"Keep speaking, keep sharing, keep us in tears and smiles. I love you."
My Arms Are Crying, Too
Poetic Medicine with John Fox
Life Is an Attitude
There are Days
I Could Tell You...
The Chemo Room
My Body
Wholeness
Grace Takes Shape and Form
Living the Breaking
Wellness, Wholeness and Healing
Consciousness and Cancer
Receiving the Unwanted Gift
Coming to Grips with Grace
The Widening of Awareness
Transcending Cancer Consciousness
Making a Cancer Connection
Cancer Support Checklist
Wells of Water Within
The Pillow
The Bear
The Greening of Meaning--Art and Self-Discovery
Crazy Wisdom Through A Crayola
Drawing from the Well
Feedback
July 12, 2008--My Arms Are Crying, Too
I went to Writing for Recovery at Cancer Wellness today. I had been planning on this for a long time and today was the day! Angela led a group of five or six of us as we explored our innermost selves. Cancer patients are beautiful beings, exposed to the root as they are. Fragility and vulnerability are the soul’s strength. Opening to the infinite isn’t necessary when you are hale and hearty. But cancer gives a shock to the sytem and the spirit kicks in.
Today it was present in every face around the table. I read my piece called Breathing Room. A woman read a powerful poem she wrote today in the group. The line....”My eyes are crying, but my arms are crying, too," was astoundingly correct. I could see mine hanging limp and empty for those that walk the earth no more. But we used them for hugs for each other. Cancer gathers its armies of cells but love has it outnumbered in the grander scheme of things.
Life Is an AttitudeLife, for me, has been a lifelong challenge! I say that both seriously and humorously. Losing a child to cancer and having a mate with it has been harrowing and challenging. Putting my pain into words is salutary for me and so, perhaps, for others. For we all hurt and we all face challenges.
If I were to dig deep to share one of my most painful challenges, it would have to be protecting a little one from the cruelty of strangers. There was the time in the restroom of a department store when someone called my little girl a boy when her hair had fallen out from chemo-- or when a child came to play with my son and he said to him, "Where's your baldheaded sister?" He spit the words out cruelly, as a taunt to my already-in-pain son.
Equally as cruel were the private moments in which I would collapse by my bed and weep, crying out softly to God, "Why, what for....?" He never answered. Love is silent. I would always manage to get back up off my knees, fall into bed and awaken the next morning. There was no time off for good behavior.
I remember hurriedly flying to St. Jude's on Mother's Day because my daughter had developed a throat infection. The first Christmas after her death, I sat in front of the tree crying because I had found a red rubber ball of hers under the couch.
A neighbor called and asked if I would sit with her daughter while she picked up a sick child at school. She had a doll of my daughter's that I had given to her after she died. Had I known I would have to sit and watch another child play with it, I probably wouldn't have gone. But grief is relentless and so is the inner spirit that rides it out.
For I am still here. God isn't finished with me yet, no doubt! I am not a saint, but I have been tried in the fire and bathed in grace (although usually not at the same time). I have stood by the grave of my little child, wondering that most of the graves around hers are those of small children. I think God intended that.
I am writing as much as I can about spirituality, faith, resilience and rebirth, for that is my passion. It is ironic that my passion has been placed at my weakest point. As if God were saying, "Aw, come on, I never asked you to do anything that I wouldn't do. God has allowed me to keep on keeping on, through a life of challenge and trials. Much of the trail has been uphill, so I have developed some pretty good climbing legs.
If you are going through the tough stuff in order to reach the fluff stuff-- the tough stuff won't do you much good. But if you are going through it with the wish to grow, grow you will. Your sorrow will just be fertilizer for the roses that you will be stopping to smell. Your weakness will be grist for the mill and your lessons will be stepping stones to the High Places. I don't regret my life, for it isn't finished by a long shot. As long as I can type into the computer, I will. So let me know if I can help you in any way.
There are DaysThere are days when the goal of enlightenment seems not even desirable. When a can of chicken noodle soup and junk food seem to fill the miserable bill. A funk moves over the mind that nothing but time will dissipate. Who hasn't been here?
There are hours when the spirit is absent from home and one hunkers down for an emotional storm that suddenly veered inland into the Ego Sea. Waves lift the little boat of self precariously, then drop it down again precipitately. The albatross is at hand.
There are moments when the body feels searing pain which no sense of unity can heal. Flesh is rendered helpless in the face of circumstance. Where is healing to be found? Perhaps in moments like these we are glad that there is such a thing as mortality.
There are seconds when suffering happens and we are able to rise above it. When we do, the clouds part and sunlight streams into the battered hulk of the human soul. Our ark has held once more and we are able to continue the voyage to what can only be called unity.
It is a good thing that spirituality contains the All, for otherwise there would be no hope for success in the journey. The All contains the pain while giving us no respite from it. There is no respite for joy, either. When it comes, it dances on the waters of the wounded one as if to say, "I know. Bear me if you can. I am foreign to your suffering yet inherent in it."
There are eternities when enlightenment is not even necessary. This I have heard. Peace unbounded, seas unsailed and love unexperienced. So we take birth again and start the endless round all over.
There are days.....
I saw someone for counseling last week. I sat in his office filled with plants and lovely things, feeling at home and well-listened to. I needed that. "I am shy," I said, trying to introduce my neurosis boldly, trying to be up-front about my agorophobia and occasional panic attacks.
"You've got a web page where you put it all down for the whole world to see....and you're shy?" He said words to that effect.
In my own mind I am shy because I am an introvert. However, as a writer I like to share my feelings in the most honest way that I can. They are raw-boned teenagers who can't seem to get enough spaghetti and meat balls. They eat over the sink and clean out the fridge in a New York minute. These gangly emotions of mine are uncontrollable. On the website I give them their space and let them speak. Then they take the car and leave me alone in the house and grief drifts in the windows.
I let my grief speak, telling you about cancer and using words like incurable and heartache, because they are part and parcel of what make me as a writer. It is true that I know peace, but it is so quiet and gentle that it seldom gets the space that it is due. Like a kitten, it is content to play in a paper bag and go unnoticed as it naps on the TV.
