[2022-03-28] 600th post
Today is my 600th post. I am honoured that you are still reading after all these months. And I'm still amazed that I manage to find something to say, every day.
For today's milestone post, I've chosen some best bits from my favourite posts. I invite you to (re)read some of the articles I am most proud of.
Today, I had a call with my family doctor.... She offered everything one could hope for from a doctor: empathy, information, encouragement, a realistic picture of the challenge ahead, and hope. She said, "allow yourself to be upset and sad and grieve the loss of your perfect health. It's totally normal if you do fall apart."
Writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer, cancer survivor Jane Ashley noted in A cancer survivor: Why positive thinking really matters that while no studies support that positive thinking is a factor in being cured of the disease, she did find value in maintaining a healthy outlook. She wrote: "So is there a reason to have a positive attitude? Absolutely. A positive attitude helps people cope with a disease which strikes without warning and can recur despite aggressive treatment. Elizabeth Edwards said it best, 'A positive attitude is not going to save you. What it's going to do is, every day, between now and the day you die, whether that's a short time from now or a long time from now, that every day, you're going to actually live.'"
People sometimes struggle with what to say to someone who has been recently diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Most websites that I consulted on talking with someone in that situation suggested that if you don't know what to say, you can start with that... "I’m not sure what to say, but I want you to know that I care." ... Just know that reaching out and running the risk that you'll say the wrong thing is almost always better than not reaching out at all.
I found myself listening to a classical music playlist this afternoon. When I got to "Send in the Clowns" and the opera singer sang Do you love farce?, I thought that she had said Do you love farts? I swear that you will say you love farts when you can't have farts. This is the last test I need to pass (no pun intended) before I can leave the hospital. Little victories. Little victories.
Just as I'm asking you to remember the nurses, tonight I am asking you to remember the family and friend caregivers in our lives—the people who are caring for ill loved ones while grappling with their own emotions, such as sadness, fear and guilt. They may not recognize their own need for support or, if they do, may be reluctant to ask for it.
I don't see cancer as good or bad luck, nor do I choose to give it the power to affect my peace of mind. Since my diagnosis, I still see so much love and beauty in the world. And I still take pride in my accomplishments even if they are small compared to what I might have achieved in a day before.
I received a lovely book from a dear friend today: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. Author Charlie Mackesy writes in the book's introduction: "I hope this book encourages you, perhaps, to live courageously with more kindness for yourself and others. And to ask for help when you need it—which is always a brave thing to do." ...
"The greatest illusion," said the mole, "is that life should be perfect."
"Everyone is a bit scared," said the horse. "But we are less scared together."
"What's the bravest thing you've ever said?" asked the boy. "Help," said the horse.
"Asking for help isn't giving up," said the horse. "It's refusing to give up."
"Sometimes just getting up and carrying on is brave and magnificent."
"When the dark clouds come ... keep going."
I came across this beautiful quote on friendship the other day: "Friendship is not about who you've known the longest. It's about who walked into your life, said 'I'm here for you' and proved it." ... Over the past two months, some people have said to me: "I wanted to write sooner but couldn't find the words." To that, I say, "take the leap." No matter the words you use, your intention will come through. That is the beauty of friendship.
I realize that my upbeat approach to cancer—no matter how sincere—may make others feel that they don't have permission to be sad or scared or stressed. They absolutely do.... In Your emotions and cancer, the Canadian Cancer Society...points out: "Family and caregivers can also feel lonely. They can feel as though they’ve lost their best friend or that they have no one to talk to about what they’re going through. They may feel overwhelmed by new responsibilities. They may feel like they don’t have time to see friends or do activities they enjoy. They may also feel overlooked by the healthcare team or family members and friends, who tend to focus on the person with cancer."
Three key concepts have emerged for me:
- Life is both sweet and bitter, glorious and wretched.
- No matter the circumstances, we can learn from what's happening right now in our lives.
- The difficult moments in life can soften us, make us kinder and help us to better support others. ...
I try to reflect that softness in these blog posts, to inspire those facing challenges very different from mine and to one day soothe the aching soul of someone who will learn that they, too, have cancer.
When making a concerted effort to stay upbeat and happy through your treatment, the first step is to create a positive environment for yourself. Start by surrounding yourself with the friends and family members who bring a smile to your face. When you’re feeling the strain of your treatment, they can bring warmth and light into your world. Focus on the people in your life that have supported you through tough moments in the past.
In their article Cancer: a family at risk, Katarzyna Woźniak and Dariusz Iżycki note: "The diagnosis of cancer is a family experience that changes the lives of all its members, bringing an immense amount of stress and many challenging situations. The daily routine, common activities and distribution of duties all have to change. Family members follow the phases of the disease, very often suffering comparable or greater distress than the patient."
