.  For example, as Claire drove her children home from a day at the beach this week, he announced: “Mommy, The Moon Master shot an egg into space, and it gave all the stars color. But it was really to send a message to Nathan, I; Nathan. He just said ‘ beee a gooood booyyy’ and so then I will get a white kitty, who is clean, and I will name her Tiger. You Mommy will put her in a basket, in the fridge but only the tail sticks out, so I can be surprised and find her and say ‘OH MY GOD, IT’S TIGER!’ Is that correct?”

I don’t think he’s going to find a white kitten in a basket in the refrigerator any time soon, but it was a good try, but what’s more, I began my day with laughter and a smile—the best medicine in the world.

There’s an old song my mother used to sing  as she did the household chores when I was a child, one made popular at by Louis Armstrong in 1929 and recorded over the years by many others, including Billie Holiday, Louis Prima, Frank Sinatra and more.   And no wonder.  Even singing the lyrics makes me happier.  It’s a good reminder that every day can be a little brighter if you find something to smile about.

When you’re smiling
When you’re smiling
The whole world smiles with you

When you’re laughing
When you’re laughing
The sun comes shining through…

(Lyrics by Larry Shay, Mark Fisher and Joe Goodwin)

Smiling and laughter, as the song reminds us, are contagious.  In a world so fraught with hardship and struggle, it’s good to find something—even a small thing—to smile or laugh about.  This week, write about something that makes you smile—or laugh out loud—each time you remember it.  Notice how a little “ha, ha” lifts your spirits.  Try laughing at least once each day.  It is, as Norman Cousins discovered, the best medicine.

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For the Week of July 27, 2014: A Place of My Own

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , pets and health, , , on July 27, 2014 | 2 Comments »

“Goethe once wrote that all writers are homesick, that all writers are really searching for home.  Being a writer is being on a constant search for where you belong.”— Mary Morris, “Looking for Home”

I’ve stubbornly refused to call San Diego “home” since relocating here in 2006.  Never one for crowded beaches, deserts and arid land, my heart finds no affinity with the landscape.  It’s little wonder, I suppose.  I was raised in rural northern California, a place where residents resented Southern California’s drain of our natural resources and periodically sought to secede and be the State of Jefferson.

I grew up among Jack pine and Douglas fir trees, in a small valley surrounded by mountains, part of the Cascade Range, and where summers were spent swimming in cold mountain lakes and rivers.  Yet I admit that as I waited in the Oakland airport to board a flight to San Diego on Friday evening, I was eager to get “home” to San Diego.  After a week of teaching in Berkeley, I was ready to sleep in my bed, sit in my easy chair, and resume the routines that mark my days:  walks with my dog, coffee on the deck while the birds cavort at the fountain and chatter in the treetops, writing in the quiet of early morning.

“I am here alone for the first time in weeks,” May Sarton wrote at the beginning of A Journal of Solitude, “to take up my ‘real’ life again at last.”  I suppose that’s how I felt in my return.  Whatever city we live in at the moment is less important that the space we shape for ourselves, one that offers that “room of one’s own,” whether a corner of the kitchen or a bedroom turned into office.  Remember Virginia Woolf’s, A Room of One’s Own?  Written at a time when women were not allowed into particular universities nor recognized in a literary world dominated by men.  Woolf famously said, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

There are many analyses of the book, and while I am not a fiction writer, what I took from reading Woolf so many years ago was simply the necessity of making a place for my creative work.  Without one free of interruption or distractions, my creative work is compromised.  I love my teaching, but it consumes my energy, and when I turn to my writing, I am often spent.  Add to that the intensity of the week-long class, “Writing as a Healing Ministry,” one I’ve taught for over ten years and requires I travel to Berkeley each July and reside in faculty housing for the week.  At the end of the week,  I am all the more in need of reclaiming my routine, the mental and emotional space I need to nurture my creative life.

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.—Virgina Woolf

In her delightful book of writing invitations, Room to Write, Bonni Goldberg explains the choice of her book title as “creating room for your writing…  Making room in your life to write,” She adds, “generates even more room for your writing.”  Creativity doesn’t just happen.  Our muses don’t just come whenever we beckon.  We have to create and protect the space needed to nurture creativity.  Only then will the artist within each of us be fully revealed.

This morning, my dog Maggie and I were once again up at 5:45 a.m. to walk.  She knows my routine by heart and seems to find nearly as much satisfaction in the certainty of that walk, as I do, even our time sitting on the deck, and as I prepare to write, in taking her place on a cushion near my feet.  We’re  at home again, stepping  into the comfort of routine and the place we call our own.  This morning, even the birds seemed to welcome us back.  Hummingbirds frolicked nearby at the fountain; a woodpecker set to work on the century plants below our deck, and a red tail hawk glided over our heads to fly across the canyon.  I sighed and smiled.  It was good to be here.  It was good to be back in place, in the place that is my own.

Think about what it’s like to return to your place after a busy day or time away, the “room of your own” that lets you bask in quiet and solitude, even briefly.  What is it like to have that place where you can be alone, and, as May Sarton described, take up your real life again?”