I like to share with you what my heart is experiencing because someone is going through pain and suffering, too. Maybe I speak for all of us when I write the rawboned stuff--I don't know. You tell me. Do you like it when I post what is going on with Bob and I? For instance, Thursday his oncologist told him that the chemo is no longer working and that the new experimental drug would be a good idea. I could go further and tell you that the myeloma is knocking at the door and there is no substance strong enough to keep it out.
I could tell you that we have been married for thirty-seven years and are measuring our life by a different standard these days. What is it? I am not sure that I even know. But the old one of enough money in the bank and places to visit and things to do is breaking down. That's a good thing.
The chemo room was, as usual, filled with extraordinary people. I spoke with a woman who has metastasized breast cancer and goes to The Wellness Community as we do. We spoke of walls and hearts and true friends....schedules dominated by cancer treatments and all that they entail. I told her that I was ready to take down my wall. “You can," she said, "for I have taken down mine." Her eyes were washed with tears of empathy and I hugged her gently, for she is such a treasure.
There was a woman who had just had a port installed earlier that morning and her husband sat down in the chair across from me. These two were life-partners, no doubt about it. She spoke of her azalea garden even as she fished a book on Braves baseball from her purse. Tamara, the chemo nurse, was showing us pictures of her daughter who had just graduated. You see, we are family to each other. No appointment needed to get a hug or wipe a tear. We are there anyway -we might as well be there for each other.
Yesterday I saw a therapist to get some help in dealing with all of this stress and sorrow. He helped me by confirming my path. He is a writer, too, and we talked of the windhorse way and courage and webpages. He stuck an acupuncture needle in my ear and I wore it proudly into the barbecue joint where we ate after my appointment.
But this was the best thing of all. Someone sent me this e-mail:
"Thank you for embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly as well as the beautiful. Your thoughts speak more of spirituality to me than religion." From a 69 year old clean and sober AA memberThat letter makes it all worthwhile. To write about the hardest journey of my life and have it received by even one person is a form of healing for me.
There is a silence that falls upon the soul when it has said too much. All of the anger and bitterness has been expressed. Remorse has now reared its ugly head. God, I didn’t know that I had so much anger in me. Cancer is a curse. It can bring forth blessings, but it is a curse for me right now. My husband is weak and sick and I am sick and tired. All of my best hopes and resolves have vanished like smoke and I am in need of renewal. But from where will it come when no one can take my place in my soul? I must live in my own being and somehow find rest and renewal there.
I have trod the halls of too many hospitals to be well-disposed towards them. I have cried too many tears to believe they will lead to burdens being lifted. I am a psalmist for the insanely grief-stricken mind. Writing flows from deep within like the tears that I have been shedding for days. But anger is a mask for grief and I am grieving like hell. For normalcy, for hope, for optimism and an end to serving the suffering body.
It is a good thing that paragraphs like these are written in water and wind like all other transitory emotions. These words, too, shall pass. Things get better and things get worse. The nondual soul who witnesses the personal suffering is always silent. It is the bird that never sang a note.
My BodyThis morning I had a physical therapy session for my neck. The therapist, Kent, was taking me through my range of motions and we were getting to know each other. Like Bernie Siegel, he has a shaven head. I told him what Bernie said about why he shaved his head...to bare his emotions, spirituality and love.
He commented that when he told me to let go, I wasn’t able to do so. “A lot of times,” he said, “people will be telling me one thing and their body will be telling me something else. And that’s where the rubber meets the road.”
I have known for a long time that I am unable to let go. But knowing and doing are far removed. It is good to know where you need to do more work...at not working. I say that tongue-in-cheek and also in truth. Without descent into the depths, we will never ascend to the inner heights. That’s just how it is.
Bernie had asked me what my pain in the neck was about. I honestly cannot put it into words, so I am putting it into my body. But I am good at words, if nothing else, so I will try. I need to be embraced--not braced. Bracing myself against emotional pain hurts my body. I write a lot about letting go. Bernie says that you teach what you need to learn.
Those of you who resonate to what I write know that we are all in the same boat. We are each other. We mirror each other. Thank God that this is true. Sometimes we can all be a pain in the neck and what we really need is to embrace and be embraced. It seems the logical thing to do, but how hard it is to stay open, to contain the pain. The body can be an alchemical vessel if we allow it to be. We can let the pain remain, embracing it with our own higher consciousness. I know this--but not all of the time.
I would like to say a word to my body, “I am sorry that I have allowed you to get so tense and in such pain. Forgive me. I am getting you some help. Thank you for all that you do.” My body doesn’t speak in words but I saw the tears in its eyes. We will be okay.
I was sitting in my chair this morning with thoughts of the last several days running through my mind. Tuesday my husband received a massive dose of chemotherapy and the next forty-eight hours passed in a slow-motion of agony for both of us.
On Wednesday night a raccoon chewed a hole in our chimney and set up housekeeping. I hated the critter with all of my pent-up emotion. Last night our old dog’s legs just gave out as we came in the house after she did her business. I sat next to her on the floor and wept like a baby. I talked to her and she wagged her tail and gazed at me from blind eyes. I carried her to her bed and finally, another long day had come to an end.
This morning the sun is out and the cherry tree in our front yard is in bloom. The bees are buzzing around the phlox and someone is here to replace some boards on our house. I took a walk and was aware of blue sky, tall trees and spring. I am even able to remember that the raccoon means us no harm. The war has receded in my mind as my husband fights to get his cancer back in remission. Such is the personal awareness....only concerned with itself.
As I continue to sit in my chair and experience peace, I am reminded that wholeness is the goal for all of us. The compartmentalized mind will never secure peace. Even though suffering abounds, so does its remedy, which is being whole. It takes no effort to be whole--just intention.
My intention is to be what I need to have; to rise above the opposites and live in paradox. I never succeed at this because the world will continue to make its demands on me--yet my goal is assured. At some precious moment I will let go and start life all over. I wish the same for you.
I was thinking about grace and how it has manifested in my life since Bob’s cancer diagnosis. Usually I think of grace as an amorphous quality hovering around the edges of consciousness, not having much to do with me.
