A Woman's Journey Through Life, Cancer and Love
When I saw this image of Buddha from Ayutthaya, Thailand, I felt a deep resonance with the experience I was having with cancer. The poems that comprise Help Me Remember Who I Am had been coming for some time and it seemed that they too connected to the image. It spoke of being held in the tight space of pain while unswayable peace remained in the center of my being. This strong paradox would create the dance of a new awareness, an awareness that can only be opened by precious pain and suffering. For me that opening would be rectal cancer and the poems my pathway to healing.
I see now that the poems capture moments in time that I was seeing through the pain and into the face of God. That face reflected compassion and love and peace, and as much as I longed to hold that image as my greatest truth, it too longed to be seen and held by me. There, in that small opening of a poem, was a vast field where I encountered the divine spirit in its gracious splendor.
I would not consider myself a writer or a poet. I have never written poetry before and I cannot really say I wrote the poems in my book. It feels like they “happened” inside of me and then found their way to the pen and paper. None of the poems took more than five to fifteen minutes to write. They poured out with an authority beyond me. I surrendered to them. Sometimes I did not even understand what I was writing. Over time the poems revealed much about my process. They are presented in the book in the order they were written. They are raw and real and honest. I offer them to you in their state of vulnerability.
Here are a couple of pages from the book:
page 11: Bargains
page 55: Help Me Remember Who I Am
Watch videos:
• Breathe
• Help Me Remember
• Kali
It was October 2006, and five days before I heard those two words, rectal cancer, I viewed the “cause” of my pain on a screen during an endoscopy. My doctor lovingly told me to go home; rest; don’t worry: it might be something else; wait for the biopsies. I didn’t need the results of the biopsies; nothing could look like what I saw but cancer.
A friend drove me home and I remember declaring. “My entire life as I know it is about to change.” I didn’t know how true those words would prove to be.
In the oncologist’s office I was presented with a protocol that could save my life: five weeks of chemo and radiation: chemo pills everyday with a 1and ½ hour drip once a week and radiation five days a week; 25 treatments in all. Then surgery to remove the rectum; a (hopefully) temporary illiostomy bag; a reversal of the illiostomy and, voila!, I would be cured.
It was the word cured that got my attention. I don’t think I heard anything else.
So, from a person who thought twice before taking an aspirin, I was transformed into a cancer patient.
There are two ways to go into this story form here. I want to tell you about the breakdown of my body from the chemo, what it is like to have radiation burns on my entire genital area, inside and out. The longing to be held but the effects of the chemo making my skin so sensitive that it hurt to be touched; lying alone in beds unable to sleep for extended periods of time because there was no relief from the pain. Overcoming the embarrassment of the nurse coming again and again to clean the puddle of shit I was lying in. I want to tell you about dancing with death and illness and all the unimaginable scenarios you can’t even imagine; all from two little words; rectal cancer. That is one story.
I did go home that week and had a surprisingly quiet and solitary week. I meditated and cooked for myself. There was a calm that came over me. It had something to do with numbness I am sure, but it also had to do with being as present as I could with life right then, just as it was and knowing I would face each step the best I could. Of course, once the diagnosis came and I had to tell my daughter and family and friends, panic and questions and fears arose.
My meditation practice provided many of the answers. If I truly believed that everything was God then wouldn’t that include chemo and radiation? The answer for me was, yes, it would. This one thought completely changed the dynamic of the experience. I began to do mantras over the chemo pills. While receiving the drips, I would listen to the Guru Gita, knowing that the golden light of God was merging with my blood to heal me. These thoughts and many others opened a vast world in my interior. Thoughts broke down concepts of who I knew myself to be and I was forced to explore my beliefs with new eyes.
There are as many stories of love and miracles as of the pain and suffering of my mind and body. Believe me, I cried, screamed, laughed, went numb, and woke up again, only to begin with what was in front of me. It seemed to go on forever.
I chose to stay in the Taos area for treatments. And because I have been in the healing arts for twenty years, I had an entire community of massage therapists, acupuncturists, ayurvedic practitioners and people with such love and compassion at my bedside that their grace most definitely “helped me remember who I am.”
After the final surgery to reverse the illiostomy, there was leakage from the surgical site, which means what was in my bowels was leaking into my abdomen. This was the closest to death I came. Because of how fragile I had become, a friend carried me to my parent’s home in Wisconsin, where I spent almost a year in recovery. There I received the kind of care only my mother and family could give and it did wonders for my healing.
I returned to my home in Taos in June, 2008. The passage though time in these years has taught me so much. Mostly that this life and all its experiences belong to me. They are mine. I can like what is happening or not, it truly doesn’t matter. What matters is what I do with what I am given. I feel I was given a voice through the poetry, and that was the inspiration for Help Me Remember Who I Am. I hope you can find an unspoken voice of your own in my words.
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