One thing that the Integral approach reminds us of constantly is that events are a four-quadrant affair which tetra-arise. For those not familiar with this lingo, it means that whatever arises in our lives comes about from the interaction of the following four manifestations: the individual singular, or the "I", that who feels, thinks, and possesses an executive function that we call the ego; the exterior of the individual, which reflect the habits, structures, behaviors, and organs of my insides; the culture in which I consider myself part of the "we" and which I follow perhaps subconsciously when it comes to taboos, norms, or mores; and the structure, function, and rules of the exterior of this collective, such as laws, systems, and medical protocols.
So how and why did I come to "win the cancer lottery" as one lung doctor told me?
Why were both cancers UNIQUE to the point that as of this moment, no one really knows what type of lung cancer it is?
How did I come to shift from deathly fear of my circumstance of imminent death to one of understanding my own bodily impermanence, and of being held by the understanding of the fact that I and we do not die, really, ever, from our essential beings?
I have no answers. I am adrift and afloat in the Mystery of life, but just as we understand that the substantiality of the water beneath us keeps us afloat, so I too have come to feel supported, regardless of the possibility of an imminent happy ending to my tale of two cancers. All of us meet death some time, after all, and to call someone a "cancer survivor", noted one curmudgeonly person, means that you wind up dying of something else.
What I do acknowledge is that after the body/mind/spiritual crushing years that I endured from the petty administrators after an honored 24 year teaching career, I had a major presencing of post-traumatic stress disorder. The PTSD did not, as I have noted, come from these attacks and attempts to crush me; they only re-ignited the prolonged stress that I had been under as I honored others' needs and ignored my own. I would be stopped in my tracks if anyone asked me, "But Lynne, what do YOU want?" It made me an excellent advocate as an attorney, since I could pour my heart and soul into another's salvation; I just had no idea that I had a right to save myself or to honor my personal needs.
Someone hypothesized that this type of personality "gets" cancer more than the narcissistic or balanced personality. I asked Ken Wilber about this issue directly. The scientific studies, he explained, might factor in a small percent of psychological causation as a co-factor with genetic mutations, so i cannot assume that I in any way "caused" either cancer to manifest.
But healing, he stated, is definitely influenced by the psyche.
There is no attraction to masochism within me. I hate having to go through pain. I cannot stand to suffer although I have learned to go deeply inward to avoid psychological or physical pain. It is what made meditation so natural for me. More likely than any desire to be hurt is the fact that I "put out" energy as a victim. When I see how I reacted to the humilitation and pain that followed the school harassment, I can in retrospect see how someone NOT attuned to being a victim would have acted forcefully and directly to stop the diminishment and ultimate negation of my contribution to and expertise within Integral education. So being a victim begets continued treatment as the victim.
How did I finally heal from this life-long syndrome? Enter my series of heros, to whom I owe so much.
After ineffective sessions with an social worker during the worst of the school's treatment of me, I reached out to a woman who listed herself as a Phoenix Rising instructor. I was so disconnected from my body that I realized that during meditation I conceived of my body as an empty turkey carcass---OUCH! I needed to finally ground myself in my body, and I called her for an appointment. Her name is Lorraine Antine, and I owe her the turning point in my healing, of body, mind, and spirit.
She realized that I had more going on than just a disconnect from my body, and began to work on the obvious PTSD that drove so many of my actions. She began doing a perfect Integral balance of body/mind/spirit reclamation of my true Self, which took 3 years to complete. My understandings of the complex and complicated interactions of my family of origin with the family I married into had to be retrained.
Both the instances of insanity and the powerful love from my family of origin had to be stitched together properly so that I could place them behind me in a supportive position. I came to rearrange my family, my ancestors, like bobsledders behind me with their arms wrapped around me, and then with me wrapped around Erica with her little "kidney bean" inside her right now. Thus I came to replicate the vision I had on the day I gave birth to her----I saw myself as the midpoint of my ancrestoral line going back into the mists of time, and then telescoping forward into the far reaches of the future. I touched the Life Force---the Eros and Agape that signal evolution and involution, manifestation and potentiality, no-death and no-birth.....
When I was at my most vulnerable in the hospital with that ugly staph infection under my skin, racked with fever and contemplating that I had but a few months left of my life, I spent hours in my room and in the hallway contemplating what I had been told by my oncologist and by the radiologist. But as I faced a truncated life ending in abject pain, I also "saw" my mom and dad hovering above me RAGING against any harm that might come to me. Their strong parental devotion and "momma and daddy grizzly" protective love felt so strong as it rushed through me that I had no doubt that their love was being directed to me at that moment.
I had time to muse about that breast cancer: it puzzled the doctors that although it showed up clearly on the mammogram, not one could "feel" it inside me. No matter how hard they palpated that breast, it felt as clean as the other. Strange.....What effect might all of this deep personal psychological work have had on that circumstance? I keep wondering.
My mother and her sister both had ductal carcinoma in their late 80s and early 90s. Both women had small lumpectomies followed by taking Tomaxafin (sp?) and I presumed that such a modest health event might come to me in my 90s as well. Hadn't the doctor put my "chances" of getting breast cancer at 16% a decade ago? I had felt so reassured that this was not something I really had to pay attention to, yet the absence of my left breast belied the encouraging statistics.
My thoughts, my musings, about my own cancer led me to the possibility that perhaps I felt that a debt had to be paid for switching from obedient servant to owner of her own life. I have considered that perhaps the sacrifice of a breast was the price I had to pay psychically to own and live the rest of my life. I had made such strides in owning my own body, my personal needs, and my non-ego-entranced self, and perhaps the Kosmos requires recompense.
Once the breast was gone, I really took little note of it---until the infection set in. I had come to identify with the Amazonian warriors and the 'goddess" who speaks of and to me, Athena. I do feel like the warrior, and since I have a hefty amount of competitive energy and a large life force, I feel stronger and more in charge of my life today than I did two months ago.
My style of dress has changed since the surgery as well. I thought perhaps it indicated a compensation for feeling mutilated as a female, but I now believe that the warrior spirit has come into me, and I intend to live into that feeling in every way. My mother at her most vital and healthiest was such a strong woman, a true force of nature.
So did this disease manifest from within that maternal bloodline to pass along the embodied warrior in charge of her own destiny, or is this merely a story I have concocted as a great chapter for a memoir??
The lung cancer is a really strange manifestation in every sense.
Once I knew I had cancer and hinted at the diagnosis on a listserv, a wonderful woman and author, Patricia Kay, reached out to me and asked if she might work with me on a cellular level. She is another hero who set in motion the shift that I underwent in the hospital, and that stays with me now as my Self-self.
By working on the smallest level of my interior, the cell, Patricia got me to plunge even deeper into the holon (whole-part)of which I am a part (and the dominant monad for Integral readers). I connected with the healthy cells; met and entered into the cancer cells; saw the entire orchestra of cells going about their business and differentiating the healthy from the diseased fellows. I entered into the noise that out of control cells might make, and how the healthy cells could build up barriers to the cancer cells, kill them off, and sweep them away. I came to feel empathy for my organs that were being taxed in dealing with this chaotic mass of disease, and comforted them as I thought that chemo was approaching to interrupt their brilliantly orchestrated working of my body.
I sailed through the mastectomy.
My mental state was strong and resiliant.
My loving other daughter, Andrea, an experienced LPN, came up to care for me, and she showed her expertise again and again in my care. This is another miracle, a story that might bring the reader to tears, but I will leave that one for another day.
Just trust me when I say that our loving mother/daughter relationship, where I am SO PROUD of her as nurse, wife, and mother, came from years of work, love, and forgiveness....
Friends and colleagues came through for me, and for the first time I was open to their love.
Of special note here are my two closest friends, both brilliant Integral minds, Joanne Rubin and Robin Reinach. More of them later...
And then came the confusing lung cancer scenario.
The radiologist had told me it might be small cell lung cancer with a 2 year life span. I might have a few months of tortured living left.
The oncologist thought it might be a rapidly metastasizing breast cancer in the lung. No more than 5 years expected for that scenario.
I dissembled......
I am now situated back in the hsopital in this retelling:
The 10th floor of Sloan-Kettering is devoted to women's cancer health issues such as breast, ovarian, cervical, and metastatic cancers.
It is my second time on this floor from Dec. 11-18th after the mastectomy Nov. 4th. I know the ropes.
The floor is a huge rectangle bisected by the medical staff, banks of phones and computers, and the bank of elevators. We women who can, trudge around in shuffling or brisk laps accompanied by our IV poles and monitors in an attempt to get some exercise. Some women meet eyes briefly, but for the most part, each woman is in her own space, her own reveries, fears, hopes, doubts, and so we walk...
I am walking around and around the rectangle, getting a bit dizzy, and I go off into a reverie.
I have but a few months to live, I fear. I cannot bear that thought.
Here again is the ultimate frustration of my life---EVERY DAMN TIME I GET A PROJECT GOING REALLY WELL, SOME EXTERNAL FACTOR MESSES IT UP AND CAUSES ME TO WITHDRAW FROM IT.
I could, but will not, detail examples of this dynamic from the past. Let's just deal with my present frustration and terror at the thought of death, be it months or 5 years from now.
My dream had been to create the first Integral Mentors and Ministers program, and now at One Spirit Learning Alliance thanks to Michael Pergola and others, we have a vibrant program started!
So what happens? I geet diagnosed with breast cancer the day the program begins.
And now that we have put so much love and preparation into this new ground-breaking program, where I became the first Integral Minister ever ordained, I will die before it develops to its potential.
My darling daughter, my only natural-born child, is pregnant. How divine! Except the child will never really remember me since I will be gone in a few months or before s/he turns 5.
I have a book that needs to be finished, and papers to be written for the journals that will never be manifested.
All this taken from me just as I have first tasted my essential self, just as I have righted soooo many years of emotional suffering! How could this be? So unfair!
I am walking, walking, around and around......
But what if.....what if I Do die before I get to fully create and refine the seminary program? Won't Joanne and Michael and Marc and Terry and Deborah be there to run it? So the entity that is really pissed off is my EGO, that I would not receive the kudos and ego gratification for having started it.
Let it go....
What about this precious little fetus growing within my daughter? Doesn't s/he have a great grandpa, and two marvelous, relaxed, and loving parents to raise this child? Of course. So what is really kicking and screaming "not fair"? My ego.
Let it go....
I did this with everything on my mental list of complaints.
With each letting go, I saw myself dropping a sheath off of my body to the floor...Until I found my little self standing before two giant oak doors, towering above my small self.
And then...
I floated away from that mental image. I felt as though I did not know anything, and it felt so freeing and good and light and right. I giggled to myself that I could not have answered any question put to me then with an answer other than "I don't know"....yet with a smile.
Some time during these walking torus I also envisioned my parents above me with that raging protective love letting me know that nothing would or could ever really harm me. And under them appeared a golden vibrating infinity sign.
I returned to my room unafraid, placid, free, rested, secure.....
More later. I am a bit spent right now in this retelling.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The Breast, the Lung, and the Tick
After my diagnosis of breast cancer and the mastectomy on Nov. 4, I opted for breast replacement surgery which begins the day of the surgery with the placement of a tissue expander next to my chest wall. Then over months saline is injected until the skin expands enough for the transplantation of my own abdominal tissue and blood vessels as a new breast.
As a result of the diagnosis I also underwent a bone and a tissue scan. Around Thanksgiving my oncologist called to tell me there was a spot on my lung that was probably nothing but required a lung biopsy. I went back to Sloan-Kettering for the biopsy Dec. 4. The radiologist confessed that he and the staff had been totally puzzled by the image on the scan and had no real idea what they were dealing with. It appeared as a ghostly image, totally translucent... Right before sending me to sleep I asked what his hunch was. He told me it was probably small cell lung cancer....and off I drifted...
Home later that night I looked up what that meant..it meant survival of 2 years.
Saturday Dec. 5 I got my hair cut very short in anticipation for my first chemo treatment Monday Dec. 6th. I was in such fear that ( I thought) I began to get cold sweats...