But if I think specifically about it, often grace takes shape and form. It shaped itself into a security guard who rescued me in a hospital parking lot when I could find no place to park and my tears were blinding me too the point of not being able to drive safely.
It formed itself into food from a friend when Rob and I were hungry and had no time to shop or cook....and barely enough energy to eat.
Grace gelled into wise words from a neighbor who was herself fighting metastatic breast cancer.
Grace took form as a pharmacist who made a house call to introduce himself and say that he would deliver Bob’s chemotherapy prescriptions to our house.
A nurse in the neighborhood offered us grace when she walked to our house and gave Bob several shots when he was anemic.
But grace is not always in shape and form.
It came to me when I found the courage to start a website. It stayed and showed me that following my passion to write would be wonderful therapy for me.
It sat on my shoulders as I taught myself how to do the technical parts of the site.
Grace manifests as mystery as well. Living in faith is mysterious grace, taking each step with faltering feet....feeling your way into more strength than you think you have.
For anyone who has ever wondered about grace, it comes in the form of wonder itself, for it can never be defined. It must be experienced and then it is always “amazing.”
The words “living the breaking” popped into my mind as I was cleaning the kitchen counter this morning. Yesterday Bob and I were privileged to be in Recovery through Art at The Wellness Community when someone participated for the first time. She has been in other groups there, but this was her first time with Edna Bacon, the art therapist.
Therese was wearing a simple straw hat with a hibiscus tucked into the brim. Obviously chemo prompted the wearing of the hat. We all drew our “check in” picture. We show in color and line how we are feeling, where we are emotionally.
I called my picture “Shifting Sands,” because my energy was down and I depicted it as broken pastel lines....little energy but a willingess to stay with myself. Bob’s drawing was of a deep blue sea and a huge yellow sun.
Tears flowed when Therese saw Bob’s picture. “I wish I had that peace,” she said. Tears are appropriate when one has just been told that their lung cancer has spread. This striking, energetic woman was being torn between her beloved Hawaii and Atlanta, where she had come to take care of her mother when she was diagnosed with Altzheimer’s several years ago.
“My doctor said that if I wanted to return to Hawaii that it should be soon,” she said, tears slipping freely down her face. If this is not living the breaking, I don’t know what is. Although those of us around the table had our own tears, this was Therese’s time and we all knew that we were in sacred space.
Hawaii has been her home for thirty-seven years and she is homesick for it. She shared some of herself with us. She has run in an Iron Man Triathlon and has been a motivational speaker. She has walked the beach with Famous Amos of cookie fame.
Sheryl also has breast cancer that has metastasized. Her quiet courage is regularly felt around the art table, but she, too, had something to tell that revealed a side of her that we didn’t know. She has decided to do all the things that she has wanted to do and never found the time for. Among other things, she wants to teach a child to read... wants to go to Bike Week in Daytona. In the meantime she is taking a course in photojournalism and she spoke about being in the home of a mentally-challenged twenty-year-old boy while she takes photos of him for her project.
Because she is documenting the relationship between the boy and his family, the family has felt free to live their relationship with their son right in front of her. Her face was lit by her own joy as she told the story of the relationship between the boy and his family. Many of us are living the breaking, only we don’t know it.
To live it consciously is to live in sacred space and take it with you wherever you go. I don’t have the answer to what Therese should do, whether she should go or stay. In a way, it doesn’t matter what her body does, whether it goes or stays. It does matter that she continue to live the breaking, to let the tears be there and the remembered joys and anticipated pleasures fuel her spirit. I was fueled by just meeting her.
We have all heard of the aloha spirit and aloha can mean hello or goodbye either one. When we can hold the opposites consciously and neither be going or staying, we are being broken for the purpose of transcendence. I take my hat off to Therese, and offer her a heartfelt aloha. May we live the breaking.
Note: Several months after I wrote this, Therese died in Hawaii, the home of her heart.
We may all be gracious receivers when getting the good things in life, but what about receiving unwanted gifts? The usual reaction to cancer is complete rejection and dejection. These are natural, human reactions and must be gone through. Anger, denial, bargaining, acceptance, we have all read about the stages that must be worked through.
However, there is a powerful spiritual principle that we can use in dealing with cancer. It is the principle of non-resistance. Non-resistance contains great healing power.
The mind cannot accept cancer. It will spend all of its time bouncing between the opposites of illness and health. The emotions cannot accept cancer. They are too involved in feeling until they are exhausted. The spirit, however, is fully capable of receiving everything as a gift.
The spirit is roomy and ready to receive anything that it is offered. Another word for the spirit is awareness. Awareness can accomodate cancer. It can not only accomodate it, it can heal you of its burden and sorrows.
How do we access awareness so that it may go to work on our behalf? First we must admit that of themselves, the mind and emotions have failed to help us deal with cancer effectively. The mind may have checked out books and tapes...the emotions may have had many therapeutic cries, but there remain kernels of rage and frustration.
These kernels are dissolved in the light of awareness. This is where we are able to receive the unwanted gift of cancer. Sitting in silence, admitting that our minds and emotions cannot deliver us, we turn to awareness.
Perhaps we have never allowed ourselves the luxury of just sitting in silence, but now we have a reason. Cancer is here whether we want it or not, and receiving it as a gift would be a wonderful thing. It is more than wonderful--it is healing.
The stars of surrender shine in the dark night of the soul and nowhere else. The peace and power of God surround someone sitting in his own silent spot in the universe. The gift of cancer is receiving the grace of God. God will never let us down, no matter how much suffering we are asked to bear. Cancer can lead us within, to the inner silence that is our birthright.
When you choose to receive the unwanted gift of cancer, your life will begin to change. It will be come sweeter and more graceful. You will carry a piece of peace with you wherever you go. You may find yourself telling jokes and acting silly. Those who know you will find it surprising, but not you. Because grace is such a light thing--it flys into the face of the unknown and is able to laugh and enjoy the journey.
Cancer has come to you and you have received it as a gift. The mind could never do this...the emotions would never even try. But now you know that your true nature is awareness and awareness turns the lead of sorrow into the gold of grace. You have come home.