Oprah also recounts a conversation she had with well-known poet Maya Angelou. "I remember when I came back from opening the school for girls in South Africa, I was sitting at Maya's kitchen table while she was making biscuits, and I said, 'That school is going to be my greatest legacy.' And she said, 'Your legacy isn't some big grand gesture. It isn't a school with your name on it. Your legacy is every life you touch, everybody you encounter.' So people emphasize the big things, the joining, and the causes—but it's what you do everyday. It's how you live everyday as a woman citizen here on Planet Earth at this time."
I love the idea of reflecting on what I will no longer do. My friend's feedback reminded me of something I used to do at work: I had a to-don't list. My to-do list was already too long, and I had a tendency to take on too much. So the director in my office worked with me to come up with a to-don't list—a collection of tasks that I would leave for others to do, such as approving certain communications products.
Our views about our lives are shaped by our experiences. The most noteworthy experiences—often the most positive and the most negative moments—form our memories. These memories shape our beliefs about ourselves and others. These beliefs colour our thoughts. And thoughts drive our emotions. ... In The Power of Writing, Amber Bauer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology quotes several studies that found that expressive writing helped cancer patients cope with their diagnosis and treatment. In one study, for example, women with breast cancer who wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings and focused on the positive reported the fewest symptoms and had the fewest unscheduled visits to their doctors.
What she meant by MRI was a Most Respectful Interpretation. In other words, what is the most positive way to see a situation when you're not sure of the other person's intent? It's a useful technique that I've used myself and recommended to others many times in the past decade. The reality is that we often don't know why others do what they do. There's little value in assuming the worst when, in fact, the opposite may be true.
She relied on three strategies based on the following principles:
- Resilient people understand that bad things happen.
- Resilient people focus their attention on what's good in the world.
- Resilient people ask themselves, "Is what I'm doing helping or harming me?"
The significance of my accomplishments was echoed in today's entry in A Year of Positive Thinking, which was about the wisdom of Kintsukuroi. "Kintsukuroi is a kind of Japanese ceramic style. The word Kintsukuroi means 'to repair with gold.' In the Kintsukuroi tradition, when a ceramic piece breaks, an artisan will fuse the pieces back together using liquid gold or gold-dusted lacquer. So rather than being covered up, the breaks become more obvious, and a new piece of art emerges from the brokenness. Kintsukuroi embraces flaws and imperfections, but it also teaches the essence of resilience. Every crack in a ceramic piece is part of its history, and each piece becomes more beautiful because it has been broken."
Today's entry in A Year of Positive Thinking—How you perceive the world is how you will live—is relevant: "You can choose to focus on each awful, imperfect experience. You can assume the worst possible outcome and expect people to fail you. Or you can allow yourself to be in awe of what is right, beautiful, sacred, and profound. You can choose to focus on what makes you feel aligned with the extraordinary life you hope for. You can expect people to surprise and delight you in the best possible ways. What you focus on is what will become your truth. Choose wisely."
Jeremy Nobel—a doctor and public health practitioner—and his colleagues reviewed more than 100 studies and concluded that creative expression improves health by reducing depression and stress and boosting healthy emotions. Nobel states that when people write about their thoughts and feelings, they feel better and get healthier. In Writing as an antidote to loneliness, Nobel notes: "When people tell their personal stories through writing, whether in letters to friends or family, or in journals for themselves, or in online blog posts, or in conventionally published work, they often discover a means of organizing and understanding their own thoughts and experiences. Writing helps demystify the unknown and reduce fears, especially when we share those written concerns with others."
The text that held my attention today was a book of quotes on the meaning of life. One that impressed me was this one from Helen Keller: "Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it." ... What came to mind upon reading this quote is how often we hear only one part of the story: the beginning or the end, and, even less often, the middle. I believe that there is value in seeing the full arc of someone's experience of living with cancer, especially if the tale is told in real time. We would hear of the diagnosis, imagining all the challenges ahead. But we would also be able to follow along with the treatment, perhaps learning a thing or two about how much or how little suffering it entails, at least for that one person. And then we would witness the outcome of the treatment.
I'm like the little girl in Erin Hanson's poem who asks "What if I fall?": "There is freedom waiting for you, | On the breezes of the sky, | And you ask "What if I fall?" | Oh, but my darling, | What if you fly?" In my case, the question on my lips or buried deep in my heart had been: "What if I die?"—a question that made me reluctant to think about the future. But in the past few days, the breezes of the sky have whispered in reply: "What if you live?" ... I know that love is the answer, that my talents are meant to be used to make the world a better place, and that my beauty comes from how I make others feel not how I look.
A friend sent me this quote the other day and it has been lingering in my mind ever since: "You never know how long your words will stay in someone's mind even long after you've forgotten you spoke them." ... In my experience, positive comments are like statements whispered in a dream. The words are fleeting and the details are forgotten far too quickly. Often, I'm left with only a general impression of the observation—a warmth that makes me feel good about myself and the person who uttered the comments. It's like Maya Angelou said: "People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel." Negative remarks, by contrast, are like a bee's sting. I remember the exact words, who said them, where I was, and the hurt that I felt. I remember the insults or careless statements—word for word—months and years later.
