Friends, I’ve just published a new post at http://www.alchemyofcancer.blogspot.com to share some of the fantastic resources I’ve discovered in my healing journey. It’s not comprehensive, but since I have started getting numerous inquiries about what I’m dong, this is a good way for me to summarize the cream of what I’ve found.
If you know anyone who has cancer, please pass this information along. Thank you!
This blog came to a screeching halt before it had barely started. I set it up one day (under another name, The Alchemy of Cancer), published my first post the next, had a conversation with my therapist a few hours later, and took the blog down. A short time later I was back at my computer re-creating everything in its original form. All this in the space of about six hours.
Thus I got to observe one of the ways I make myself crazy: I seem to have an unnecessary sense of urgency about everything. From the minute the idea arose to blog about my journey with cancer, I moved forward like a writer possessed. I didn’t stop for a second to think about whether this blog would support or interfere with the healing path I’m on.
I did the exact same thing after talking with my beloved counselor just a few hours after my first post. His advice not to do the blog as I had intended—and the reasons for it—felt so good, so right, that I didn’t stop for a second to think about how I felt about the blog and what it already meant to me. That same day I had received powerful, positive feedback from other close friends and family whose input I greatly valued. Yet here I was blindly and immediately taking it down, without even stopping to digest my therapist’s wise counsel. (By the way, he did not suggest I take it down immediately—that was my idea.)
Lying in bed a short time later, finally feeling into the events of the day, I recognized this crazy-making pattern that drives me. I realized that this sense of urgency was typical of the way I live life, rarely taking time to reflect on things, feel them, before springing into action. And I knew it was time to make a change.
Acknowledging that it was not much of a change to do what I was about to do next, I got out of bed and went back to my computer to re-create the blog, which I had already fallen in love with. Take a deep breath, I thought to myself, and prepare to take as long as it takes to feel and discover what is true for you about this writing and this format.
So far it’s been three days. During this time insights having been stumbling over each other, clamoring for me to turn my attention to some of the “lead” in my life and making me crave its transformation. Here are just a few of the things I’m learning:
(1) Healing is best done in private, out of view. It takes time and stillness. With just one post I was already diffusing the energy of my own healing process by turning my attention outward, picturing myself as the next Julie Powell (Julie & Julia) with thousands of loyal and devoted readers. I hadn’t even established what I was doing on the inner planes before starting to plan my personal version of a television reality show: a competition with myself in which I could report statistics like lab results and how much the cancer had shrunk.
(2) Healing is most effective when the focus is on wholeness, not the disease. How can you not focus on the disease when you have cancer? Anyone with cancer or a serious illness will tell you it’s practically a full-time job. It takes vigilance, energy and a lot of time and attention to keep up with things: taking nutritional supplements, exercising, scheduling appointments, taking tests, making travel plans to treatment facilities, checking insurance coverage, researching possible new therapies, blah, blah, blah. Yet, far from feeling like heavy burdens, I’ve come to perceive and perform these things as ways of taking care of myself, activities and gestures I try to do with love and gratitude for the choices I have and the means to fulfill them.
“Focusing” on my illness means that conversation at dinner with friends is dominated by my latest test results and what therapy is next. It means repeating the story so many times to close friends and family that it becomes a performance, a recitation, far from the authenticity of being in the moment and sharing my feelings or what I’m learning—not quite as compelling as really good test results, but a lot more relevant.
To that end, I am moving most of my writings to this blog. From time to time, however, I’ll post something at The Alchemy of Cancer (http://alchemyofcancer.blogspot.com) of specific interest to people dealing with cancer. There may be some overlap, especially in the first couple of posts, until the two paths find their own ways.
(3) It’s time to break my compulsive habit of doing things quickly, this pattern of Urgency, as if checking things off a list means something.
(4) It’s time to examine closely my Motives—not only for blogging but for every choice I make.
(5) It’s time to take a close look at this drive that seems to grip us all: the Quest to Be Somebody.
I wanted this blog to be an exploration of how to turn life’s “lead” into “gold.” I must say, I’m starting to feel very shiny.
I have breast cancer. My doctor said I would probably die if I didn't follow her recommendation: an immediate mastectomy. I didn't believe her.
Thus began my walk between the worlds of traditional and alternative medicine and the quest to see if I could find a cure before turning to traditional surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. In this blog I will share my process, a journey in which I am attempting to transmute the “lead” of life—the pain, the darkness, the agony, the grief, the anger, the powerlessness—into the “gold” of light and freedom.
This blog will not be a resource center for alternative therapies. First, there are already hundreds of resources out there in terms of books, websites, etc. for alternative cancer cures. Also, despite a strong propensity for alternative medicine, I am trying to stay open to all possibilities. I do, however, promise to share anything that comes to my attention that feels significant and universal.
Nor will this be an attempt to describe every supplement I’m taking and every therapy I have embraced or am currently using. The whole point of turning your own life’s lead into your own life’s gold is just that: you have to find what works for you, what feels right to you, what sings to you, and what is true for you at any given moment. My path cannot be a prescription for you. But it may give you a glimpse into how to explore your own life—what’s working, what’s not and why.
I used to think “being true to yourself” was just a great line from Shakespeare (“This above all: to thine own self be true” from Hamlet). But I have come to see that it is a process rich beyond description. For most of us in the West, it is a question of unlearning a great deal of the conditioning we’ve been exposed to since infancy. But ultimately, if you have cancer and can commit to seeing the ways in which you live falsely, it won’t matter so much whether or not you have (or have had) surgery. (At least I think so. I am aware that this is a lot easier to believe since I haven’t had to face surgery so far.)
Which brings me to my last point in this opening post: One example of my going for the gold will be my effort to tell the truth in this blog. I am quite skilled at making everything, even the worst events of my life, look good. I like to wrap things up in neat little packages so that people I’m sharing my life with will feel comfortable. I like to imagine that everything is perfect, even when it’s not. “Chin up” and “Keep a stiff upper lip” were two of the messages I received growing up from my British mother. Reality can strip me naked, and I can still pretend I’m the Empress with new clothes.
So stay tuned—we’ll see what outfit presents itself next! I look forward to sharing with you.
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