Strangely enough, transcending cancer consciousness is something we do all the time. No one can remain forever aware of anything, including cancer. Grace will let the shadows dissipate and you will find yourself laughing and working and playing as if all is well...and in truth, it is.
Grace grips you in the strangest ways. It has picked me up and plopped me down in green pastures, although my stay might not have been as long as I would have liked. It has brought new friends my way. It has shown me my own inner strengths as well as pointed out my weaknesses. It has made me grateful for my husband and son. Between the two of them I am sheltered. Coming to grips with the grace of cancer.....in silent reflection I remember these things.
Today in Recovery through Art at The Wellness Community there were eight of us. Two of us were support people, but we are all on the same page. Edna asked us to draw what feeds us. I selected a yellow pastel and drew a mountain of light. "What is beyond me sustains me," I said. The ego can’t sustain us because it lives in the land of opposites. If it’s not paradoxical, it’s not worth having, if you ask me. That’s why faith requires a letting go.
John’s wife has breast cancer and he said that they have found blessings in the experience. Of course. Exactly.
We are all sailing in dangerous waters and our little boats are flimsy...made of tissue paper. Were it not for grace, we would not get very far. In Recovery through Art we are all connected by cancer and united by a spirit of survival. We start off slow, putting our feelings on paper. Gradually, if we are lucky, we hit a patch of good energy and take off together like a flock of geese. Today was a good day. We drew until we flew.
Suffering is something that we resist mightily. It never occurs to us that we can sink into it and make room for it. Paradox is power and the paradox here is that all suffering is a chance to go deeper into who we really are.
The true self can never know pain because it cannot be colored by conditions. The ego persuades us that it can, but what does the ego know anyway? It wants comfort and companionship...nothing wrong with that. The lesson in suffering is that resistance to it perpetuates it. We give this idea lip service, but it is in the heart’s service to begin to live it. Someone advised me to “let it have you, let pain have you, let love have you.” They said it at a time when I was receptive and I am forever grateful.
To let love and pain both have you is to have escaped the ego’s trap. Now we are at home in honesty.
My consciousness has changed since Bob has been diagnosed with cancer. Hopefully, it has grown much wider. However, before it got wider, it got awfully narrow. Crisis is constricting at first and there is no point in feeling guilty about it. But after the initial shock of diagnosis and the coming-apart-at-the-seams stage, one gradually returns to what he was before the diagnosis. You don’t return to normal, because there is no such thing. But you do return to your previous state of consciousness. Big Mistake!
The gift in the illness is growth--a widening and deepening of consciousness. Let your tears and sorrow be there. Make lots of room for them to happen in. Then you won’t be resisting your all-too-human emotions. Be so good to yourself that your own kindness is ambrosial. Comfort yourself and heal yourself and the world will honor you for doing that. Sympathy is a false emotion anyway. Empathy has respect for the sufferer and would never think to add a drop of false comfort.
Speaking personally, I have learned more about how to be good to myself since Bob’s diagnosis than in the rest of my life put together. I knew that I was going to be a willing worker on his “team” and for that I needed help myself. Since charity begins within, that is where I started. I made the tape on Nurturing the Now to clarity for myself how I could start being present to my own spirit.
Nurturing the now is a non-dual project. There is only now and you are committed to opening yourself to it. In that there is healing and nowhere else. The law of one says that there is only God, so we are all God manifesting, are we not? The excitement of self-discovery does not stop in times of suffering. It may disappear for a while, like a stream going underground in the desert, but it will eventually appear again. When it does...and you welcome it, your newly-found strength will be there as well. It is actually universal strength that you have accepted and acknowledged. And in that is rest and renewal.
Recovery through Art was intense today...a lot of emotion poured out on paper. We used brushes, paints, pencils, scissors and paper to depict pain. There was someone there who was newly diagnosed. She said, with a twinkle in her eye, that she felt like she was in daycare--meaning that her adult self felt out of place.
But she admitted that she had never allowed herself to play and she was looking forward to the art therapy sessions. She produced a colorful Chinese New Year picture that revealed her energy and willingness to take on the crisis/opportunity that cancer brings.
Lucy brought something to show us--a pillow and a piece of paper that she had drawn a design on. Last year she and Edna were looking at some art that she had done and Edna commented that this particular piece looked like a pillow. Lucy has a friend who is an accomplished seamstress and she asked her if she could replicate the artwork in fabric and make a pillow. She worked long and hard to make a pillow that looked remarkably like Lucy’s drawing.
There are rich colors and textures in many different pieces of fabric. Lucy told us about them going in search of the different materials that would match her drawing. When her friend completed the pillow, she called Lucy and asked if she could bring it over.
Lucy said, “It was late, so I told her I thought we should probably wait until the next day.” “But the phone rang a few minutes later,” said Lucy, “and it was my friend saying that she just had to come and bring it. She couldn’t wait any longer!” I wish her friend could have seen us as we listened to the story of the pillow.
The pillow is bursting with color and energy . It has become Lucy’s healing pillow and sits on a chair to greet her as she comes in her door. Quite a metamorphosis, huh? From a piece of paper into a pillow into Lucy’s words to us and these words I type into the computer. Nothing is wasted, not even if we think so at the time.
This is where cancer becomes a blessing way and the journey becomes bearable and even holy. As we learn to engage the playful parts of ourselves in our journey to wellness, we are just remembering something very familiar but long forgotten. We are all familiar with the phrase, “Let us pray.” I’d like to add, “and let us play.”
The paints are on the table, along with some soft brushes, magic markers and pieces of white paper. We are seated around the table, just four of us today. Tallulah is sitting in for Edna, who is on a two-week vacation to Ireland.
So simple a concept, putting how you feel down on paper with color and line. Only cancer is black lines gone crazy, coloring the whole body with pain and devastation. It can be depicted quickly and energetically.
It is felt by all of us as Lucy tells us that her fourth-stage metastatic breast cancer seems to be on the move once again. Wisely, she has given her resignation at work so that she can martial all her resources against the enemy.