 

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For the Week of July 13, 2014: What It Means to Heal

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , cancer and poetry, , , , , , on July 13, 2014 | 4 Comments »

So much died here last year

but last month rain forced

peach-red mouths out of balding sand,

and within weeks sun coaxed

tiny constellations of yellow,

purple, and white into sandy flats,

along rocky dirt roads . . .

I will never be the same

knowing how effortlessly death

rests in the cells of my body,

yet with each step I am willing

to say yes to the chances I take,

to the hope no one can take from me

here in the midst of my recovery

now that I’ve seen what can thrive

in the bankrupt landscape of the heart.

 (From “Hiking in the Anza-Borrego Desert after Surgery,” by Francine Sterle.  In: The Cancer Poetry Project, Karin Miller, Ed., 2001)

 

“Healing” is a word I frequently use. My cancer writing groups were inspired, in part, by the research on writing’s healing benefits.  Both my books on the subject contain the words “heal” or “healing” in their titles.  But I have new respect for what it means, at this stage in my life, to heal.  Like you, I’ve experienced emotional and physical healing more times in my life than I care to admit.  But for the past several weeks, my life has been concerned with the long, slow process of physical healing.

In early April, I suffered a bruised tailbone when landed on the hardwood floor as my desk chair rolled out from under me when I sat down.  A week later, I strained the muscles in my right arm badly when I threw caution to the wind and lifted one too many potted plants on our deck.  Days before I was headed to spend the month of May in Toronto, I fell, rather badly, as I backed up to take a photograph of my husband and his new car.  I confess my eyes were on the camera, not where I was stepping, and my back heel caught on a garden stone.  I took a fine photograph of the sky and telephone wires as I fell, landing hard on my already bruised tailbone and shoulder before my head hit the pavement.  I felt more embarrassment than injury at the time; the pain came later.  All of this preceded, I might add, the advent of my seventieth birthday.  Not only my body was damaged, but so was my self-image.   I’ve been forced to accept that as I age, I need to be more considered about some of the physical tasks I undertake—or at the very least, pay attention to where I’m stepping!

Healing from all of these mishaps has taken far longer than my body ever required to recover from the bumps and bruises of a rough and tumble childhood—and it’s given me pause for thought.  I’ve seen doctors, been to acupuncture and worked with a physiotherapist.  But my body refuses to be rushed in its healing process, and that new reality is forcing me to learn a tough lesson of patience.

What does it mean to heal?   Obviously, time is involved, but google the word “healing,” and you’ll be confronted with more variations on it than you can possibly read, whether from traditional medicine, psychology, religion, or the alternative healing arts.  Look up “healing” in the dictionary, and you’ll find  “the natural process by which the body repairs itself,” and “tending to cure or restore to health.”

In my cancer writing groups, “healing” has more of an emotional and spiritual context.  During the experience of cancer, terms like “recovery”, “in remission,” and, for some, “cure,” are more commonly used to describe the body’s process of repair during treatment.  “Healing,” on the other hand, carries multiple meanings, and what each person considers as healing is unique to their lives and situation.

It’s not just the body that needs healing during cancer.  A cancer diagnosis threatens our sense of wholeness and of self.  We suffer, although out of that suffering, we may gain new insights into what it means to be human and what truly matters to us—which can be a prelude to healing.  Healing is more than physical repair; it involves transformation.  We emerge from the cancer experience in remission or with “no evidence of cancer,” but we aren’t the same people we were before it.  We’re changed. Our lives are redefined, and so is our sense of meaning.  To come to terms with that change, that altered self also takes time—it’s a process of healing, and it, too, cannot be rushed.

In a May 2005 article by Thomas Egnew,“The Meaning of Healing:  Transcending Suffering,” appearing in the Annals of Family Medicine, the author explored the meaning of healing and translated it into behaviors—all as a way  to help doctors enhance their abilities to be healers. Egnew included three major themes in his definition, and not surprisingly, they are ones that readily apply to anyone:  wholeness (to become or make whole), narrative (a reinterpretation of life), and spirituality (the search to be human; to transcend).

Healing requires that we have the courage to truly plumb the depths of who we are—who we have become as a result of cancer—or any other major life upheaval.  Last summer, I was among a group of presenters at the Omega Institute in New York along with oncologist and pioneer in integrative medicine, Jeremy Geffen, MD, the weekend’s featured speaker.  Dr. Geffen defined seven distinct levels of healing needed to regain wholeness.  According to Geffen, as he listened to his patients their concerns and questions over the years, he saw a pattern emerging,  Patients’ concerns fell into one of seven interwoven, yet distinct, areas.  Ultimately, he labeled them as “The Seven Levels of Healing.  They include:

  1. Information or knowledge
  2. Connecting with others
  3. Exploring safe and effective ways of tending to our health
  4. Emotional healing
  5. Harnessing the power of the mind
  6. Assessing our life’s purpose and meaning
  7. A spiritual connection

(The Journey Through Cancer: Healing and Transforming the Whole Person, by Jeremy Geffen, MD, 2006).

