Oct 16, 2012 | Beuchner, Frederick, Passion, Uncategorized, Vocation
In the few years since my cancer diagnosis, I’ve had more conversations about the sad parts of life than I have in all my years before the diagnosis combined. Sharing my own story with others, especially in the form of a book, has provided avenues for others to share their own struggles and grief with me.
After reading my book, a friend shared with me some of her struggles with mental illness. She then asked whether I feel burdened by the frequent conversations about my own—and others’—pain. While I wish we all had much less sorrow in our lives, I’m keenly aware that’s not the case. Talking about the tough stuff simply is what life is about these days. And recently I’ve even come to see it as my new vocation.
In contemporary conversations about vocation, we often talk about finding or choosing a vocation. We take strength-finder inventories; we envision where we’d like to be in ten years and what we need to do to get there. Much reflection on vocation in the past, however, has characterized vocation as something given to us, even when we’d prefer to be doing something else.
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Oct 9, 2012 | Hitchens, Christopher, Uncategorized
I was never a big fan of Christopher Hitchens’ take on religion. A self-described antitheist, Hitchens took great pleasure in mocking God, religion, and people of faith. While there are many valid critiques of religion out there, Hitchens’ attacks seemed designed to get a rise out of his readers rather than to add any new insight to the debate.
Even though I wasn’t a fan of Hitchens’ views on religion, I’ve become a fan of the man. After he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2010, Hitchens began writing about his life refracted through this new lens. The cancer did not let up, and he died at the end of last year. But his words live on, particularly in a posthumously-published book entitled, Mortality, a collection of his Vanity Fair essays on the challenges of “living dyingly” with cancer.
I didn’t find a soft spot for this man simply because we have a stage IV cancer diagnosis in common. I became a fan of his writing because I think it’s worthwhile to talk about cancer in ways that do more good and less harm.
In his essay entitled “Miss Manners and the Big C,” Hitchens makes clear why more conversations on how to talk about cancer are necessary. He points to the need for better manners by those whose insensitive comments about life with cancer leave their mark.
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Oct 2, 2012 | CaringBridge, Grace, Quilt, Uncategorized
Almost exactly three years ago I was given a most amazing gift. On an exquisite fall day, my family and I were lured to a friend’s home and given a quilt sewn together by dozens of friends and family members. Over the past 3 ½ years, we’ve been overwhelmed by many meaningful gifts bestowed on us in response to my illness. But this one takes the cake.
The friend who came up with the idea of a quilt told us that back when I was at my sickest, she had a vision of creating a quilt for us. She considered this vision her marching orders and used the entries on my Caring Bridge site to make contact with our friends and family about participating in making a quilt.
Mailing fabric, dropping off squares at various locations, even meeting prospective sewers clandestinely in coffee shops, our friend recruited a small army of sewers to help make her vision a reality.
During the summer I moved into remission, sewers sent completed squares back to our friend. A quilting frame went up in her living room, and unbeknownst to us, her family hosted quilting nights where our friends and family gathered to stitch this quilt together.
On that gorgeous fall day three years ago, our family was rendered speechless by this gift and the deep love radiating from our dear friends and family who had gathered to stitch it together for us.
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Sep 25, 2012 | Uncategorized, Yoga
Back when I was really sick, people recommended I take up yoga. This suggestion annoyed me. Cancer had broken my back—not once but twice. Couldn’t they see that bending and stretching was beyond what my body would allow?
After months of back braces, surgery, and radiation, I moved toward remission and living without a brace. Again people recommended yoga and again I was annoyed. I was building strength and logging many miles on my bike—couldn’t they see that I was beyond gentle stretching?
But the world’s preoccupation with yoga seemed to follow me everywhere, and I finally relented and attended a yoga class offered as part of a weekend retreat. It was different than I expected, more challenging than I imagined. And it left me feeling clear-eyed, focused, and calm.
I considered taking up yoga.
Then a yoga studio opened two blocks from my house. I took it as a sign and started with a basic vinyasa class. The class was challenging and rewarding. My back benefited from the core work. I gained flexibility and expanded my range of motion.
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Sep 17, 2012 | Fragility, Grace, Inside Out Podcast, Uncategorized
Recently I was interviewed for a radio show on what it’s like to live with—and talk about living with—cancer. The interviewer asked thoughtful questions, including one I hadn’t heard before. The interviewer set up her question with a reference to a friend of hers who doesn’t want others to know that she has cancer because she doesn’t want to be treated differently, like she’s some breakable object. The interviewer then confessed to wanting to treat me “gently” during our interview, which led to her question: what’s my take on being viewed as fragile because I have cancer?
It doesn’t take much effort to figure out that I’ve opted for a more public approach to living with cancer rather than a keeping-quiet-about-it approach. I’ve thought a lot about the dynamics of going public with my condition; even so, the interviewer’s question was a bit startling. No one has framed the issue for me in quite that way: that when we’re public about our illness or our suffering others will treat us differently, and that is something we might want to avoid.
I think it’s fair to say that cancer confers a special status on those of us who have it. I think it’s also fair to say that other people knowing we have cancer often changes how we interact.
I can see where the interviewer’s friend fears being treated differently. We pride ourselves on being independent and in control of our lives; cancer wreaks havoc on all of that. Being out there about our diagnosis and our struggles often makes it plain to others that we’re neither independent nor in control. It makes sense that we’re reticent to make that reality public.
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Sep 10, 2012 | CaringBridge, Uncategorized
Sites like Caring Bridge can be effective mediators of grace to those of us diagnosed with a serious illness or suffering the effects of a life-threatening accident (see previous post for more on that). While the potential benefits of using such sites are many, it is nevertheless the case that publicly narrating an illness for a virtual audience can present challenges, especially for those less familiar with the world of social media. Amidst the benefits of using online communication to keep loved ones informed of your condition, you might encounter a few difficulties along the way:
5. Even though Caring Bridge is not just another social networking site, it can be mistaken for one.
When the condition of the person suffering from the illness or accident is updated frequently on Caring Bridge, family and friends often make a habit of checking the site regularly. It becomes part of the routine: check email, Facebook, Caring Bridge. While having others up-to-date on the latest medical development is one benefit of using such sites, it can also be unnerving to have attempts at chronicling grief and pain discussed and framed in social networking terms: “I just love your Caring Bridge site!” “You should post more photos!” “You should change the wallpaper on your site—you have a Fall background and now it’s spring!” Because it operates like other social networking sites, people who use it are often tempted to think of it in these terms. To others of us, though, it’s a tool we wish we didn’t have to use to keep others in our lives up-to-date on how we’re doing with stage IV cancer or other life-altering conditions.
4. Not everyone in your life reads Caring Bridge.
It is the case that for most of us using Caring Bridge, readership of our sites reaches more people than we could have imagined before we were sick or hurt. Developing a sizable readership on Caring Bridge, however, can also nurture the illusion that everyone in our lives reads our updates. That’s simply not the case. Some people close to me never read Caring Bridge; a few have told me that they’ve followed other Caring Bridge stories in the past and no longer have the energy to follow more. Negotiating the highly public nature of having your story followed by hundreds with those in your life who know nothing of you latest posts adds an extra dimension to the challenge of talking cancer while having cancer.
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