“Let’s all start by doing some scribbling, doodling," suggests Tallulah, and we began letting our emotions appear on paper. Remembering how Trina, our neighbor, had died all of a sudden from undiagnosed leukemia, I drew a brown lightning bolt first. It hit a black circle and soon I was adding bright red. I was trying to draw “angry.” It has hit the fan again, so to speak.
Lucy has drawn her healthy self alongside her newly-threatened self. This one is drawn in black, whereas her healthy self has a smile and some color. She needs to connect the two somehow.....what will it take?
We talk.....and Lucy shares with us how she saw a bear on a trip to Alaska. She even had the good luck to take its picture. She knew there was a bear there somewhere because she had seen its droppings. Lucy the adventurous spirit has shown up at art therapy and we are enjoying what she has to say. As we paint and draw we listen to her tell us about how she likes to read Joseph Campbell, camp out alone, be adventurous.
Art therapy is so deceptively simple. Stick figures flesh themselves out quickly as we are willing to be present to our own energy. I am seeing how Lucy's strong figure on the left side and the black one on the right side are occupying the same piece of paper. Our strengths and weaknesses seem so painfully divorced from each other, but are they really? Perhaps Lucy's adventurous spirit is already beginning to connect the two disparate images together.
As we realize that our time together is up for a while, we began putting our tools away, washing brushes and stacking supplies in the crowded cabinet. But something has been left for the heart's meditation. For me it is the understanding that courage to face cancer comes out in little ways. We may learn courage in miniscule measurements but they add up.
Coming together, the union of the opposites, this is one reason we draw (pull) together. Our daughter, Laurie, who died when she was seven, has been with us during this quiet time. For many years we didn’t speak of her. It hurt too much, but in art therapy she seems to put in more frequent appearances. I remember her joyous smile and how she combed her daddy’s hair as he sat on the couch reading the paper.
What is it that we can give each other in the face of cancer? Maybe only bits and pieces of self poured out one brush stroke at a time. Is it possible that we can heal ourselves spiritually by such childlike efforts? I know we can.
Note: Lucy passed away in 2002. She was a new bride.
The Greening of Meaning--Art and Self-Discovery
It’s Friday and we are in Edna’s Art class once again. Today Bob and I are the only two participants. Edna has placed a framed picture in the middle of the folding table--it is a picture of an African village drawn by the seventh-grader who lives there.
We look at it and throw out a few comments....."it invites you in....it makes you want to live there...." There are three huts, each with blue walls....a fruit tree....what looks to be a spear and shield....green, green grass and a pen with cows. A large brown man is striding into the village bearing a pot in his hands.
“That’s what sold me on the picture--the pot!” said Edna, who is a potter. She bought the picture when she was in New York from an artist who makes trips to Africa to take art supplies to some children there. He sells the pictures and gives the money back to the children, which enables them to pay for their art supplies. She owns the picture, which indeed makes you yearn for a simpler life.
“I thought we might draw our village,” said Edna, and as usual, she gets no objections. She always says that we are free to do something else if we don’t like the proposed theme.
Bob’s village was very much like the one that the African boy depicted. A stream cuts through green hills with three simple buildings, one a church. The sun is yellow with an orange face and rays. “I like the way you have the stream running through,” says Edna.
My pictured village is a polyglot, a mishmash of energy....there is a labyrinth of yellow and blue in the center of the page. I tried to let my hand do its thing while “I” looked on with interest. This is some of what I saw...a fruit tree with four and twenty blackbirds, a pink fish, a blue butterfly, the tree with fruit and blackbirds had its roots growing above ground for some reason.
There was an orange pumpkin house and a brown house like a teapot with pink wings and a face. To the left I drew a precipice with a waterfall and a deer at the top. As an inspiration I let the water interlace with fire and around this mystical village I drew lines of yellow light.
When I held it up to explain it, I explained that one of my favorite books is Hinds Feet On High Places, by Hannah Hurnard. The main character, Much Afraid, journeys to the High Places to find the nature of true love. She is called there by The Good Shepherd, who tells her that when she makes her feet like hinds’ feet she will get to the high places.
“I am like the main character,” I told Edna, "always in fear. I am learning to touch my fear consciously so I have a chance of transforming it.”
Our journey through cancer requires us to look at our fear on a daily basis. Only in that way will we find meaning on a higher level. What I find is an authentic piece of me that can only be set free by conscious intention. It is the child within me that knows the way to this village. One of of my reading books as a child was Friendly Village.We all long to be in a such a place and you know, it’s possible.
Crazy Wisdom Through A Crayola
We had such a nice time in Recovery Through Art today, even though Bob and I were the only participants. Creativity doesn’t need a crowd, happily.
After drawing the usual check-in picture, Edna asked us to draw the question.....or the answer. All of our art is about the freedom to explore feelings, so with a bright box of Crayola markers before me, I took up the challenge.
First I drew a question mark in magenta and then I put down that marker and picked up an orange one, letting my intuition be my guide, and I found myself drawing an orange “U” around the question mark....and I laughed outloud. Edna looked at me and I said, “Wait, I’ll tell you when I get through.”
Then at the bottom corner of the page I drew another large orange “U” and followed it with a bright red exclamation point. In the middle of the paper I drew a brown diagonal of curvy tracks and on them went a bright purple ball with a yellow interior and then for some reason I drew green marks across the top of the paper. There.....all done. With a satisfaction stemming from surprise, I waited for Bob to finish his drawing.
Ta-dah....now it was time for me to explain what had come to me during the process of putting my feelings on paper. “Orange you,” I said, “orange you the question...and orange you the answer?” The three of us laughed at the crazy wisdom that had come through my Crayola.
Bob and I told Edna about being in fourth grade together and here we are sitting around a table still learning about ourselves. Only now it means a lot more. We talked about our old dog and how we love her, about how Rob and I have learned to get along so well after so many years of us both wasting time being angry at each other. "You know,” said Edna, “he may have been trying to take you out of your grief.”
I agree with her. I wish I could have been a better parent, but we all do the best we can at the time. “The good thing,” I said, “is that now there is total good will between us.” No small achievement.
I told stories on myself --one about how I raced to the doctor to get a checkup for myself after Bob got home from the hospital. I couldn’t find a place to park in the parking deck and all of a sudden I had to find a restroom--or else.