Healing, true healing, is complex and multi-dimensional.  And it takes time.  I thought I understood that, at least during those “big” illnesses and surgeries I’ve endured.  The fact that some bruising and muscle sprains have required me to re-assess so much of what I’ve blithely taken for granted about my body has forced me, again, to slow down and reconsider what it means, this time, to heal.

What about you?  Do Geffen’s seven levels of healing resonate with your experience?  How would you define “healing” if asked by someone newly diagnosed with cancer?  What, in your experience, has been healing for you?  What people, places or activities have been important in your healing process?    Think about what it means to heal.  Write about it.

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For the Week of July 6, 2014: A Musical Rx

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , dance and healing, , , , , , on July 6, 2014 | Leave a Comment »

Blues a healer, all over the world
Blues a healer, healer, all over the world, all over the world
It healed me, it can heal you
The blues can heal you, early one morning

(“The Healer,” by John Lee Hooker & Santana)

The blues.  Their roots lie in African-American history, from Southern plantations of the 19th Century, sung by slaves and share croppers as they toiled in the cotton fields. The blues evolved, interacting with jazz and giving birth to rhythm ‘n blues and rock ‘n roll.

Nothing “blue” would have defined our evening last night as we attended a live performance by the San Diego blues band, 145th Street, as they paid tribute to the great slide guitarist and blues singer, Muddy Waters.  Instead, you would have witnessed a crowd of people, young and old, on their feet, moving and clapping to the hard rhythm of Waters’ best loved songs.

We had come close to not going to the show at all.  Yesterday was hot, and by day’s end, I was tired and irritable, wanting to do nothing more than sit near the air conditioner.  But we’d bought the tickets in advance, and it seemed a waste to not use them, so I dragged my wilted self out the door with my husband, and we drove downtown.  We arrived a full half hour before the performance began, but already, the room was crowded with fans.  Luckily we managed to snare two of the last available seats.  A short time later, the band filed on stage and launched into their first number.  Within moments, the irritability and lassitude I’d been feeling had disappeared.  The musicians rocked and, as it turned out, so did we all.

“When you are feeling particularly down or upset, make music your friend,” advised music therapist, Dr. Suzanne Hanser, in a recent article in Coping with Cancer Magazine.  “Begin your day with music. Music with a strong beat or dance rhythm might make you boogie out of bed…”  Well, I can’t vouch for wanting to boogie out of bed–I prefer quieter starts to my days– but I do know that music can elevate one’s mood and sense of well-being.

Mark, Sichel, LCSW, writing for Psychology Today, states:  “While music therapy  as a distinct field has been around a long time, it’s only recently that I’ve begun suggesting to patients that they sing their way out of the blues… Losing yourself in the right music is an immediate, unconscious and effortless way to reframe your situation.”  Hmmm.  Years ago,  I was a devotee of Donna Summer’s “I Will Survive” and the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want…,” belting out the lyrics right along with the recordings as I nursed a broken heart.

“The power of music to integrate and cure is quite fundamental,” Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author of Awakenings wrote. “It is the profoundest non-chemical medication.” Music has a long history in medicine and healing. The ancient Greeks believed music could heal the body and the soul. Ancient Egyptians and Native Americans incorporated singing and chanting as part of their healing rituals. Even the U.S. Veterans Administration incorporated music an adjunct therapy for shell-shocked soldiers after World War II. Today, music therapy is widely used in hospitals and cancer centers to promote healing and enhance the quality of patients’ lives.

Google “music and healing,” and you’ll find a number of articles attesting to the physiological and emotional benefits of music.

  • It aids our autonomic nervous systems, positively affecting blood pressure, heartbeat and breathing.  In fact, music can actually improve the overall functioning of our cardiovascular systems.
  • It helps reduce stress, aid relaxation and alleviate depression.
  • In cancer patients, music can decrease anxiety. Together with anti-nausea drugs, music can help to ease nausea and vomiting accompanying chemotherapy.
  • It relieves short-term pain and decreases the need for pain medication.
  • It’s effective in diminishing pre-surgical anxiety and beneficial for patients with high blood pressure.
  • Music even plays a role in improving troubled teens’ self-esteem and academic performance.

Add a little movement to the mix, as many in the crowd of people did last night, and you may find yourself smiling even more.  Dance or movement therapy is a newer expressive or healing art, and yet The American Cancer Society states that “Clinical reports suggest dance therapy may be effective in improving self-esteem and reducing stress. [It} can be useful for both physical and emotional aspects of quality of life.”  I used my version of dance therapy during the most difficult period after my first husband’s sudden death. I often played favorite rock’n’roll tunes and danced to them in our darkened living room once my children were asleep.  It was far more beneficial to my spirit to dance in the dark than sit alone and cry!

Let music be your muse this week.  Why not take time to listen to some of your favorite music?  Maybe you’ll feel like dancing, or perhaps you’ll find old memories ignited.  Perhaps certain music lulls you to sleep.  Whatever your experience, notice how music affects your mood, even how different selections trigger different feelings or memories.  Write about what happens when music is a part of your day.

I think I should have no other mortal wants if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.— George Bernard Shaw

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