Monday I went off to my first chemo treatment. The nurse inserted the IV and showed me the door where i would receive the first influsion. Just then the oncologist entered and said that there would be no chemo, that the biopsy revealed that it was indeed lung cancer.
She took out the IV and sat me down. It was NOT small cell lung cancer. I was positively giddy at the reprieve. Then she told me that it was probably metastatic breast cancer that had traveled to my lung. I asked her what that meant in terms of survival. She said with luck, 5-10 years. The other "good news" I received is that chemo was now out of the question for me. I will be treated by hormone therapy since this breast cancer is very very sensitive to the use of hormone cessation pills to stop any new tumor growth.
Tuesday Dec. 8 I ran a fever and felt terrible. Flu-like virus, I thought.....No further news from the biopsy all week.
Sat. morning I woke to find my involved breast turning reddish. I waited until 10 pm to check it again. It was bright red and swelling. I called the plastic surgeon who instructed me to pack a bag for 3 days and get to the Sloan-Kettering ER immediately. I had cellulitis, an infection of the skin, common when a foreign object (the chest tissue expander) is placed into the body. 1 in 5 women getting reconstructive ssurgery get this condition.
By Tues, my condition had worsened. No antibiotic could stop the infection and I ran a fever continuously. I needed another surgery which I had by 4 pm. They took out the tissue expander, flushed the infection.....
I then spent 5 days recovering on heavy IV antibiotics.
But consider this---but for the lung cancer, I would have had that first shot of chemo which would have significantly decreased my infestion-fighting white bood cells. And unbenownst to anyone, I already had a raging internal infection of cellulitis inside me. They told me that my healthy immune system really dug in and protected me until I got to the hospital. That shot would have been fatal to me in trying to stave off the infection, or at least led to an ICU-level infection.
Wed. the lung cancer surgeon stopped by to introduce himself to me. He had preliminary results from the biopsy. It was NOT metastatic breast cancer. It was a sneaky early stage lung cancer probably from 2nd hand smoke from all the years in my father's house. Since it is translucent, it cannot be found on any x-ray. It only shows up on a body scan. Which you are only given if you already have cancer. I asked what would have happened if it had not been for the scan spotting it. He said it would have grown until it would have caused symptoms, andby then it would be too late. IOW, but for the breast cancer we would never have found the lung cancer....
He told me that I would have surgery this Jan. to get rid of it, then follwed by pills that will stop it from any further impact on my health. The surgery is done robotically thru 3 small cuts. I go home after 2-3 days with 3 band aids.
And then there was the tick.
On Wed. night as I prepared to shower, I thought I spotted a caraway seed on my arm. Except it was a tick. I knew how to get them out which I did, and then demanded preventative medicine. The next day they brought in a beautiful Lab dog to sniff out the room. Emma is the hospital's official bedbug and tick detector. No new ticks.
Tonight is Friday and I leave tomorrow at 10 am for home.
I have written this quickly and without analysis of the stage and state shifts I have gone through this week.
Your prayers and good intentions helped save me this week. I will add the spiritual context in a later post, but I wanted to get this up and public.
Blessings to you all.
As a result of the diagnosis I also underwent a bone and a tissue scan. Around Thanksgiving my oncologist called to tell me there was a spot on my lung that was probably nothing but required a lung biopsy. I went back to Sloan-Kettering for the biopsy Dec. 4. The radiologist confessed that he and the staff had been totally puzzled by the image on the scan and had no real idea what they were dealing with. It appeared as a ghostly image, totally translucent... Right before sending me to sleep I asked what his hunch was. He told me it was probably small cell lung cancer....and off I drifted...
Home later that night I looked up what that meant..it meant survival of 2 years.
Saturday Dec. 5 I got my hair cut very short in anticipation for my first chemo treatment Monday Dec. 6th. I was in such fear that ( I thought) I began to get cold sweats...
Monday I went off to my first chemo treatment. The nurse inserted the IV and showed me the door where i would receive the first influsion. Just then the oncologist entered and said that there would be no chemo, that the biopsy revealed that it was indeed lung cancer.
She took out the IV and sat me down. It was NOT small cell lung cancer. I was positively giddy at the reprieve. Then she told me that it was probably metastatic breast cancer that had traveled to my lung. I asked her what that meant in terms of survival. She said with luck, 5-10 years. The other "good news" I received is that chemo was now out of the question for me. I will be treated by hormone therapy since this breast cancer is very very sensitive to the use of hormone cessation pills to stop any new tumor growth.
Tuesday Dec. 8 I ran a fever and felt terrible. Flu-like virus, I thought.....No further news from the biopsy all week.
Sat. morning I woke to find my involved breast turning reddish. I waited until 10 pm to check it again. It was bright red and swelling. I called the plastic surgeon who instructed me to pack a bag for 3 days and get to the Sloan-Kettering ER immediately. I had cellulitis, an infection of the skin, common when a foreign object (the chest tissue expander) is placed into the body. 1 in 5 women getting reconstructive ssurgery get this condition.
By Tues, my condition had worsened. No antibiotic could stop the infection and I ran a fever continuously. I needed another surgery which I had by 4 pm. They took out the tissue expander, flushed the infection.....
I then spent 5 days recovering on heavy IV antibiotics.
But consider this---but for the lung cancer, I would have had that first shot of chemo which would have significantly decreased my infestion-fighting white bood cells. And unbenownst to anyone, I already had a raging internal infection of cellulitis inside me. They told me that my healthy immune system really dug in and protected me until I got to the hospital. That shot would have been fatal to me in trying to stave off the infection, or at least led to an ICU-level infection.
Wed. the lung cancer surgeon stopped by to introduce himself to me. He had preliminary results from the biopsy. It was NOT metastatic breast cancer. It was a sneaky early stage lung cancer probably from 2nd hand smoke from all the years in my father's house. Since it is translucent, it cannot be found on any x-ray. It only shows up on a body scan. Which you are only given if you already have cancer. I asked what would have happened if it had not been for the scan spotting it. He said it would have grown until it would have caused symptoms, andby then it would be too late. IOW, but for the breast cancer we would never have found the lung cancer....
He told me that I would have surgery this Jan. to get rid of it, then follwed by pills that will stop it from any further impact on my health. The surgery is done robotically thru 3 small cuts. I go home after 2-3 days with 3 band aids.
And then there was the tick.
On Wed. night as I prepared to shower, I thought I spotted a caraway seed on my arm. Except it was a tick. I knew how to get them out which I did, and then demanded preventative medicine. The next day they brought in a beautiful Lab dog to sniff out the room. Emma is the hospital's official bedbug and tick detector. No new ticks.
Tonight is Friday and I leave tomorrow at 10 am for home.
I have written this quickly and without analysis of the stage and state shifts I have gone through this week.
Your prayers and good intentions helped save me this week. I will add the spiritual context in a later post, but I wanted to get this up and public.
Blessings to you all.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
My Treatments--chemical, emotional, spiritual
Yesterday I had a panic attack.
Friday I had the lung biopsy which was nothing to fear. I felt nothing, and just had to stay there for 5 hours afterwards to make sure my left lung did not collapse.
But the radiologist who performed the biopsy left me with such red hot and freezing cold fear that I was incapacitated for 24 hours. He said he could not make out what that blotch was on the scan. He said it was 50/50 that it was small cell lung cancer. Ever the nosy kind, I looked it up and found out that it is a rare lung cancer seen only in 20% of cases, always among smokers (never smoked once in my life) and FATAL. Thanks for scaring the hell out of me.
I realize that Drs. at S-K are there FOR CANCER. I realize that they cannot afford to just cheerlead their patients since they do have to pronounce death sentences on some.
But for God's sake, how about giving me the other 50% probability??
I remained in hot/cold sweated fear, conceiving that my death would be measured in horrible pain-filled months. I could not stop shaking, and when I went out to lunchwith Erica and Simon (daughter and son-in-law) I shook so badly that I spilled juice and drinks all over the table.
Then I went off to get my hair cut very very short, awaiting the inevitable hair loss. Until the news of the lung spot was received, I had grieved more about my hair than anything related to treatment. My hair has always been a source of pride for me. Born a blondish red head, I have been told that blonds have more hair than other shades, and that I have 3x the follicles as other women. So although my hair does have a mind of its own, once handled by Rossana, my stylist, I feel as though I had had a complete makeover, and walk out of the salon feeling renewed.
Ro did a splendid job, giving me a pixie cut rather than a buzz, which would have looked ugly. With stylish long dangly earrings, i can pass for, well, OK. I will go retrieve my new wig this week, which makes me look like my "old self."
So what is the "old" and "new" self, this fiction?? It does not exist, and I really acknowledge that at this time:
Ken from One Taste, pp. 465--468
"The world is illusory, which means you are not any object at all---nothing that can be seen is ultimately real. You are neti, neti, not this, not that. And under no circumstances should you base4 your salvation on that which is finite, temporal, passing, illusory, suffering-enhancing and agony-inducing.
"Brahman alone is real, the Self...alone is real---the poure Witness, the timeless Unborn, the formless Seer, the radical I-I, radiant emptiness---is what is real and all that is real. It is your condition, your nature, your essence, your present and your future, your desire and your destiny, and yet it is always ever-present as pure Presence, the alone that is Alone....
"There is neither creation nor destruction,
Neither destiny nor free-will;
Neither path nor achievement;
This is the final truth." Ramana Maharshi
What led me to abandon my gentle abiding and go into a panic attack? Who panicked, and why? Fear of suffering imminently. Fear of dying before seeing my grandchildren. Fear of not-being. Obviously the small self, the ego, considered its death, and as always, set into motion more suffering.
I wish....I wish I had a belief system that provided me with a tale of a wondrous afterlife with angels and harps and cherubs and God and me chatting....But that system would havge to include every sentient being, and everyone behaving themselves! I suppose that is why we cordon off our belief in heavens...only "my" tribe can come into this heaven. But hey, have we ever gotten along with our whole tribe at any time??
But I do not have such a calming story. Much more do I demand of myself.....It is what I share with my "students" at Oner Spirit, yet in truth, I believe that we are all working to abide within IT which is already ever There with us.
At some point yesterday I "popped" out of the panic attack. It had a beginning, a middle, and and end. It was not "me", it was an emotion which my clever daughter fed back to me. God girl!! She is listening and thinking and absorbing!!
I then spent the rest of the day back where I have been all along, Athena, Amazonian one-breasted warrior woman. So how do I explain what happened for those hours of melt-down? And how do I learn to live into those times, learn from them, and short-circuit their appearance?
Ken from One Taste, p. 533
" Resting int that Freedom and Emptiness---and inmpartially witnessing all that arises--you will notice that the separate-self (or ego) simply arises in consciousness like everything else. You can actually feel the self-contraction, just like you can feel your legs....The self-contraction is a feeling of interior tension, often localized behind the eyes, and anchored in a slight muscle tension throughout the bodymind. It is an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world. It is a subtle whole-body tension,. Simply notice this tension.
"Once people have become comfortable resting as the empty Witness, and once they notice the tension that is the self-contraction, they imagine that...they have to get rid of the self-contraction....Just that is the second mistake, because it actually locks the self-contraction firmly into place....
"The only thing that wants to get rid of the ego is the ego. Spirit loves everything that arises, just as it is....
"But the ego, convinced that it can become even more entrenched, decides to play the game of getting rid of itself----simply because, as long as it is playing that game, it obviously continues to exist (who else is playing the game?)...."
"and so, the practice? Whe3n you rest in the Witness, or rest in I-I, or rest in emptiness, simply notice the self-contraction. Rest in the Witness, and feel the self-contraction. When you feel the self-contraction, you are already free of it...."
And that is precisely what I did yesterday. I went into the icy hot contraction radiataing out of my stomach and manifesting into cold sweat. I noticed it.
And popped out of the panic attack.
Tomorrow I drive down to Basking Ridge, NJ to S-K's beautiful regional out patient center amidst a corporate campus surrounded by forests and streams. They have come to understand the effect of enviornment on the body-mind intersection. The main campus hospital in NYC is furnished tastefully with enough to drink and munch that you can imagine sitting in the Continental Lounge at Newark awaiting a flight. The outpatient center is tranquil, open, with fish tanks and areas to sit and do work looking out of the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the woods. Last time I was there I saw a hawk fly by the entire lenth of the room...gorgeous creature....