I pulled the car over by the ticket booth and asked the attendant where the nearest bathroom was and said that maybe she could find me a place to park. When I got back, she had found a security guard who parked my car and went to get it for me when I left my doctor’s building.
“He was your angel that day,” said Edna.“No doubt about it...and I told him so.” I reached into my purse and pulled out a tattered index card with his name, Craig Trottman. Thank you, Craig. You never know when a good deed is being done for someone for whom it makes all the difference.
Every time I sit around the table with Edna, the art therapist, I find a place inside of me untouched by anything remotely sorrowful--in other words, I can just be and that is enough.
My check-in picture started out to be a well, because it struck me that at TWC I am drawing from the well parts of myself....the parts that transcend suffering and sorrow. But I realized that I didn’t know how to draw a well, so I decided to give it a face and now it looked like a rabbit, but instead of ears I found myself drawing leaves. I drew a big grin on this “whatever-it-was” and started listening to Edna.
“This past weekend I was at a CURE event and I really enjoyed it,” she said.
Bob and I know about CURE, Children’s United Research Effort, because our daughter, Laurie, was one of Dr. Abdel Ragab’s first patients in Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at the Emory Clinic when he came there during the seventies. Back then there was no place parents could go to remember the children they had lost to cancer.
“Now they have an annual event where parents can come and be together and celebrate their children and talk about them," said Edna. She told us that last year she had the group make flower pots and how much fun it was, and someone had called and asked her if she would do the flower pots again this year.
“I didn’t want to repeat the project two years in a row, but I knew they liked the pots, so this year I had us put herbs in them....rosemary .”
“Rosemary for remembrance,” I said.
“Yes,” Edna replied.
That led to my sharing this with the group. One of the doctors who took care of our daughter during her final days became a minister. Bob and I were about forty then and I had just suffered a very early miscarriage, so there would be no more children for me.
We were invited to her ordination and as we sat in the pew before the service began, I read the program and saw that the flowers at the altar were in loving memory of our daughter, Laurie, and two other children who had lost their battle with cancer. I looked up, expecting to see the usual large spray of gladiolus, whatever. But then I saw what she had chosen--three tiny rosebuds in an inconspicious vase.
Wow.
I looked down at my check-in picture and Edna and I both saw the synchronicity. I drew my bucket with leaves before she told me about the little herb pots and we both saw how wise a force it is that draws us together to heal.
I talked about how my ego-self is like an old stump, full of fear and sorrow . But there is a part of me that is sprouting new green leaves and I am in no way responsible for this because it is a gift.
“You know, “ I said, “this part of me that is so afraid of having to suffer belongs to my personality, but there is a joy inside of me that is realer than it!” It is this I feel at TWC. It is a place where I can repot my old self in a new and insightul way.
“Let’s draw something that will bloom in the spring,” said Edna.
I drew myself.
Before we knew it, there was a tangible energy in the room and it was a mystery where it came from. We went from flower pots to rosebuds to what will bloom this spring. Neither Edna nor I had the remotest idea what the subject of our conversation would be....and yet a healing force resulted from it. I couldn’t wait to get back to the computer and spin the threads into story. That is what I love to do. And now I am learning to speak about this alchemical process.
Bob is a good listener--lucky for me. “What went on reminds me of Christ asking Thomas to touch the wounds and see that it is indeed He." We have to touch our own wounds before they can be transformed. And from that willingness to touch sorrow arises a joy unknown by those who haven’t been through this experience.
Even though you can’t know beforehand what shape an event or relationship will take--the history is a mystery--you can trust the process. Much like you can trust that winter will turn to spring, you can trust your willingness to touch your pain in order to transform it.
I am learning from this to be in a relationship and not know what its history will be and that it’s okay. The filaments spun in faith will make a seamless garment.
Cancer need not be a death sentence. It is a wake-up call that can lead to a truly meaningful life.
A support system is essential. More than likely, you will find that while family and friends are wonderful, a dedicated support community will offer you many different ways to grow. This is because everyone is in the same boat and all are rowing toward wellness.
Wellness is not an option. It is a way of life. You can have cancer or any other disease and still have wellness as your goal. I am speaking of wholeness--the understanding that your life belongs to you and you can always grow in many different directions.
Meditation is an invaluable tool in cancer recovery. Make sure you meditate at least twenty minutes a day, preferably in the morning, before the cares of the day take you over.
Set aside time for silence. Just sit in your chair or lie on your bed and be. Being will make you beautiful (spiritually beautiful, that is....)
Wholeness is the goal--unity of body, mind and spirit. To achieve this, we must build daily discipline into our lives. Small efforts are hugely helpful. Baby steps will get you there. And when you get tired, have a sip of silence....or say a prayer
Gratitude is the best attitude. Say thank you as often as possible. Grace will sustain you on your journey back to wholeness.
If you or your loved one has cancer, you may feel “up against the wall.” And why shouldn’t you? All of a sudden you are all too aware of your mortality or that of a loved one. In my case, my husband’s diagnosis left me with the realization that we needed a support system that was already in place.
We found it at The Wellness Community in Atlanta, Georgia. There are Wellness Communities and other cancer support organizations in many different cities. They are invaluable. "Your life is too precious to live it in fear and isolation." That is what I had to tell myself.....for I had always been someone who enjoyed being alone. But with my husband’s illness, I began to reach out to other people for help.
Before I did, though, I began gathering my thoughts and made a tape on nurturing the now, on living in the present moment. I found that I had to make a decision to dare to do this. Crisis craves a solution, and the first thing to do is go within and find your own center. This inner center is always intact because it is spiritual in nature.
The second thing to do is make a connection with a cancer community. Everyone is in the same situation and from this comes a natural compassion. I have found it to be of genuine help.
Body, mind and spirit are so eager to expand in many different ways after a cancer diagnosis. If you ask me, a group of like-minded people is just what the doctor ordered (or should order). We were lucky to pick up a brochure about The Wellness Community when my husband was in the hospital. I kept it for quite a while before we ventured a visit there.