A quote came up on my Instagram feed the other day that...said not to worry about the future because we have no control over it. While we may not have control over the future, surely we have influence over it, I thought. ... I thought about the Instagram quote today when a friend sent me this passage by political theorist John Schaar: "The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created―created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination."
I'm reminded of something that a consultant said to me a dozen years ago: when our extending ourselves is driven by love or passion, the work energizes us, but when the effort is driven by fear—fear of not measuring up or of disappointing someone—then the work can lead to burnout. Our motivation for overwork can be the difference between exhilaration and exhaustion, she added.
A friend recently sent me a thought-provoking and heartwarming tale. Someone who was tired of stories about COVID, looting and brutality and who was convinced that this was the new normal said to an 87-year-old man that 2020 must have been a particularly challenging year. The elderly man—who had lived through polio, diphtheria and Vietnam protests—said no; he learned long ago to not see the world through the lens of daily headlines. Instead, he related that he sees the world through the people around him. "I just choose to write my own headlines," he declared. He offered these examples: "Husband loves wife today." "Family drops everything to come to Grandma's bedside." "Old man makes new friend."
Sometimes, it feels like grief is all around me, hanging in the air like heavy smoke. Other times, it feels like it has invaded me, like a damp chill that seeps into my bones. As I often do when I am overwhelmed by emotion, I went in search of comforting words.
I came across the analogy of the what-if tree while searching for guidance on dealing with worries related to the illness of a loved one. Clinical psychologist Jade Wu writes in Afraid of a Loved One Dying? How to Keep Yourself Tethered to Now: "The what-if tree has a sturdy trunk with strong roots at the bottom—that’s the present moment. As you climb the what-if tree, with each branching what-if scenario the branches get thinner and your footing gets shakier. At some point, it’s not useful to think that far ahead." We've all climbed the what-if tree. The more we allow our thoughts to extend into scary possibilities, the higher we climb, and the more vulnerable we feel as the branches get thinner and thinner.
It got me thinking about how easy it is to feel like a burden when we can no longer do for ourselves or others what we did in the past. So many of us define ourselves by what we give—be that to our jobs, our families or our communities—so when our ability to give is diminished, our sense of self-worth may similarly plummet. We may feel that we are contributing less and taking more, that we are adding to the workload of our caregivers, that we are not doing our fair share in our relationships. ... You are valuable simply because you exist. "There’s a wonderful quote by the author Max Lucado that sums it up perfectly: 'You are valuable just because you exist. Not because of what you do or what you have done, but simply because you are.' These words imply we are all inherently worthy, because we’re all human beings."
I could probably do a whole series, at some point, on helpful sayings that can change our perspective in an instant. Today, for example, I came across an Instagram post by PeacefulMindPeacefulLife quoting author Idil Ahmed: "Always say, 'my peace is more important' when you find yourself reacting to something that doesn't deserve your energy. ... The key element in Ahmed's quote is "something that doesn't deserve your energy." We shouldn't choose peace at the expense of standing up for ourselves. But when something doesn't really matter, why not let it go?
A friend wrote to me the other day to share that she had gone to her doctor and raised a sensitive issue. She hadn't wanted to bring up the subject, "BUT," she explained, "I did this because of you, and your journey, and I summoned enough courage to finally say something." She added: "because of you, and your willingness and determination to live out loud with bravery and vulnerability...I decided to push myself to be a little more like you."
Yes, we each have a unique combination of abilities and background that make us well suited for our jobs, but someone else—with a different set of competencies—could be equally proficient at our jobs, particularly with the benefit of a few months of experience. To our work colleagues, we may be unforgettable. But to our family members, we are irreplaceable.
If you're going through s**t and fretting over your lack of control, it might help to change your perspective. Look for the things you can control and take pride in the things you are learning. Your wisdom may be just the thing someone else needs to get them through a similar s**tty situation in the future.
A few weeks ago, I asked Jenesis readers How has a loved one's cancer affected you? I was deeply moved by the responses I received. The answers were filled with painful emotions—shock, heartbreak, sadness, fear, frustration, anger, helplessness, guilt, exhaustion, grief—with glimpses of positive feelings, such as caring, hope and gratitude. Many of the people who responded to me had lost a loved one to the disease and continued to feel grief. Some had supported family members who survived, but their relationship changed. Some grew closer to their cancer-afflicted loved one or rose to the challenge of caring for the person. All came face-to-face with the fragility of life.
Do not underestimate the gifts you bring to the world. You are kind, curious and caring. You make people smile and laugh. You make others feel special. You listen. Do not discount the difference you make in the lives of your loved ones. Your very existence brings them joy and comfort. Do not miss the meaning you can derive in the midst of this horrible situation and the growth it can engender in you and others. There is always something to be learned. There is always something to be taught.