I understand that each treatment center is a little cubicle that provides ultimate privacy so that I do not sit in a line similar to a hair salon with a row of women under the dryers, or in this case, hooked up to IVs. I'm supposed to brting a bag of snacks, lots of water, and things to keep me busy during the--I think--1 1/2 hrs. I will be there.
I will bring Ken's and Patricia's book and read them. They are my tutors, my reminders.
Friday I had the lung biopsy which was nothing to fear. I felt nothing, and just had to stay there for 5 hours afterwards to make sure my left lung did not collapse.
But the radiologist who performed the biopsy left me with such red hot and freezing cold fear that I was incapacitated for 24 hours. He said he could not make out what that blotch was on the scan. He said it was 50/50 that it was small cell lung cancer. Ever the nosy kind, I looked it up and found out that it is a rare lung cancer seen only in 20% of cases, always among smokers (never smoked once in my life) and FATAL. Thanks for scaring the hell out of me.
I realize that Drs. at S-K are there FOR CANCER. I realize that they cannot afford to just cheerlead their patients since they do have to pronounce death sentences on some.
But for God's sake, how about giving me the other 50% probability??
I remained in hot/cold sweated fear, conceiving that my death would be measured in horrible pain-filled months. I could not stop shaking, and when I went out to lunchwith Erica and Simon (daughter and son-in-law) I shook so badly that I spilled juice and drinks all over the table.
Then I went off to get my hair cut very very short, awaiting the inevitable hair loss. Until the news of the lung spot was received, I had grieved more about my hair than anything related to treatment. My hair has always been a source of pride for me. Born a blondish red head, I have been told that blonds have more hair than other shades, and that I have 3x the follicles as other women. So although my hair does have a mind of its own, once handled by Rossana, my stylist, I feel as though I had had a complete makeover, and walk out of the salon feeling renewed.
Ro did a splendid job, giving me a pixie cut rather than a buzz, which would have looked ugly. With stylish long dangly earrings, i can pass for, well, OK. I will go retrieve my new wig this week, which makes me look like my "old self."
So what is the "old" and "new" self, this fiction?? It does not exist, and I really acknowledge that at this time:
Ken from One Taste, pp. 465--468
"The world is illusory, which means you are not any object at all---nothing that can be seen is ultimately real. You are neti, neti, not this, not that. And under no circumstances should you base4 your salvation on that which is finite, temporal, passing, illusory, suffering-enhancing and agony-inducing.
"Brahman alone is real, the Self...alone is real---the poure Witness, the timeless Unborn, the formless Seer, the radical I-I, radiant emptiness---is what is real and all that is real. It is your condition, your nature, your essence, your present and your future, your desire and your destiny, and yet it is always ever-present as pure Presence, the alone that is Alone....
"There is neither creation nor destruction,
Neither destiny nor free-will;
Neither path nor achievement;
This is the final truth." Ramana Maharshi
What led me to abandon my gentle abiding and go into a panic attack? Who panicked, and why? Fear of suffering imminently. Fear of dying before seeing my grandchildren. Fear of not-being. Obviously the small self, the ego, considered its death, and as always, set into motion more suffering.
I wish....I wish I had a belief system that provided me with a tale of a wondrous afterlife with angels and harps and cherubs and God and me chatting....But that system would havge to include every sentient being, and everyone behaving themselves! I suppose that is why we cordon off our belief in heavens...only "my" tribe can come into this heaven. But hey, have we ever gotten along with our whole tribe at any time??
But I do not have such a calming story. Much more do I demand of myself.....It is what I share with my "students" at Oner Spirit, yet in truth, I believe that we are all working to abide within IT which is already ever There with us.
At some point yesterday I "popped" out of the panic attack. It had a beginning, a middle, and and end. It was not "me", it was an emotion which my clever daughter fed back to me. God girl!! She is listening and thinking and absorbing!!
I then spent the rest of the day back where I have been all along, Athena, Amazonian one-breasted warrior woman. So how do I explain what happened for those hours of melt-down? And how do I learn to live into those times, learn from them, and short-circuit their appearance?
Ken from One Taste, p. 533
" Resting int that Freedom and Emptiness---and inmpartially witnessing all that arises--you will notice that the separate-self (or ego) simply arises in consciousness like everything else. You can actually feel the self-contraction, just like you can feel your legs....The self-contraction is a feeling of interior tension, often localized behind the eyes, and anchored in a slight muscle tension throughout the bodymind. It is an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world. It is a subtle whole-body tension,. Simply notice this tension.
"Once people have become comfortable resting as the empty Witness, and once they notice the tension that is the self-contraction, they imagine that...they have to get rid of the self-contraction....Just that is the second mistake, because it actually locks the self-contraction firmly into place....
"The only thing that wants to get rid of the ego is the ego. Spirit loves everything that arises, just as it is....
"But the ego, convinced that it can become even more entrenched, decides to play the game of getting rid of itself----simply because, as long as it is playing that game, it obviously continues to exist (who else is playing the game?)...."
"and so, the practice? Whe3n you rest in the Witness, or rest in I-I, or rest in emptiness, simply notice the self-contraction. Rest in the Witness, and feel the self-contraction. When you feel the self-contraction, you are already free of it...."
And that is precisely what I did yesterday. I went into the icy hot contraction radiataing out of my stomach and manifesting into cold sweat. I noticed it.
And popped out of the panic attack.
Tomorrow I drive down to Basking Ridge, NJ to S-K's beautiful regional out patient center amidst a corporate campus surrounded by forests and streams. They have come to understand the effect of enviornment on the body-mind intersection. The main campus hospital in NYC is furnished tastefully with enough to drink and munch that you can imagine sitting in the Continental Lounge at Newark awaiting a flight. The outpatient center is tranquil, open, with fish tanks and areas to sit and do work looking out of the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the woods. Last time I was there I saw a hawk fly by the entire lenth of the room...gorgeous creature....
I understand that each treatment center is a little cubicle that provides ultimate privacy so that I do not sit in a line similar to a hair salon with a row of women under the dryers, or in this case, hooked up to IVs. I'm supposed to brting a bag of snacks, lots of water, and things to keep me busy during the--I think--1 1/2 hrs. I will be there.
I will bring Ken's and Patricia's book and read them. They are my tutors, my reminders.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Into the Tunnel
I am approaching two events with much trepidation: Friday I must return to Sloan-Kettering for a biopsy under local anesthesia of a spot on my lung discovered in a body scan some 2 weeks ago. My oncologist, Dr. Graham, is not terribly alarmed, since 70% of these spots are benign. But then again, I was told that 80% of people with my mammogram do not have cancer. Statistics really do nothing other than tell me what a group of "others" tallied, and do little to speak of me individually.
I fear the years with my family when my father chain-smoked. We would drive for days during our summer vacations with me gasping for breath in the car as he smoked away. I recall my doctor when I was 10 showing me an x-ray of my lungs and seeing that they looked like a patch-work quilt of whites and deepening shades of grey. He exhorted me never to smoke, since my lungs were already so damaged, and I followed his caution. But today 2nd hand smoke kills hundreds of thousands. Will I be one of them? After 5 years, the survival rate for lung cancer is 15%. I am sympton-free, and this spot never showed up on any x-ray; does that auger well, or is that a neutral fact? Can lung cancer ever be caught "early enough" to have a positive prognosis? I have returned to the cancer roller-coaster at UncertainPark, where every ride is a lethal risk and the finish line is either safety for a few more years or a death sentence with a known terminus.
I have a grandchild or two safely nested within my daughter, so I learned on Thanksgiving. Will I be alive long enough for this child to remember me, or will I be the grandma who is too ill to play with, a woman haggard and drawn, lying on a sofa, until she passes, and the little one fears seeing her?
Death is on my mind, again. I cannot see into the fog to get any clear sense of my destiny. I am soooo way past "why me" that I see balanced scales that can tip either way. I am not immune, no magical thinking will help me escape even long enough to accept the "you'll be just fine, I just know it" from friends. Even they have moderated their hopes for me recently by sayuing they will be praying for me; and I am no longer shy about asking for their prayers. PLEASE pray, I am scared, I can do nothing to aid myself beyond what I am doing, and I so value the community's support at this time.
I wish I could cut-paste portions of the forum at cancer.org. It appears to be a safe venue for women to express their open and authentic feelings. One woman actually laughed and directed us to read her chipper and upbeat blog, and then remarked that this was the only place where she could be her real self, and could vent her fear, pain, and honest questions. One woman, an Orthodox Jew, told us that although she has worn a wig since the day she was married, she still had a terrible emotional reaction to losing her hair. There is a venue on the site for Stage IV cancers, the women with Treya's diagnosis, and some of them are still alive at this point after 5 years. The statistics speak of no progress with Stage IV, but even these survivors give all of us a whisp of hope, wherever we might be on ther cancer grid.
What am I doing during this time of not-knowing, which is a bit more serious than the normal state of not-knowing? I have worked so hard over the past 3 years to recover from life-long PTSD. I have confronted my own personal nightmares, freed up energy for more Persephonic (how is THAT for an adjective??) dives into the underworld of my own creation.
Last night my fear of having lung cancer unearthed a felt-sense of a familial tie. First I had connected the dots between the breast cancer and the toxic aspects of my maternal lineage. Then last night my insight revealed that my dad and his unanswerable grief over his life has been lodged in my lungs. When I felt into that terrible and lonely grief, I felt a wave of hot, hot energy begin in my 5th chakra and radiate up, filling my head and exiting my crown chakra. That was followed by great quiet and emptiness...
I continue to dig. I continue doing vipassana with the Witness, on a moment by moment basis. I continue reality-chcking my personal story line, my self-created narrative, and seeing into the pervasive negativity. This permits me to reframe as I did today with my hopelessness, which has been my personal salvation against chronic disappointment and crippling suffering throughout my life. No one who knows the full extent of my life has ever denied that it has been one of personal, generational, and cultural suffering. It is hard for me to look that totality head-on, but I have been counseled to do just that. No spiritual bypass this time. LOOK INTO IT ALL.
Yet with all that duly noted, I am free, freed from the nightmares, accepting of the responsibility for my own stubbornness in refusing to comply with the authorities' inane demands on me at work. I had lunch with 2 school friends today, both now retired. We shared stories of the "old boys' club" functioning, of the scared fragile "little men" who run the place and the departments, who are so obviously at very low stages of ego development that they see any move by the females to work for the betterment of the school as a direct attack on their "power". It appears to be endemic throughout the school, and I wonder if the same pattern repeats throughout much of k-12 in the US.
Check out 12/1/10's Tom Friedman's Op Ed piece in the NY Times today----he has a marvelous satirical piece on what a WikiChina dump of cables between their embassy in D.C. and Beijing might read like. See, it's all about our appearance rather than our reality, he notes. Obama gets trashed by Palin and Huckabee for not acknowledging our national exceptionalism, even as it evaporates as quickly as the Alaska ice sheets. Congress knows what is true in the LL and what should be enacted in the LR, yet refuses to do so lest they fail to be gifted with the corporate billions that permit them to buy more airtime so they can tell more blatant lies about their opponent than their opponent can launch. We can't get out of Afghanistan which costs us $170 million per day because then Obama and the Dems will be labeled as wimps and will not get the cotrporate billions to throw away in the next election cycle. So let me get this straight-----they cannot DO anything, really, because it might risk their ability to get corporate billions to throw away on their attempt to get re-elected and continue getting corporate billions for the next election cycle so they can return to Congress where they cannot do anything substantive or else they will not get corporate billions...... Hmmmm.
The marvelous book Idiot America says it best: we are fighting all the wrong battles...Nothing of substance can ever be debated rationally any longer. We are again in a raging period of anti-intellectualism, except science can indeed reflect certain parts of reality with far more truth thaqn ever before, and instead of moderating it with valid UL and LL wisdom tradition offerings, we get magical thinking and pre-rational beliefs touted above science or conflated "as" science..