We ended up in a class called Recovery through Art and we still attend. I have found that my unconscious need to grow is facilitated by just sitting with a blank piece of paper and lots of chalks and paints, etc. I never leave a session without having learned something positive. I never went to kindergarten, so I say that this class is like kindergarten for adults.
We enjoy studying our dreams and keeping dream journals. I’ve tried yoga and meditation as well. The point is, you owe it to yourself to find out what sort of cancer connection you can make. I have found that the source of life is internal and eternal, but you need an external confirmation of this.
When cancer patients meet, deep and lasting growth can occur. Healing is happening around art tables and on yoga mats and at potluck dinners. All you have to do is make a decision that you want some for yourself. No one has to go through this alone.
After a cancer diagnosis of ourselves or of a loved one, often we cry rivers and feel floods of emotions.
The water of life has turned to a raging river and we are drowning in despair.
But take courage. There are wells of water within that will prove to be nurturing both to yourself and to others.
The diagnosis has been given and the prognosis is probable. You know that your life will never be the same again. You must grieve for everything that cancer takes from you, so don’t waste a moment feeling guilty about that.
But God is a miracle worker. He is biding His time until you choose to look at the gift within the illness. There is always a surprise and a gasp of awe the first time that you see this.
With me it came about when I realized that I could write about how cancer was forcing me to look within for comfort. I had to come within the circle of my own compassion. There God could meet me and allow me moments of peace.
Then I began our website to share freely with others who have cancer or have a loved one with the disease. The way out is in as we look to our own inner resources. It is different with everyone. Some may start by sharing recipes that strengthen the immune system. Some, like me, can write or speak about their experiences with it. All can profit from pain in a positive way.
Picture yourself walking down a long and dusty road with a pitcher of cool water that you are carrying. If you lose your emotional balance, the pitcher will spill into the dry ground and leave you thirsty and unable to share with others. But as long as you are patient and focused on carrying the water with you one day at a time, there will be plenty for you and some left over to share with others.
As you recuperate and regenerate from within, you are replenishing the water of life in your own spirit. Others may never know that you are offering them hope by your example, but you offer it anyway. The water of life carried by someone who cares is the sweetest water on earth.
Pool your resources if you can. Connect with another cancer patient. Be open about your cancer experience. You never know whom you might be blessing. When my husband was in the hospital, a nurse told me that she had seen sick people bless people in ways that are exciting and mysterious.
Healing happens, and you can be blessed by bearing your illness in honesty and a willingness to learn from every experience that you go through....and grow through. Bloom where you are planted is the common expression....and water the garden of life.
Transcending Cancer Consciousness
For a cancer patient or his or her loved ones, cancer consciousness becomes all-pervasive and often little is left for self-care of the right kind. What do I mean by self-care of the right kind? I mean that awareness is the gateway to living above the fear and loathing of cancer.
Much of this fear and loathing is occuring below the level of conscious thought and that makes it even more deadly! So just sit quietly somewhere and see that when you look at your thoughts they are generally not very hopeful. That is because negativity is the rut into which the mind falls when it is not being consciously guided.
The rut of routine thought is painful but it is not without a cure. The cure is to enter the rut with the clear intention of just observing that it is, indeed a chasm of conflict. This alert obseration is the solvent that will lead you once more into silence....down a silent lane of peace.
I am peace itself, actually, and am not my threatening thoughts. But I must choose to remember this and this is the way of the mystic--to constantly care for what is true. This care begins with the admission that the rut is a reality but doesn’t have to be. You can indeed, as The Course in Miraclessays, choose once again.
At this point, confusion arises about who is the self that suffers and who is the self that can rise above suffering? The mind is the culprit behind suffering but there is no point in blaming it because it doesn’t even exist. It is just an aggregate of thoughts.
You can test this for yourself by sitting quietly with the intention of watching each thought as it arises. You can’t do this for very long without the passing parade of thoughts thinning out. The marching marauders are fewer and fewer and causing you less and less unrest. It is your intention to observe them that eventually slows the parade down to a trickle.
Now you can take another step into silence by seeing that you are the watcher of the parade of thoughts--not the parade. This is your ticket out of the painful parade and admission into your own place of peace.
If you practice watching the parade, soon you will see for yourself that that self-care is always available. It is found in paying attention to your painful thoughts, putting the spotlight on them and remembering that who you really are is awareness, not thought.
When something bad happens, consciousness goes out the window. When my husband was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2000, in spite of the fact that I had been a truth student for a long time, consciousness was the first thing that I lost. I don’t mean bodily consciousness, altho I wouldn’t have minded. I mean my very own sense of self.
Gone, swallowed up by sorrow. My mind and emotions began to scream out for help. The minute that your life changes for the worse, the first thing that you want is some help.
First, you want the sorrow to go away, and secondly, you realize that you need help on many different levels. I have no family, at least in town, but my husband and son , so I needed help getting to the hospital, getting things bought for my husband, getting food for my son and myself.
God seemed far away indeed. Philip Yancey wrote a book, Where Is God When It Hurts....a great title. Where is consciousness when you are hurting? Mine was invested in surviving, which is completely natural.
But in several months time, as I began the long road back to my self, my awareness let me know that it was still around. It began telling me that I was going to have to change the way I saw myself and my life. It was time to take charge of my inner self once again.
Before my husband’s diagnosis we were living the typical life of a couple in their late fifties. He had taken early retirement and we were smelling the roses. Now he has cancer--what do we do, stop and smell the stinkweed?
The ego calls anything it doesn’t like stinkweed, and reality is at the top of the list. We all know that birth leads to death, eventually. But now we are looking “eventually” in the face. We have something going for us now.
We have lost our lackluster life. We are keenly aware of our sorrow and of our challenges. Who will help us....who will love us...who will not abandon us? Being human, these are human questions that cycle around our minds, usually at night.
If we are lucky, we will call on our own consciousness to come in and sit with us. We will listen to our hearts and how they hurt. We will just listen, promising not to abandon ourselves. “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” You can say this to yourself. It makes a huge difference.
I have chosen to love myself. ....to honor my new needs--and they are quite simple--starkly standing against my pain.
I need good strong boundaries that reassure me when I need silence and solitude. I need to organize my outlook. What does that mean? It means that I have to toss out the junk of my self-pity and bring in a sense of order to my thought life.
