When you are on a spiritual journey, everything is an opportunity. What if the opportunity was breast cancer? Would you take it? Do you have a choice? When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2008 I cried a lot, and laughed a lot too. As a spiritual person, I tried to find meaning in the experience.
Now I often meet women who after having their mammogram say, “I am one of the lucky ones”, because the doctor did not find cancer. I’m one of the lucky ones too, because I had it. The journey of having cancer changed me in a positive and meaningful way, and I credit my creativity, spirituality, and a willingness to see that it is all a gift, where others see “lucky” or “unlucky”.
What does it mean to be lucky? Does it mean you never have to feel fear? Never suffer? Never feel grief? If this were your path in life you could end up very arrogant and self-serving. Does avoiding those parts of life that hurt or scare you really sound like any way to live? To really live we have to grow, and nothing makes you grow like fear.
When most of us experience fear we want to get away from it. Kate Bush sang a song in which she said “Make it go away.” You can’t. Cancer is one of those things - you can’t make it go away. The mere word “cancer” is like hearing the “f” word your first time or hearing someone make a racists remark – you never forget it. But cancer is a part of you. It’s somewhere in your body, on the level of your cells. The cells build themselves again and again, creating a tumor that’s called cancer, and this time, it was inside me. It was on my left breast. My breasts! My breasts that make me feel like a woman, they turn me on when they are kissed, they were the first thing a man ever noticed about me as a woman, they make me want to stand up straighter, they make me know what it feels like to be beautiful… those breasts! But inside one of them was cancer.
When I first found out I had cancer it was like this: I got the call to come in a second time – it’s probably nothing – don’t worry I told myself. The doctor who examined me was a man. He examined the ultrasound and said, “I am certain you have cancer!” He said it like he discovered America and the rest of us were so lucky to be in his presence, but I couldn’t believe it. He went on exclaiming, “I am positive you have cancer!” “I am absolutely certain you have cancer!” I looked at the nurse as if she was my lifeline to another world where things made sense. She never once looked up. “I am certain you have cancer!” This doctor would not shut up. He made it about him as I sat there in fear and disbelief, not knowing what to do. What if he was right? Then what? “I am absolutely positive you have cancer!” That’s how I found out.
Of course, you have to have a biopsy to know for sure, and that was the first time in my life, when I let my breast be exposed to this apple-corer-looking thing that hurt like hell. It was only the beginning of intense physical pain. What do you do?? I didn’t know. What do I normally do when I don’t know what to do? I couldn’t run. I couldn’t make it go away. Get help, I told myself.
In part my help consisted of a team of doctors. There was my surgeon, my oncologist, my radiologist, and my primary care physician. But when I met with them, I was sobbing so much, they all asked me if I was suicidal. I wasn’t, but it made me realize that I was showing the world my resignation to death. The thought of crossing over to death was always on my mind. Before that I always thought about sex, now my thoughts were about death.
My radiologist got me in touch with an onsite social worker. I had a social worker when I was put into foster care at age 16. Other people who get social workers are those who can’t take care of themselves, they stop eating and bathing. Was I that bad? No, I was still bathing. Everything brought me to tears. I was a mess, and it was a mess. I remembered reading in a book about spirituality that life is messy. But I thought that was when you fall in love with a guy who is married, and another guy you don’t like, likes you… That was a good mess, this was a bad mess. Well, maybe. You just don’t know.
The first thing I got involved in, with the help of my social worker, was a support group at the Cancer Support Community (originally the Wellness Community) in Walnut Creek, California. It was close to work and the meetings were in the evening for this group. The intake counselor talked to me on the phone to find out more about me. I cried the whole time while I was standing outside my office on a break. When I told a co-worker about the group with some excitement, he said those groups are for people who want to complain about how sorry they feel for themselves. He made it sound like we were all a bunch of losers. Losers with cancer. Well, maybe.
The group was one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life. Of course, I went there and sobbed as normal, but I laughed too. The see-through plastic “bra” with the nipple area cut out, the one I had to wear for radiation to keep my boob from moving around, “made me look like Barbarella,” I told the group. "Now if I could just get rid of that radiation machine, I’d really look hot!" We laughed about our experiences. The drugs I was taking caused me so many problems, and my doctor who originally told me about all the possible the side effects seemed shocked to hear I had any! So I wrote them down for her, and then I told the group, “I have gas, constipation, my ears ring, my hands are numb, my face is flushed, my chest is heavy, I have pain in my legs…” As I’m reading this list, it sounded so bad, like, this can’t be that bad?! But I kept going, “uncoordinated, can’t sleep, indigestion….” Pretty soon I tried to sound like Roseanne Rossanadana, the character Gildna Radner played on Saturday Night live. It was hysterical! I’m reading this list of all the problems this drug is causing and laughing! The group was laughing. Other people in the group were adding their side effects with the same accent… I was laughing so hard, I was crying, but this time with delight. What I learned was, when I could laugh at something that once frightened me, then I knew I had moved through the fear and onto acceptance or understanding. I knew I had been transformed. And I learned this because I had cancer.
The Cancer Support Community is now affiliated with Gilda’s Club. Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer in 1989. Gilda’s Club was started in her memory to support people with cancer.
I found my people! I found other people going through the same thing and they were amazing people! Strong, brave, beautiful, funny, rich with depth, compassion, and understanding. I started having synchronistic experiences: I went for a hike all the while asking God to guide me through this difficulty. At the top of the hill where I was hiking was a tree, a California Bay tree. Those never grow on top of hills, they usually grow in the crevices where they can get the most water. “It just wanted to be closer to the rain.” I told myself. And then this feeling of grace came over me: I also choose to be closer to the rain: to the cold rain that we all run from, I’m choosing to go into it, and not run away. That day I found grace through God, the God that is within all of us.
In her book, “Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears” Pema Chodron says, “How we relate moment by moment to what is happening on the spot is all there really is. We give up all hope of fruition and in the process we just keep learning what it means to be right there.”
I found that when I had to be there, I accesed a deeper part of myself. I found that was creative in ways I could not have imagined: I decided to make radiation all about breakfast. I set up all of my appointments for first thing in the morning so I could eat breakfast. I told myself, “I just have to do this one thing (radiation) and then I’m going to breakfast.” I love breakfast, and the cafeteria at John Muir Hospital was good and inexpensive. After each treatment, after taking off my plastic Barbarella bra and getting dressed, I’d go to the cafeteria, get my tray, pour a cup of coffee, choosing from the options (scrambled eggs, country potatoes, turkey sausage...). I’d be friendly with the cashier or anyone else in line, because I was just there for a great breakfast. I did that for 30 days, 30 treatments. After eating breakfast I’d cross out that day. It was a gift I gave to myself. My authentic self, and a very creative self who obviously could overcome adversity, fear, and uncertainty with her beautiful spirit intact. Being on a spiritual journey has made having cancer a life affirming experience.
If you have been diagnosed with cancer, get help and let your fear help guide you. Find out what resources there are in your area. You can start with the American Cancer Society.
Whether you are on a spiritual journey or not, life has so much to teach us and labeling what happens as good or bad, lucky or unlucky will only keep you stuck. We really don’t know all that life can be until we open ourselves to the experience that is before us, see it as an opportunty for acceptance, understanding, and transformation.