So biopsy Friday, I either have lung cancer or do not....Then Monday I begin chemotherapy and begin losing my hair which grieves me as well. Then Tuesday a return to S-K for a shot that will result in severe bone pain. That will be followed by my body's idiosyncratic reaction to the toxins sent in like LF's SWAT team to track down errant and out of control cells that escaped surgery.
I haven't even gone into the whole breast reconstruction issue. That will come after I get through the next week.
I AM thankful that I had the mammo that led to the biopsy that led me to S-K that led me to a great surgeon that led me to a great reconstructive plastic surgeon that led me to a caring oncologist. Consider the alternative, Rick reminds me.
So what are the themes of this post?
Authenticity and how difficult our culture makes it for us to reach self-truth.
Meeting the truth-claims of all four quadrants, and the cultural inability or refusal to reach rational and/or post-rational analyses.
The difficulty of holding onto worldcentric perspectives when our institutions are governed by those with egocentric world-views.
I fear the years with my family when my father chain-smoked. We would drive for days during our summer vacations with me gasping for breath in the car as he smoked away. I recall my doctor when I was 10 showing me an x-ray of my lungs and seeing that they looked like a patch-work quilt of whites and deepening shades of grey. He exhorted me never to smoke, since my lungs were already so damaged, and I followed his caution. But today 2nd hand smoke kills hundreds of thousands. Will I be one of them? After 5 years, the survival rate for lung cancer is 15%. I am sympton-free, and this spot never showed up on any x-ray; does that auger well, or is that a neutral fact? Can lung cancer ever be caught "early enough" to have a positive prognosis? I have returned to the cancer roller-coaster at UncertainPark, where every ride is a lethal risk and the finish line is either safety for a few more years or a death sentence with a known terminus.
I have a grandchild or two safely nested within my daughter, so I learned on Thanksgiving. Will I be alive long enough for this child to remember me, or will I be the grandma who is too ill to play with, a woman haggard and drawn, lying on a sofa, until she passes, and the little one fears seeing her?
Death is on my mind, again. I cannot see into the fog to get any clear sense of my destiny. I am soooo way past "why me" that I see balanced scales that can tip either way. I am not immune, no magical thinking will help me escape even long enough to accept the "you'll be just fine, I just know it" from friends. Even they have moderated their hopes for me recently by sayuing they will be praying for me; and I am no longer shy about asking for their prayers. PLEASE pray, I am scared, I can do nothing to aid myself beyond what I am doing, and I so value the community's support at this time.
I wish I could cut-paste portions of the forum at cancer.org. It appears to be a safe venue for women to express their open and authentic feelings. One woman actually laughed and directed us to read her chipper and upbeat blog, and then remarked that this was the only place where she could be her real self, and could vent her fear, pain, and honest questions. One woman, an Orthodox Jew, told us that although she has worn a wig since the day she was married, she still had a terrible emotional reaction to losing her hair. There is a venue on the site for Stage IV cancers, the women with Treya's diagnosis, and some of them are still alive at this point after 5 years. The statistics speak of no progress with Stage IV, but even these survivors give all of us a whisp of hope, wherever we might be on ther cancer grid.
What am I doing during this time of not-knowing, which is a bit more serious than the normal state of not-knowing? I have worked so hard over the past 3 years to recover from life-long PTSD. I have confronted my own personal nightmares, freed up energy for more Persephonic (how is THAT for an adjective??) dives into the underworld of my own creation.
Last night my fear of having lung cancer unearthed a felt-sense of a familial tie. First I had connected the dots between the breast cancer and the toxic aspects of my maternal lineage. Then last night my insight revealed that my dad and his unanswerable grief over his life has been lodged in my lungs. When I felt into that terrible and lonely grief, I felt a wave of hot, hot energy begin in my 5th chakra and radiate up, filling my head and exiting my crown chakra. That was followed by great quiet and emptiness...
I continue to dig. I continue doing vipassana with the Witness, on a moment by moment basis. I continue reality-chcking my personal story line, my self-created narrative, and seeing into the pervasive negativity. This permits me to reframe as I did today with my hopelessness, which has been my personal salvation against chronic disappointment and crippling suffering throughout my life. No one who knows the full extent of my life has ever denied that it has been one of personal, generational, and cultural suffering. It is hard for me to look that totality head-on, but I have been counseled to do just that. No spiritual bypass this time. LOOK INTO IT ALL.
Yet with all that duly noted, I am free, freed from the nightmares, accepting of the responsibility for my own stubbornness in refusing to comply with the authorities' inane demands on me at work. I had lunch with 2 school friends today, both now retired. We shared stories of the "old boys' club" functioning, of the scared fragile "little men" who run the place and the departments, who are so obviously at very low stages of ego development that they see any move by the females to work for the betterment of the school as a direct attack on their "power". It appears to be endemic throughout the school, and I wonder if the same pattern repeats throughout much of k-12 in the US.
Check out 12/1/10's Tom Friedman's Op Ed piece in the NY Times today----he has a marvelous satirical piece on what a WikiChina dump of cables between their embassy in D.C. and Beijing might read like. See, it's all about our appearance rather than our reality, he notes. Obama gets trashed by Palin and Huckabee for not acknowledging our national exceptionalism, even as it evaporates as quickly as the Alaska ice sheets. Congress knows what is true in the LL and what should be enacted in the LR, yet refuses to do so lest they fail to be gifted with the corporate billions that permit them to buy more airtime so they can tell more blatant lies about their opponent than their opponent can launch. We can't get out of Afghanistan which costs us $170 million per day because then Obama and the Dems will be labeled as wimps and will not get the cotrporate billions to throw away in the next election cycle. So let me get this straight-----they cannot DO anything, really, because it might risk their ability to get corporate billions to throw away on their attempt to get re-elected and continue getting corporate billions for the next election cycle so they can return to Congress where they cannot do anything substantive or else they will not get corporate billions...... Hmmmm.
The marvelous book Idiot America says it best: we are fighting all the wrong battles...Nothing of substance can ever be debated rationally any longer. We are again in a raging period of anti-intellectualism, except science can indeed reflect certain parts of reality with far more truth thaqn ever before, and instead of moderating it with valid UL and LL wisdom tradition offerings, we get magical thinking and pre-rational beliefs touted above science or conflated "as" science..
So biopsy Friday, I either have lung cancer or do not....Then Monday I begin chemotherapy and begin losing my hair which grieves me as well. Then Tuesday a return to S-K for a shot that will result in severe bone pain. That will be followed by my body's idiosyncratic reaction to the toxins sent in like LF's SWAT team to track down errant and out of control cells that escaped surgery.
I haven't even gone into the whole breast reconstruction issue. That will come after I get through the next week.
I AM thankful that I had the mammo that led to the biopsy that led me to S-K that led me to a great surgeon that led me to a great reconstructive plastic surgeon that led me to a caring oncologist. Consider the alternative, Rick reminds me.
So what are the themes of this post?
Authenticity and how difficult our culture makes it for us to reach self-truth.
Meeting the truth-claims of all four quadrants, and the cultural inability or refusal to reach rational and/or post-rational analyses.
The difficulty of holding onto worldcentric perspectives when our institutions are governed by those with egocentric world-views.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
New Experiences and Insights
It has been fascinating for me to read Pink Ribbon Blues through an Integral lens. Her message has reached into today's NY Times magazine section, the most succinct part being that the pink ribbon culture has no place for the "other" reality: the dying, the ones suffering during treatment, the scared.....The only "proper" way to experience breast cancer is to be sexy, flirty, girl-ishly feminine, victorious over cancer, never doubting your victory, spunky, running races while not whining----oh yes, they give out t-shirts at the races saying "no whining". I have so appreciated her outing this denial of the dark side of a disease that relentlessly kills 48,000 American women a year.
Yet it is true but partial.
She decries the pressure on women to "grow" from the illness, to find transformative elements within its ugly grip. Yes, we cannot put any type of pressure on women, yet growth can indeed spring from this medical trauma, just as a death in a family can reconfigure their relationships.
Where I depart from her warning is that growth and transformation can be offered as possibilities, as openings, not in some magical sense, but as glimmers of hope that can be courted during the depressing sequence of living with cancer. Let it be a treasure hunt, not like "making lemonade out of lemons" which cannot happen if you have no water or sugar at hand. Let it widen the woman's personal perspectives. Can this be the time to leave the abusive husband without stirring up negative feedback from family members? Can this be the time to nurture herself for the first time, without feeling guilty? Can she talk back to people or become more assertive on her own behalf? Might she be freed to reach out to reconcile with those estranged from her?
This aweful experience has permitted a reconfiguration and a happy ending to a very sad decades-long estrangement. I do not wish to go into details, except to say that a happy ending could never have been rationally predicted 20 years ago.
This aweful experience has permitted my communication with my maternal female cousin for only thre 2nd time in our lives. She has had several breast cancer scares, and I shared my diagnosis with her so that she could share it with her doctor. She now signs her cards, "Love". Possible at any time prior to this? No.
This aweful situation has permitted me to face the end of my deep acceptance of a very sad life story that I had embodied within me.
When I was about 16 I read the book The Last of the Just, which recounts a myth that there were 36 honorable Jewish men over the generatrions who took upon themselves the suffering of the Jewish people. When the last of the just Jews died suffering, it would end the tribal history of victimization and historic oppression. I immediately identified with the last young man and deeply incoprorated his plight with my life. As I discovered meditation, my deep times brought up that tale as my own, and I "saw" cleawrly that my role was to selflessly give up my own life to assist my mother and her sisters through their lives. I accepted this "deep wisdom". I was the sacrificial lamb so that the family might be freed in some way. I knew that my daughter would not carry on this tragic legacy.
I went through surgery without looking back or regretting the loss of a breast. Onward....Yet in my deep unconscious I saw myself offering my own body part as a blood sacrifice upon an ancient altar, and thus I had finally paid off the generational and tribal debt. In my meditations I saw myself turning away from the altar and walking into a freer future, although that future contains some terrible possibilities in the nearer future.
I sat readfing Dr. Susan Love's breast book at last, looking at pictures describing what had been done to me on the operating table. I then figured I'd best read the chapter about metasteses....I read it straight through...towards the end of the chapter, a gnertly abiding version of my voice within my head commented to me, "Don't bother reading this. It will not happen to you." At that moment my crown chakra opened and I was suffused with warm golden light throughout my body.
Nothing like this has ever happened to me. Ever. I am not the "type" who ever gets voices or openings of chakras or golden warm light flowing through me.
p. 81, Grace and Grit: "The mystical experience is indeed ineffable, or not capable of being entirely put into words. Like any experience...one has to have the actual experience to see what it's like....
Mystical experiences are in principle no more certain than any other direct experiences. But far from pulluing down the mystics' claims, that argument actually elevates their claims to a status equal to all other experiential knowledge, a status I would definitely accept....
How do we find out [what they mean]? We check it out against more experience----which is also exactly what the mystics have historically done, checking and refining their experiences over the decades.....a track record that makes modern science look like a johnny-come-lately."
So I did just that, to my two Integral experts, and we were able to match it up against the mystical wisdom traditions.
HOWEVER....
Ken cautions that we must first begin at the bottom---the bodily level-- and exhaust those causes before we then proceed upward to any possible emotional causes, then mental, then spiritual.
p. 259: "What is not helpful is taking the fact that these psychological and spiritual aspects can be very useful, and then saying that the reason you broke your legs is that you lacked these psychological and spiritual facets in the first place. A person suffering any major illness may make significant and profound changes in the face of that illness; it doers not follow that they got the illness because they lacked those changes."
And we cannot, and dare not, presume that our thoughts or psychological state caused this major illness.
p. 260: "All things considered, then, psychological mood plays some part in every illness. And that component should be exercised to the maximum..." [my ital.]
Yet I hold all of this lightly, since science can't figure out whether eggs are good for us or not.
Yet it is true but partial.