I see that my life now is richer because of pain. Pain lets you set your priorities. I know that I need awareness as much as I need breathing. I need quiet time to reflect on truth, because that is my passion.
Pain can set me free, believe it or not. It can set me free from living my life like a zombie, a robot, a mechanical man. It can nudge me into now, the living awareness of each moment.
Pain can become prayer. God, let me feel this pain without resistance. Resistance is the root cause of pain. When we accept a situation, then only can it change. Bitterness and self-pity perpetuate themselves unless we break from them. We can break from them in the right way or the wrong way. I can break down or break free. I choose the latter.
A breakdown or a breakthrough. The ego loves to break down. It thrives on thrills. Conversely, the spirit is sustained by silence and awareness. Only when it has stopped and gathered itself up can it go forth and contribute to the play of life.
I met a very wise man on Maui who said this, "Life is a play and we are witnesses, but for heaven’s sake, don’t let on that you know." He said, "If you were sitting in the audience of a Shakespearean play, you wouldn’t stand up and yell, "It’s only a play!"
That would spoil it for everybody. So just understand that you don’t have to come on like a sage telling everybody that it’s only a play.
Besides, we are getting our chops, as they say. Learning to hone our craft. Cutting the lines that don’t work or that don’t advance the story line.So if we are suffering, we should try to suffer without resistance. Only in this way can we end suffering. Kicking against the pricks is all we know how to do. We are Rockettes of Resistance. We would be better off leaving the chorus line and risk getting out of step with our self-pity, which is just another form of resistance.
It’s just possible that pain can be productive, and I think it can be, if we are ready to realize that resistance perpetuates the pain.
Someone said that a rock, allowed to remain on the ground, weighs nothing. The rock of my resistance can be noticed instead of picked up. If I pick it up it’s gonna weigh me down.
So how is pain productive? It produces the awareness that we are not in control of our lives and not meant to be. We are meant to let go and let God, or awareness, run the show. There’s really not any other way; only our ego thinks so. What is ego but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal? It’s either bragging or complaining.
So to recap, there is relief for resistance. And that relief is a willingness to accept life exactly as it happens, letting it unfold. The compassionate heart will not steer you wrong. Listen to it and it will lead you back to your true home, your own Self.
The heart knows what is necessary for its peace, but we have forgotten to honor it. We honor it by intention. We choose to do what is nourishing and fulfilling to us on a daily basis.
This is how the heart recovers from crisis, from chaos. We allow it to feel everything fully and completely, without resistance. And it rewards us with silence.
Our silence acceptance will lead us beside the still waters and restore our soul.
Wellness, Wholeness and Healing Wellness is within. It arises spontaneously when body, mind and spirit are working as a whole. How do I access this unity, you may ask.
It is superbly simple. You choose it.
Choosing wellness does not mean that you are in perfect health. Rather, it means that you are in the perfection of God and His Will for you. It is always God’s Will that we be made whole.
Often this wholeness is not immediately evident. In fact, spiritual wholeness may not manifest until you are undergoing a severe illness or trial. “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
The day that you choose wellness is the day that your life changes for the good. It means that you are sick and tired of fighting your own battles....and losing most of the time. The occasional win doesn’t amount to much, if we are honest.
One way to wellness is through silence. You must be willing to walk toward silence in the midst of your noisy thoughts and emotions.
You must walk on through the mists of emotions and the fog of daily frustrations.
God knows that you have become willing to be made whole.
You have let go and reached out your hand to Higher Help.
Higher Help is immediately healing.
Wholeness is your goal.
When you reach wholeness you will be holy and your life will be a reflection of wellness.
Sitting with John Fox for one of his Poetic Medicine workshops is a wonderful experience. I got to do that as a member of The Wellness Community in Atlanta, Georgia, this week. John has made annual visits there for eight years now. Having attended last year, I looked forward to participating once again. Somehow he manages to inspire however many people are in attendance. They end up writing poetry spontaneously and sharing it eagerly. What a gift he has.
Cancer patients are the best group ever. So willing to learn anything that will carry them along on the road to improvement. So generous to share their courage with those who might benefit from it. There are always newly-diagnosed people mingling with those who are long-term survivors. Hope, inspiration and the sense that their newborn selves will be the better for having traveled this journey consciously are fertile ground for poetry. The dark side is woven in as well, for out of this may come the aha! experience that can lead to even further healing.
John facilitates his groups in a mysterious way; I cannot for the life of me remember exactly what he did. He does have this lovely pair of hand cymbals that he rings to quiet everyone inwardly. And then the writing begins. I asked John how it felt to do what he did. “It feels great,” he said, beaming a lovely smile. And I knew he meant it. Below is the poem that came to meet me when I sat with John Fox.Journey
Journey I have been is me
Following threads thrown out
like spider.
Some convoluted, fragile,
Some laughing, clear and strong.
Amazing maze, corn-yellow maize
Hedges clipped like music,
Some grown-over and dilapidated
I wander each thread like
dopey insect, human heart--hungry lion.
Journey follows journey
endless intricacy--of me.
Vicki Woodyard
July 12, 2008--My Arms Are Crying, Too
I went to Writing for Recovery at Cancer Wellness today. I had been planning on this for a long time and today was the day! Angela led a group of five or six of us as we explored our innermost selves. Cancer patients are beautiful beings, exposed to the root as they are. Fragility and vulnerability are the soul’s strength. Opening to the infinite isn’t necessary when you are hale and hearty. But cancer gives a shock to the sytem and the spirit kicks in.
Today it was present in every face around the table. I read my piece called Breathing Room. A woman read a powerful poem she wrote today in the group. The line....”My eyes are crying, but my arms are crying, too," was astoundingly correct. I could see mine hanging limp and empty for those that walk the earth no more. But we used them for hugs for each other. Cancer gathers its armies of cells but love has it outnumbered in the grander scheme of things.
Got a comment or something that you would like to share? My husband died in 2004, but the energy and love in the essays is timeless.
E-mail: Vicki Woodyard
©Vicki Woodyard 2008 All rights reserved