She decries the pressure on women to "grow" from the illness, to find transformative elements within its ugly grip. Yes, we cannot put any type of pressure on women, yet growth can indeed spring from this medical trauma, just as a death in a family can reconfigure their relationships.
Where I depart from her warning is that growth and transformation can be offered as possibilities, as openings, not in some magical sense, but as glimmers of hope that can be courted during the depressing sequence of living with cancer. Let it be a treasure hunt, not like "making lemonade out of lemons" which cannot happen if you have no water or sugar at hand. Let it widen the woman's personal perspectives. Can this be the time to leave the abusive husband without stirring up negative feedback from family members? Can this be the time to nurture herself for the first time, without feeling guilty? Can she talk back to people or become more assertive on her own behalf? Might she be freed to reach out to reconcile with those estranged from her?
This aweful experience has permitted a reconfiguration and a happy ending to a very sad decades-long estrangement. I do not wish to go into details, except to say that a happy ending could never have been rationally predicted 20 years ago.
This aweful experience has permitted my communication with my maternal female cousin for only thre 2nd time in our lives. She has had several breast cancer scares, and I shared my diagnosis with her so that she could share it with her doctor. She now signs her cards, "Love". Possible at any time prior to this? No.
This aweful situation has permitted me to face the end of my deep acceptance of a very sad life story that I had embodied within me.
When I was about 16 I read the book The Last of the Just, which recounts a myth that there were 36 honorable Jewish men over the generatrions who took upon themselves the suffering of the Jewish people. When the last of the just Jews died suffering, it would end the tribal history of victimization and historic oppression. I immediately identified with the last young man and deeply incoprorated his plight with my life. As I discovered meditation, my deep times brought up that tale as my own, and I "saw" cleawrly that my role was to selflessly give up my own life to assist my mother and her sisters through their lives. I accepted this "deep wisdom". I was the sacrificial lamb so that the family might be freed in some way. I knew that my daughter would not carry on this tragic legacy.
I went through surgery without looking back or regretting the loss of a breast. Onward....Yet in my deep unconscious I saw myself offering my own body part as a blood sacrifice upon an ancient altar, and thus I had finally paid off the generational and tribal debt. In my meditations I saw myself turning away from the altar and walking into a freer future, although that future contains some terrible possibilities in the nearer future.
I sat readfing Dr. Susan Love's breast book at last, looking at pictures describing what had been done to me on the operating table. I then figured I'd best read the chapter about metasteses....I read it straight through...towards the end of the chapter, a gnertly abiding version of my voice within my head commented to me, "Don't bother reading this. It will not happen to you." At that moment my crown chakra opened and I was suffused with warm golden light throughout my body.
Nothing like this has ever happened to me. Ever. I am not the "type" who ever gets voices or openings of chakras or golden warm light flowing through me.
p. 81, Grace and Grit: "The mystical experience is indeed ineffable, or not capable of being entirely put into words. Like any experience...one has to have the actual experience to see what it's like....
Mystical experiences are in principle no more certain than any other direct experiences. But far from pulluing down the mystics' claims, that argument actually elevates their claims to a status equal to all other experiential knowledge, a status I would definitely accept....
How do we find out [what they mean]? We check it out against more experience----which is also exactly what the mystics have historically done, checking and refining their experiences over the decades.....a track record that makes modern science look like a johnny-come-lately."
So I did just that, to my two Integral experts, and we were able to match it up against the mystical wisdom traditions.
HOWEVER....
Ken cautions that we must first begin at the bottom---the bodily level-- and exhaust those causes before we then proceed upward to any possible emotional causes, then mental, then spiritual.
p. 259: "What is not helpful is taking the fact that these psychological and spiritual aspects can be very useful, and then saying that the reason you broke your legs is that you lacked these psychological and spiritual facets in the first place. A person suffering any major illness may make significant and profound changes in the face of that illness; it doers not follow that they got the illness because they lacked those changes."
And we cannot, and dare not, presume that our thoughts or psychological state caused this major illness.
p. 260: "All things considered, then, psychological mood plays some part in every illness. And that component should be exercised to the maximum..." [my ital.]
Yet I hold all of this lightly, since science can't figure out whether eggs are good for us or not.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
WHAT Do I Call Myself?
There is a fascinating sociological evolutionary arc within the cancer world. There is either the masculine or the feminine archetypes, and now for the women it is "both/and". Yet I am not sure if this is progress, and I am searching for a new term to self-describe.
Using Lance Armstrong as the masculine archetype, we see the adrenaline/testosterone fueled rush of the challenge to succeed in dominating his opponent, which in his mission statement for his foundation LIVESTRONG is not just about cancer.
from Pink Ribbon Blues p. 83: "Masculine ideals encourage men to render their illnesses invisible, or heroically transform them into social capital...he paints a portrait of himself that acknowledges his cancer diagnosis and treatment while obscuring its reality beneath heroism and an almost inhuman capacity."
Breast cancer, on the other hand, has been culturally transformed into a lifestyle where everyone is/can be involved permanently.
"Warrior? Survivor? Supporter? Which One Are You?" comes from a 2007 community breast cancer walk which reflects the attitude that evereyone should be involved in a communal manner, and since warrior is mentioned first, there is the implicit bias toward that role. What is ironic on multiple levels is that the overt values of self-empowerment have implicit cultural demands that the cancer patient submit to inhabit a specific role. If she does not wear 5" heels to her chemotherapy, then she has violated the norm of being a "she-ro", and does not deserve to be part of the pink ribbon culture.
What is wrong with the pink ribbon campaign? Doesn't it advocate yearly mammograms that save lives? Actually, we find out that yearly mammograms are not saving numerous lives, although it did save mine! And it diverts attention and funding and research from the critical areas of finding out what will prevent and cure the disease. And some of the biggest sponsors of the pink culture are sponsors of activities that actually do show an impact on the increased chances of getting breast cancer.
p. 105: "Playing on generational differences between the second and third feminist waves, pink ribbon culture declares women's empowerment through the use of she-roism, a homogenized version of women's advocacy coupled with mass-mediaterd consumption."
I believe that masculine archetypes play on 1 PP of the hero transcending and excluding his disease/foe in order to maintain his heroic posture of strength.
I can sense that feminine archetypes here are playing on 2 PP of an unaltered, unmaimed, humorous and lively feminine woman who submits to the communal role of the she-ro.
More on archetypes tomorrow.
Using Lance Armstrong as the masculine archetype, we see the adrenaline/testosterone fueled rush of the challenge to succeed in dominating his opponent, which in his mission statement for his foundation LIVESTRONG is not just about cancer.
from Pink Ribbon Blues p. 83: "Masculine ideals encourage men to render their illnesses invisible, or heroically transform them into social capital...he paints a portrait of himself that acknowledges his cancer diagnosis and treatment while obscuring its reality beneath heroism and an almost inhuman capacity."
Breast cancer, on the other hand, has been culturally transformed into a lifestyle where everyone is/can be involved permanently.
"Warrior? Survivor? Supporter? Which One Are You?" comes from a 2007 community breast cancer walk which reflects the attitude that evereyone should be involved in a communal manner, and since warrior is mentioned first, there is the implicit bias toward that role. What is ironic on multiple levels is that the overt values of self-empowerment have implicit cultural demands that the cancer patient submit to inhabit a specific role. If she does not wear 5" heels to her chemotherapy, then she has violated the norm of being a "she-ro", and does not deserve to be part of the pink ribbon culture.
What is wrong with the pink ribbon campaign? Doesn't it advocate yearly mammograms that save lives? Actually, we find out that yearly mammograms are not saving numerous lives, although it did save mine! And it diverts attention and funding and research from the critical areas of finding out what will prevent and cure the disease. And some of the biggest sponsors of the pink culture are sponsors of activities that actually do show an impact on the increased chances of getting breast cancer.
p. 105: "Playing on generational differences between the second and third feminist waves, pink ribbon culture declares women's empowerment through the use of she-roism, a homogenized version of women's advocacy coupled with mass-mediaterd consumption."
I believe that masculine archetypes play on 1 PP of the hero transcending and excluding his disease/foe in order to maintain his heroic posture of strength.
I can sense that feminine archetypes here are playing on 2 PP of an unaltered, unmaimed, humorous and lively feminine woman who submits to the communal role of the she-ro.
More on archetypes tomorrow.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Post-surgery
Andrea, Rick, and I entered Sloan-Kettering (SK) at 5:45 a.m. right on time. I had no fear, no tension. Inhabiting the "now", I was with those whom I love and trust, and it was a good feeling to know that they surrounded me, in addition to others who knew how today would challenge me. I was taken into the pre-surgical area pretty quickly where I changed into a gown and they started an IV. Andrea and Rick came in, we chatted briefly, and then Andrea came in with me to the anesthesiologist, a lovely young woman.
Andrea has been a golden halo for me. Not oinly is she a solid citizen who has a weide-open heart, but she is a loving wife and a great parent to Shayna, now 14. She has strength and is no one's fool. As I get acquainted her as a grown woman, I can see the very best personality traits from Rick's family shine through her. She can hold boundaries with no regrets or self-doubt, is such a competent professional who is sure of her skills and her knowledge, and I was merely resting in her expertise as we spoke with nurses, doctors, and the other professionals.
Dr. Sachhini came in to speak with us, his quiet demeanor radiating from him, and he did something so tender I was taken aback---he gently chucked me on the chin, a loving and intimate little sharing of body language to acknowledge that he saw me as a human and was there as surgeon and protector.
Then I walked into the surgical suite, put on a hair net, hopped up on the bed(???), and chatted briefly with the anesthesiologist. I asked about my numbers on her monitor, and my usual low blood pressure showed up, something like 99/60. My pulse was 77, and I watched as she injected the sleeping potion into the IV........
I awoke in a heavy fog back in the recovery room, with Dr. Sacchini, Andrea and Rick around me. I heard him say that the serntinel node, which we knew was malignant, was the only obviously cancer-ridden one, and that the others he dissected looked clean. That would be the most favorable outcome I could pray for, although the expanse of future possibilities still leaaves me in such a grey zone that I must learn to live with a big question mark from now on.
The day and night was pretty aweful, with my monitors misfiring and beeping their little hearts out until we all just gave up....IV kept losing the battery, my pulse ox kept dropping below 84, ring ring ring ring ring, forget sleep. Andrea and Rick stayed for a little while and then departed when it became obvious that I was not going home the next day as planned. Technicians maarched in and out, plastic surgeon and surgical fellows trouped in, drains were emptied, I peed successfully early and often so that hurdle was successfully met. Once again, Andrea knew what to ask, how to speak to everyone, and they all responded with openness to her, which no doubt helped me. She and nurse Cory just chatted away, trading war stories, and it added to my sense of security to see how much of an expert at her job she really was. My pulse ox went up and down all day thereafter, and we were all relieved that I was staying another night.
I have not described the procedure nor dealt with the emotional piece. What I will share is that the incision is huge and nasty with large black thread sewn across what used to be my left breast. It reminds me of a Tim Burton movie, sort of like "Coraline"-scary. There are black magic marker lines around my chest to guide them, and big stitches under my armpit which I cannot yet see since I can't raise my left arms without really nasty pain. I was in no hurry to see my "new" chest, and have no particular reason to feel the implant with the magnetic port which will be filled with sasline until I get my own stomach tissue to fill in the breast perhaps within the year. My right breast will have to be reduced in size since they can't "make" restored breasts in my size. I figure a zippy perky little B cup instead of my regular D cup might be fun.....And then I can shop at Victoria's Secret again. Ah, retail therapy, how it does indeed fill the void.
I have two plastic tubes coming out of my left side ending in what appear to be grenades that are attached to a big surgical bra by velcro. I have to empty this lymph fluid tinged with blood until they stop draining, and I manage that by myself now. I and Dr. House are on Vicadin but I feel no rush from it, just cessation of pain and a slight mushy brained feeling.
Erica and I had bought 4 pairs of lovely button-down PJs for me in a huge size which fits over ther hand grenades and makes me feel a bit more normal. I don't feel like having anyone over for a while, nor do I feel like going out into public. Let me stay home and recouperate. I don't feel animated to do work now either, except that I have dived into the "pink ribbon wars" and the history of breast cancer so that I am an aware "consumer". As for SK, I cannot say how much the entire group meant to me. Every person from receptionist to doctors' assistant to the energetic lady who emptied my waste basket impressed me greatly. At the #1 cancer hospital in the country, they are humble and kind and aware of the horrific disease we are all dealing with. My 2 room mates were in for cancerous lymph nodes that popped up years afterr their initial surgeries, so I am now aware that I am on borrowed time. These folks do not scare, infantalize, or talk down to us. I can't imagine the training they must receive. But every one of them were well beyond expectations.
There were no pink teddy bears or ribbons, but there was a white carnation in a little vase delivered Friday night as the result of a bequest of someone. With it was as list of activities for those who are "long term patients" which i did not care to lerarn more about.
At 4 pm a woman in a formal waiter's uniform came around with coffee or tea in sweet little china cups and 3 of the yummiest and most sinful cookies. The meals were unbelievably top-notch, served whenever I felt hungry, from 7 am thru 8 pm, and then whenever I needed it, which I did not. The top chef had won a TV cooking competition, which I thought was random and exciting at the same time.
I came home Saturday and got to figure out how to sleep in my bed with the pain and 2 drains on my left side. It hurt! So I flipped over on my right side and my left side hurt again. The best condition was straight flat on my back and not moving much at all.
I will haver OT, PT, and visiting nurse service of 2 weeks, and I will have to make due now that Andrea has left for home. I was really really excited to just sit and listen to her talk about her job and her family. She is a great story-teller, and I loved listening to her describe her life. This healing occured on all levels within me, and within our family. Soon I will visit with cousin Lenny whom I've never met before, and he will avise me on my pathology reports.
So how and what am I feeling?
I don't know right now.
Andrea has been a golden halo for me. Not oinly is she a solid citizen who has a weide-open heart, but she is a loving wife and a great parent to Shayna, now 14. She has strength and is no one's fool. As I get acquainted her as a grown woman, I can see the very best personality traits from Rick's family shine through her. She can hold boundaries with no regrets or self-doubt, is such a competent professional who is sure of her skills and her knowledge, and I was merely resting in her expertise as we spoke with nurses, doctors, and the other professionals.
Dr. Sachhini came in to speak with us, his quiet demeanor radiating from him, and he did something so tender I was taken aback---he gently chucked me on the chin, a loving and intimate little sharing of body language to acknowledge that he saw me as a human and was there as surgeon and protector.
Then I walked into the surgical suite, put on a hair net, hopped up on the bed(???), and chatted briefly with the anesthesiologist. I asked about my numbers on her monitor, and my usual low blood pressure showed up, something like 99/60. My pulse was 77, and I watched as she injected the sleeping potion into the IV........
I awoke in a heavy fog back in the recovery room, with Dr. Sacchini, Andrea and Rick around me. I heard him say that the serntinel node, which we knew was malignant, was the only obviously cancer-ridden one, and that the others he dissected looked clean. That would be the most favorable outcome I could pray for, although the expanse of future possibilities still leaaves me in such a grey zone that I must learn to live with a big question mark from now on.
The day and night was pretty aweful, with my monitors misfiring and beeping their little hearts out until we all just gave up....IV kept losing the battery, my pulse ox kept dropping below 84, ring ring ring ring ring, forget sleep. Andrea and Rick stayed for a little while and then departed when it became obvious that I was not going home the next day as planned. Technicians maarched in and out, plastic surgeon and surgical fellows trouped in, drains were emptied, I peed successfully early and often so that hurdle was successfully met. Once again, Andrea knew what to ask, how to speak to everyone, and they all responded with openness to her, which no doubt helped me. She and nurse Cory just chatted away, trading war stories, and it added to my sense of security to see how much of an expert at her job she really was. My pulse ox went up and down all day thereafter, and we were all relieved that I was staying another night.
I have not described the procedure nor dealt with the emotional piece. What I will share is that the incision is huge and nasty with large black thread sewn across what used to be my left breast. It reminds me of a Tim Burton movie, sort of like "Coraline"-scary. There are black magic marker lines around my chest to guide them, and big stitches under my armpit which I cannot yet see since I can't raise my left arms without really nasty pain. I was in no hurry to see my "new" chest, and have no particular reason to feel the implant with the magnetic port which will be filled with sasline until I get my own stomach tissue to fill in the breast perhaps within the year. My right breast will have to be reduced in size since they can't "make" restored breasts in my size. I figure a zippy perky little B cup instead of my regular D cup might be fun.....And then I can shop at Victoria's Secret again. Ah, retail therapy, how it does indeed fill the void.
I have two plastic tubes coming out of my left side ending in what appear to be grenades that are attached to a big surgical bra by velcro. I have to empty this lymph fluid tinged with blood until they stop draining, and I manage that by myself now. I and Dr. House are on Vicadin but I feel no rush from it, just cessation of pain and a slight mushy brained feeling.
Erica and I had bought 4 pairs of lovely button-down PJs for me in a huge size which fits over ther hand grenades and makes me feel a bit more normal. I don't feel like having anyone over for a while, nor do I feel like going out into public. Let me stay home and recouperate. I don't feel animated to do work now either, except that I have dived into the "pink ribbon wars" and the history of breast cancer so that I am an aware "consumer". As for SK, I cannot say how much the entire group meant to me. Every person from receptionist to doctors' assistant to the energetic lady who emptied my waste basket impressed me greatly. At the #1 cancer hospital in the country, they are humble and kind and aware of the horrific disease we are all dealing with. My 2 room mates were in for cancerous lymph nodes that popped up years afterr their initial surgeries, so I am now aware that I am on borrowed time. These folks do not scare, infantalize, or talk down to us. I can't imagine the training they must receive. But every one of them were well beyond expectations.
There were no pink teddy bears or ribbons, but there was a white carnation in a little vase delivered Friday night as the result of a bequest of someone. With it was as list of activities for those who are "long term patients" which i did not care to lerarn more about.
At 4 pm a woman in a formal waiter's uniform came around with coffee or tea in sweet little china cups and 3 of the yummiest and most sinful cookies. The meals were unbelievably top-notch, served whenever I felt hungry, from 7 am thru 8 pm, and then whenever I needed it, which I did not. The top chef had won a TV cooking competition, which I thought was random and exciting at the same time.
I came home Saturday and got to figure out how to sleep in my bed with the pain and 2 drains on my left side. It hurt! So I flipped over on my right side and my left side hurt again. The best condition was straight flat on my back and not moving much at all.
I will haver OT, PT, and visiting nurse service of 2 weeks, and I will have to make due now that Andrea has left for home. I was really really excited to just sit and listen to her talk about her job and her family. She is a great story-teller, and I loved listening to her describe her life. This healing occured on all levels within me, and within our family. Soon I will visit with cousin Lenny whom I've never met before, and he will avise me on my pathology reports.
So how and what am I feeling?
I don't know right now.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Story Unravels
Meaning-making...my life's theme, what I teach to others, what I write about, whawt I am grappling with myself. What can this health crisis come to mean for me and others, since they are always front and center in my awareness?
For one thing, my "story" is unraveling. The victim, the acknowledged tragic life I have led...has there ever been a therapit or advisor who has not commented on the tragic nature of my life?? Friends have abandoned me during my life due to the sheer unlivability of it day to day, hearing about the unfolding currents of betrayal and illness and sickness.
And yet...I am not depressed, I have adaptive capacities, which at times have been bypasses. My numbing out, dissociative abilities, have stood me in good stead over the years, but they have also kept me within my "story", haven't they? As the Diamond Approach counsels, the superego was needed at one time, but it has outlived its helpful and healthy capacities. Let it go along with the ego. Time to abide....
p. 86: "As Plotinus puts it, a flight of the alone to the Alone---that is, from the self to the Self."
Time for death and resurrection. Big-time.
p. 87-8: "The Lankavatara Sutra decribes this enlightenment experience as a "completer turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness." This "turning about" is simply the undoing of the habitual tendency to create a separate and substantial self where therer is in fact only vast,open, clear awareness. This turning about, or metanoia, Zen calls satori or kensho. "Ken" means true nature and "sho" means "directly seeing." Directly seeing one's true nature is becoming Buddha. As Meister Eckhart put it, "In this breaking through I find that God and I are both the same."
My story is unraveling and I can actually feel this turning about! I can feel how I have looked backwards over my maternal lineage to the way they lived, or failed to live, their lives, the stories that they inculcated me with, about the meaninglessness of my life other than to serve them and care for them; how there was a curse on their family; how there was as tragic chapter waiting to be written by me. No, I do not mean this metaphorically.
My mother, who adored me in her own way, was a gifted writer/poet/singer/artist/piano player/seamstress. She wrote the story of her maternal lineage and about their sad, terrible lives, their victimhood, their lack of adaptive capacities, asnd she made me sit there and listen to it. I squirmed and begged to be let go, but her claim was always that she "had no one else but me" around to listen to her (no surprise there), so I sat and was awash in intergenerational pain.
When she finished her impassioned reading to me with the recounting of her tragic life, she turned to me and with an odd half-smile, half smirk, said, "Now there is your chapter."
I have worked extraordinarily hard over 3 years to claim the ability to "see" my true nature. I have turned around to focus forward, not backwards. There is more to be done, but I am catching glimpses of my own true nature. This health crisis will avail me plenty of chances to continue burning off this story, this legacy, this worldview. And learning to soften and open my heart, which can radiate powerful love outwards, but is damned picky and reluctant to open to accepting love. Only as the story unravels and I go through the various deaths that Zen speaks of, will I be free of the protective shields that permit only outward movement of the Great Love.
p. 103: "First we die to the material self--that is, disidentify with it---then we die to an exclusive identity with the bodily self, then to the mental self, and then finally to ther soul. The last one is what Zen calls the Great Death. We make stepping-stones out of all our dead selves. Each death to a lower level is a rebirth on a higher level, until the ultimate rebirth, liberation, or enlightenment."
I've gotten such a late start on this journey. I have had to untangle soooo many knots while trying to walk, hobbled as I was, along the Path.
Re-reading Grace and Grit the day before my surgery is a mixed exercise of terror, when reading about her recurrence and metastases, and cold hard facts that her treatment and the years of experience learned by the doctors puts me in a slightly more positive medical position. But I must let go of this story as well. There is no story, no statistic, nothing to hold onto but Spirit, and the Mystery.
So on this day before surgery, which honestly will be just one day in the entire progression of "Lynne has cancer", where am I?
Abiding.
Just abiding.....
Not-knowing. In the gap. No stories to scare or support me.
For one thing, my "story" is unraveling. The victim, the acknowledged tragic life I have led...has there ever been a therapit or advisor who has not commented on the tragic nature of my life?? Friends have abandoned me during my life due to the sheer unlivability of it day to day, hearing about the unfolding currents of betrayal and illness and sickness.
And yet...I am not depressed, I have adaptive capacities, which at times have been bypasses. My numbing out, dissociative abilities, have stood me in good stead over the years, but they have also kept me within my "story", haven't they? As the Diamond Approach counsels, the superego was needed at one time, but it has outlived its helpful and healthy capacities. Let it go along with the ego. Time to abide....
p. 86: "As Plotinus puts it, a flight of the alone to the Alone---that is, from the self to the Self."
Time for death and resurrection. Big-time.
p. 87-8: "The Lankavatara Sutra decribes this enlightenment experience as a "completer turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness." This "turning about" is simply the undoing of the habitual tendency to create a separate and substantial self where therer is in fact only vast,open, clear awareness. This turning about, or metanoia, Zen calls satori or kensho. "Ken" means true nature and "sho" means "directly seeing." Directly seeing one's true nature is becoming Buddha. As Meister Eckhart put it, "In this breaking through I find that God and I are both the same."
My story is unraveling and I can actually feel this turning about! I can feel how I have looked backwards over my maternal lineage to the way they lived, or failed to live, their lives, the stories that they inculcated me with, about the meaninglessness of my life other than to serve them and care for them; how there was a curse on their family; how there was as tragic chapter waiting to be written by me. No, I do not mean this metaphorically.
My mother, who adored me in her own way, was a gifted writer/poet/singer/artist/piano player/seamstress. She wrote the story of her maternal lineage and about their sad, terrible lives, their victimhood, their lack of adaptive capacities, asnd she made me sit there and listen to it. I squirmed and begged to be let go, but her claim was always that she "had no one else but me" around to listen to her (no surprise there), so I sat and was awash in intergenerational pain.
When she finished her impassioned reading to me with the recounting of her tragic life, she turned to me and with an odd half-smile, half smirk, said, "Now there is your chapter."
I have worked extraordinarily hard over 3 years to claim the ability to "see" my true nature. I have turned around to focus forward, not backwards. There is more to be done, but I am catching glimpses of my own true nature. This health crisis will avail me plenty of chances to continue burning off this story, this legacy, this worldview. And learning to soften and open my heart, which can radiate powerful love outwards, but is damned picky and reluctant to open to accepting love. Only as the story unravels and I go through the various deaths that Zen speaks of, will I be free of the protective shields that permit only outward movement of the Great Love.
p. 103: "First we die to the material self--that is, disidentify with it---then we die to an exclusive identity with the bodily self, then to the mental self, and then finally to ther soul. The last one is what Zen calls the Great Death. We make stepping-stones out of all our dead selves. Each death to a lower level is a rebirth on a higher level, until the ultimate rebirth, liberation, or enlightenment."
I've gotten such a late start on this journey. I have had to untangle soooo many knots while trying to walk, hobbled as I was, along the Path.
Re-reading Grace and Grit the day before my surgery is a mixed exercise of terror, when reading about her recurrence and metastases, and cold hard facts that her treatment and the years of experience learned by the doctors puts me in a slightly more positive medical position. But I must let go of this story as well. There is no story, no statistic, nothing to hold onto but Spirit, and the Mystery.
So on this day before surgery, which honestly will be just one day in the entire progression of "Lynne has cancer", where am I?
Abiding.
Just abiding.....
Not-knowing. In the gap. No stories to scare or support me.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Why me? Why now?
p. 43: "And the point is that the meaning of that sickness---negative or positive, redemptive or punitive, supportive or condemnatory---can have an enormous impact on me and on the course of my disease; the sickness is often more destructive than the illness."
One of the first questions I am asked during all the screenings I have had is whether I have been under severe stress recently, which is cause enough for a rueful laugh. My safe place, my area of intimate connection with Others, with whom I could act and inform and transform and open them wide to wonder and awe....the 3 men stripped me of that. They stripped me and berated me and defamed my accomplishments there, my reason to be alive.
So shall I take in hatred against the 3 men whom I had just recently consigned to memories past, who at last were banished from my nightmares after 3 years? How do I work with that energy, how do I manage not to take meaning by returning to the position of victim, of betrayed one, of the wounded one?What archetype do I utilize now?
Being a good teacher, a teacher who could actually midwife transformation in her students, that role kept me sane and grounded for 23 years. I have always had a difficult time trying to rationalize why I should even be alive, and being a good teacher gave me reason to continue to wake and go off to work each day. Being a parent whose child loved her and was thriving in the midst of chaos gave me justification to convince myself that I had standing in the world to deserve to continue to live. There had been those times before I became a parent when all I wished was to get life over with, let me live til 60 and then let me go from this place of living nightmares.
Now consider this "connect the dots" irony, this karmic joke: the very week that my daughter is going off the pill in an attempt to get pregnant, the very day I return home from surgery with a breast removed that she suckled upon eagerly as a little one, that gave her nourishment, protection, and love. And I want to be alive to see her give birth; I want to be strong and healthy to play with my grand child(ren) because I will be a magical grandma.
After my own struggle to understand that I am a beloved child of the Kosmos who does not need a reason or a talent or a book published or a position in an organization to justify continued blessing of life, NOW I must struggle to stay alive. Now I must avert my face from hatred and return to Kosmic support by the Divine, where I will be in a state of not-knowing what the result of my surgery will be...will ther cancerreturn? Will it metastacize in my lungs? bones?
p. 44: "...the less the actual medical causes of an illness are understood, then the more it tends to become a sickness surrounded by desultory myths and metaphors..."
We do not really know what causes cancer or the one I have. Was it the stress? environmental toxins? What myths will I take up and perpetuate, like condemning the 3 unwise men who harassed and tormented me? I would have to do a 4 quadrant analysis to create a list of infinite possibilities.
What attitude will I embody towards the illness? the sickness?
How far over to the UR and LR will I go for desparate reassurance or fright? I probably have a cancerous lymph node...and then how many others? how many cancer seeds have already begun their swim with transformed DNA to parts of me unknown? what ae the statistics for 5 year, 8 year survival? am I now a statistic?
We are far removed fromTreya's time in responding to breast cancer, but it is still no walk in the park for the aggressive type she had. Chemotherapy is vastly improved in targeting the original tumor, and the effects seem less stressful on the body.
But Ken is right when he talks about how little the doctors can speak to my prognosis, to my survival. I am learning their deflecting words..."we'll wait and see"...."this will be a chronic disease for you"....
As for the alternative methods, which I am trying and will continue to work with, Ken's point of view is still valid: most of the sites out there, the books I have purchased or skimmed through, speak of testimonials, not double-blind studies. So many sound like the quack publications where "they" (the drug/medical/governmental structure "don't want you to know the truth about cancer cures because they will lose money and power." Pre-rational religious drivel.
pp. 48-49: Ken writes a pretty good analysis of how different religious/spiritual agents describe illness and sickness.
But yet----I am not throwing all of them away any more than I would discount a shaman's vision. Wilber-Combs Lattice, anyone? I will be writing much more about the kernels that seem to lie in trans-rational healing modalities. At this moment, how do I find meaning in this new ordeal? Treya faced an identical dilemma:
p. 50: "Perhaps, after all these years of rather anxiously looking for my life's work, coming down with cancer contained the seeds of this work, if only I could recognize it?"
Bitter irony...I had finally found my life's work, and as in every single endeavor inmy entire life, some "outside" agent comes in to interrupt, to poison, to make impossible the continuation of whatever work I am doing with great love and passion. What is that all about? Am I being given a Kosmic swat on the knuckles to remember how transitory everything is? to just let go of my striving, that at times has had heavy egoic pressures pushing it, but now is effortlessly and joyfully emerging from within my soul?
I have made right hand path decisions, but have come to very few left hand path decisions. The time is coming this week. God bless my support system.
One of the first questions I am asked during all the screenings I have had is whether I have been under severe stress recently, which is cause enough for a rueful laugh. My safe place, my area of intimate connection with Others, with whom I could act and inform and transform and open them wide to wonder and awe....the 3 men stripped me of that. They stripped me and berated me and defamed my accomplishments there, my reason to be alive.
So shall I take in hatred against the 3 men whom I had just recently consigned to memories past, who at last were banished from my nightmares after 3 years? How do I work with that energy, how do I manage not to take meaning by returning to the position of victim, of betrayed one, of the wounded one?What archetype do I utilize now?
Being a good teacher, a teacher who could actually midwife transformation in her students, that role kept me sane and grounded for 23 years. I have always had a difficult time trying to rationalize why I should even be alive, and being a good teacher gave me reason to continue to wake and go off to work each day. Being a parent whose child loved her and was thriving in the midst of chaos gave me justification to convince myself that I had standing in the world to deserve to continue to live. There had been those times before I became a parent when all I wished was to get life over with, let me live til 60 and then let me go from this place of living nightmares.
Now consider this "connect the dots" irony, this karmic joke: the very week that my daughter is going off the pill in an attempt to get pregnant, the very day I return home from surgery with a breast removed that she suckled upon eagerly as a little one, that gave her nourishment, protection, and love. And I want to be alive to see her give birth; I want to be strong and healthy to play with my grand child(ren) because I will be a magical grandma.
After my own struggle to understand that I am a beloved child of the Kosmos who does not need a reason or a talent or a book published or a position in an organization to justify continued blessing of life, NOW I must struggle to stay alive. Now I must avert my face from hatred and return to Kosmic support by the Divine, where I will be in a state of not-knowing what the result of my surgery will be...will ther cancerreturn? Will it metastacize in my lungs? bones?
p. 44: "...the less the actual medical causes of an illness are understood, then the more it tends to become a sickness surrounded by desultory myths and metaphors..."
We do not really know what causes cancer or the one I have. Was it the stress? environmental toxins? What myths will I take up and perpetuate, like condemning the 3 unwise men who harassed and tormented me? I would have to do a 4 quadrant analysis to create a list of infinite possibilities.
What attitude will I embody towards the illness? the sickness?
How far over to the UR and LR will I go for desparate reassurance or fright? I probably have a cancerous lymph node...and then how many others? how many cancer seeds have already begun their swim with transformed DNA to parts of me unknown? what ae the statistics for 5 year, 8 year survival? am I now a statistic?
We are far removed fromTreya's time in responding to breast cancer, but it is still no walk in the park for the aggressive type she had. Chemotherapy is vastly improved in targeting the original tumor, and the effects seem less stressful on the body.
But Ken is right when he talks about how little the doctors can speak to my prognosis, to my survival. I am learning their deflecting words..."we'll wait and see"...."this will be a chronic disease for you"....
As for the alternative methods, which I am trying and will continue to work with, Ken's point of view is still valid: most of the sites out there, the books I have purchased or skimmed through, speak of testimonials, not double-blind studies. So many sound like the quack publications where "they" (the drug/medical/governmental structure "don't want you to know the truth about cancer cures because they will lose money and power." Pre-rational religious drivel.
pp. 48-49: Ken writes a pretty good analysis of how different religious/spiritual agents describe illness and sickness.
But yet----I am not throwing all of them away any more than I would discount a shaman's vision. Wilber-Combs Lattice, anyone? I will be writing much more about the kernels that seem to lie in trans-rational healing modalities. At this moment, how do I find meaning in this new ordeal? Treya faced an identical dilemma:
p. 50: "Perhaps, after all these years of rather anxiously looking for my life's work, coming down with cancer contained the seeds of this work, if only I could recognize it?"
Bitter irony...I had finally found my life's work, and as in every single endeavor inmy entire life, some "outside" agent comes in to interrupt, to poison, to make impossible the continuation of whatever work I am doing with great love and passion. What is that all about? Am I being given a Kosmic swat on the knuckles to remember how transitory everything is? to just let go of my striving, that at times has had heavy egoic pressures pushing it, but now is effortlessly and joyfully emerging from within my soul?
I have made right hand path decisions, but have come to very few left hand path decisions. The time is coming this week. God bless my support system.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Barbara Ehrenreich's Critique of the Pink Ribbon Culture
At the end of 2001, Barbara Ehrenreich, noted feminist author, published a long article in Harper's Magazine. It was sharply critical of the 'breast cancer movement', suggesting that effort was placed into mammography and pink ribbons that could be better used elsewhere.
Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing conventional therapy even while suggesting that she did not believe it was very effective.
HERE IS THE TALK Barbara Ehrenreich gave at Breast Cancer Action in San Francisco, CA:
Actually cancer was not my first run-in with a breast-related disease. About 20 years ago, the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons announced that small-breastedness is itself a disease: "There is a substantial and enlarging body of medical information and opinion to the effect that these deformities [small breasts] are really a disease." They even gave this disease a name—micromastia.
I was myself a sufferer from micromastia. It wasn’t easy. Oh, I managed to hobble around, raise my kids and get my work done, but I knew how ill I really was.
Then just 3 years ago, a doctor told me that I didn’t have to worry about breast cancer too much, because my breasts were small.
Now there’s a doctor who doesn’t have to worry about brain cancer too much…
Here’s another relevant personal fact: In the 70s I was an activist in what we then called the women’s health movement. We campaigned for safe contraceptives, against unnecessary surgery, for the option of unmedicated childbirth, for the right to choose abortion.
In the area of breast cancer, we battled against the practice of proceeding directly from biopsy to mastectomy, without even letting the patient wake up to make the decision herself. We wanted women to have the information and the right to make their own health care decision. We even took on the psychiatrists, with their peculiar theory that ambitious or outspoken women were suffering from “penis envy.”
Anybody here ever envied a penis? Wanted to be one?
Anyway, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 years ago, I did what any veteran of the Women’s Health Movement would do: I started researching, looking especially for support and information from other women who had the disease. I ordered a half dozen book, mostly women’s accounts of their breast cancer experiences. I waded out into the net and found scores of breast cancer websites, which I nervously devoured. I was looking for tips, ways to survive the treatments, questions to ask the doctors, and of course emotional support—sisterhood. I was sure that I would find the Women’s Health Movement alive and well and able to help me.
I found a lot. But what I found shocked me. Yes, I found useful tips and information, but I found something else—that a whole culture (I don’t know what else to call it) has grown up around breast cancer. And it certainly did not contain the sisterhood I was searching for.
How to define breast cancer culture?
It’s very pink and femme and frilly – all about pink ribbons, pink rhinestone pins, pink t-shirts and of course a lot about cosmetics. The American Cancer Society offers a program called “Look Good…Feel Better” which gives out free cosmetics to women undergoing breast cancer treatment. The Libby Ross Foundation gives breast cancer patients a free tote bag containing Estee Lauder body crème, a pink satin pillowcase, a set of Japanese cosmetics, and 2 rhinestone bracelets. And no one, so far as I could determine, was complaining about the strange idea that you can fight a potentially fatal disease with eyeliner and blush.
I found that the culture of breast cancer is highly commercialized. First, in the sense that many apparently grassroots fundraising efforts are in fact sponsored by large corporations eager to court middle-aged females. Among them: Revlon, Avon, Ford, Tiffany, Pier 1, Estee Lauder, Ralph Lauren, Lee Denim, Saks Fifth Avenue, JC Penney, Boston Market, Wilson athletic gear. Where were they, I wondered, when the Women’s Health Movement was fighting for abortion rights and against involuntary sterilization?
More amazing to me though, was the number of breast cancer-related items you can buy today: You can dress entirely in a breast cancer-theme: pink-beribboned sweatshirts, denim shirts, pajamas, lingerie, aprons, loungewear, shoelaces and socks; accessorize with pink rhinestone broaches, angel pins, scarves, caps, earrings and bracelets.
You can decorate your home with breast cancer candles, coffee mugs, pendants, stained glass pink ribbon candle holders, wind chimes and nightlights. You can pay your bills with special “Breastchecks” or a separate line of “Checks for a Cure.”
To me, the most disturbing product, though, was the breast cancer teddy bears. I have identified four distinct lines, or species, of these creatures, including “Carol,” the Remembrance Bear; “Hope,” the Breast Cancer Research Bear; the “Susan Bear,” named for Nancy Brinker’s deceased sister Susan; and the new Nick and Nora Wish Upon a Star Bear, available, along with the Susan Bear, at the Komen Foundation website’s “marketplace.”
Now I don’t own a teddy bear—haven’t had much use for one in 50 years. Why would anyone assume that, faced with the most serious medical challenge of my life, I would need one now? And that wasn’t all: The Libby Ross tote bag that I just mentioned also contained a package of crayons—something else I haven’t needed in many a decade. I began to get the feeling that this breast cancer culture is not only about being pretty and femme—it’s also about regressing back to being a little girl—a very good little girl in fact.
There is, I would point out, nothing similar for me. At least men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer are not given gifts of matchbox cars.
But the worst of it, for me, was the perkiness and relentless cheerfulness of the breast cancer culture. The “Breast Friends” site, for example, features a series of inspirational quotes: “Don’t Cry over Anything that Can’t Cry Over You,” “I Can’t Stop the Birds of Sorrow from Circling my Head, But I Can Stop Them from Building a Nest in My Hair,” and much more of that ilk.
You don’t find a lot of complaining in breast cancer culture. Sure, people acknowledge that breast cancer is a terrible experience in many ways—you’ll lose a breast or 2, you’ll go through chemo and lose your hair and your immune response, you might get lymphedema and lose the use of your arms.
But guess what? You would turn out a better person for it—more feminine, more spiritual, more evolved. You would be something better than a mere cancer-free person; you would be a “survivor.” Some quotes:
As “Mary” reports, on the “Bosom Buds” message board:
I really believe I am a much more sensitive and thoughtful person now… I enjoy life so much more now and am much happier now.
Cindy Cherry, quoted in the Washington Post, goes further:
If I had to do it over, would I want breast cancer? Absolutely.
And I’ve heard even worse on the health channel: gushing descriptions of breast cancer as a form of spiritual upward mobility. Something that a woman should be happy to experience.
Is there any other disease that has been so warmly embraced by its victims? (And yes, I use the word “victim”—that’s another part of the perkiness—the failure to acknowledge that some of us are in fact victims of a hideous disease.) No one thinks TB, AIDS, or heart disease is supposed to be a “growth opportunity” and make you into a better person. No one is thankful for colon cancer, diabetes or gonorrhea. Why, I began to wonder, is a disease that primarily attacks women supposed to be something they should be grateful for?
So when I went looking for the Women’s Health Movement to sustain me in my breast cancer ordeal I found something very different. In the 70s we used to get angry and militant about women’s health issues: we barged into medical meetings, picketed hospitals, showed up uninvited at Congressional hearings. In the case of breast cancer, all that fighting spirit had been transformed into…pink cotton candy.
As for my own mood a year ago, when I was undergoing treatment. It wasn’t sweet or spiritual or “feminine” in the old fashioned sense. I was angry, as angry as I have ever been in my life. I wondered if it was possible to express this anger in the breast cancer culture I’d been exploring. So I wrote a letter and posted it on the message board run by the Komen Foundation, the largest of the breast cancer foundations. What I said was:
I was diagnosed 6 months ago and have been through a mastectomy and chemotherapy. I don’t think of myself as a “survivor” because too many women have gone thru the same “treatments” only to have their cancers recur a few years later.
What I am is angry.
Angry about “treatments” which are in fact toxic and debilitating.
Angry about all the emphasis on “early detection” when there is no way of knowing how early any detection is. Some small tumors are very fast-growing and some big ones are very slow. But no one seems to be making the distinction.
Angry about insurance companies: I’m not battling cancer, I’m battling Aetna, which is still refusing to pay for the biopsy…And what about all people without insurance? (Bush wants to cut help for them in his next budget, and I don’t hear anyone from the breast cancer groups screaming.)
Angry about all the sappy pink ribbons, breast cancer teddy bears and other cute accessories when the fact is WOMEN ARE DYING.
And finally, angry that with all the money pouring into research, no one knows what the cause of breast cancer is. If I want to protect my daughter, we need to know the CAUSE.
Anyone else out there sick of the breast cancer hype?”
That’s what I wrote; that’s what I was feeling at the time.
The responses I got were alarming. “Suzy” wrote to say “I really dislike saying you have a bad attitude towards all of this, but you do, and it's not going to help you in the least.” Several women offered to pray for me to achieve a better state of mind.
“Kitty,” however, thought I’d gone around the bend:
You need to run, not walk, to some counseling…Please, get yourself some help and I ask everyone on this site to pray for you so you can enjoy life to the fullest.
It was at this point that I realized that there is nothing feminist—and not much even sisterly—about the culture that has grown up around breast cancer. Because one of the first principles of second wave feminism was that you honor women’s experience and respect their feelings. You don’t tell a woman who’s been raped or assaulted or subject to medical maltreatment to “cheer up” and stop whining. We thought there was something powerful and constructive about anger—I still think there is—because it was anger, more than anything, that made us into tireless activists for women’s health.
But here I was—expressing my heartfelt feelings—and being told by other women who had been through similar experiences to shut up and put on a happy face. To be a “Stepford patient.” I began to suspect that the purpose of the breast cancer culture—with it’s teddy bears, and crayons and cosmetics and pinkness—is to get us to regress to a child-like state, to suspend critical judgment, and get us to accept whatever the medical profession wants to do to us.
Now of course there are—or have been—rationales for all the aspects of breast cancer culture I found so offensive:
Being cheerful is supposed to save year life. Everything depends on your attitude, I was told again and again by the books and websites I consulted. Anger and sorrow will kills you; being upbeat will save you. Having an upbeat culture of breast cancer survivors—with their public displays of energy and athleticism—is justified again and again as a way of getting women to come forward and have their mammograms. If women neglect their annual screenings, it must be because they are afraid that a diagnosis amounts to a death sentence. I was told by doctors and breast cancer establishment figures that beaming survivors, proudly running races and climbing mountains, are the best possible advertisement for routine screening mammograms, early detection, and the ensuing round of treatments. Trouble is: neither of these rationales holds up under close examination.
The idea that attitude can save your life was based on studies purporting to show that women who participate in breast cancer self-help groups are both happier and live longer than those who don’t. More recent studies show that women in support groups may be happier, but they don’t live any longer than the sourpusses and social isolates who don’t go to groups.
I’m all for support groups—it’s just that they don’t count as form of treatment! And I’m all for being happy, but it won’t save your life.
As for the need to have a highly visible, cheerful, breast cancer culture in order to get women to get “squished”—the Oct 20 issue of the Lancet carried a study of past studies of the effectiveness of screening mammography—a study showing that all the past studies were flawed and that mass mammography screening does nothing to lower a country’s breast cancer mortality rate.
We haven’t heard the last word on this, and the breast cancer establishment is scrambling to find some new evidence that mammograms are worth it. But for now: fact is, they don’t seem to do much, as some doctors have suspected for a long time. Ten years ago, the famous British surgeon Michael Baum called routine screening mammography “one of the greatest deceptions perpetrated on the women of the western world.”
In other words, the establishment breast cancer culture—represented by the races for the cure, the pink ribbons and teddy bears—rests on a paradigm that has been disproved and discredited.
We don’t need to be cheerful. And we may not need to get those mammograms every year—which means we don’t need all this breast cancer “awareness’ that the corporations and the foundations are always encouraging.
So what does it hurt to have this massive breast cancer culture? You could say: whatever gets you through the night…
But there are at least 2 major problems with it:
First, the breast cancer culture has encouraged a dangerous complacency about current medical approaches to breast-cancer treatment. Implicit in all the pink ribbons and the drumbeat for regular mammograms was the promise that your cancer could be cured—if only you bring it to the doctors' attention early enough. In other words, there’s nothing wrong with the so-called treatments—the burden is on you to get your tumor detected “early.”
But as I wrote to the Komen message board: not all small tumors are "early" and more easily treated. In fact, there is no single disease “breast cancer”—probably a multitude of diseases of various degrees of virulence. But right now, they’re all being treated as a single disease.
Worse, current treatments—surgery, chemotherapy and radiation—carry no guarantee of long-term survival and are notoriously debilitating and disfiguring themselves. Every year, more than 40,000 American women die of breast cancer, large numbers of whom had duly submitted to screening mammograms and to the nightmarish treatments that ensued.
Even mammograms are something to worry about: Only one carcinogen has been definitely established as a cause of breast cancer, and that is ionizing radiation of the kind emitted by mammography machines.
A second big problem with the pink ribbon culture: While they want a cure—we ALL do—they say almost nothing about the need to find the CAUSE of breast cancer, which is very likely environmental. This omission makes sense: breast cancer would hardly be the darling of corporate charities if its complexion changed from pink to green.
But by ignoring or underemphasizing the issue of environmental causes, the pink-ribbon crowd function as willing dupes of what could be called the Cancer Industrial Complex: by which I mean the multinational corporate enterprise which with the one hand doles out carcinogens and disease and, with the other, offers expensive, semi-toxic, pharmaceutical treatments. Breast Cancer Awareness month, for example, is sponsored by AstraZeneca (the manufacturer of Tamoxifen) which until 1999 was also the fourth largest producer of pesticides in the United States, including at least one known carcinogen.
So the more I immersed myself in the pink ribbon culture – during those awful months of chemo last year—the more disgusted I got. But I had one lifeline, one source of hope and genuine sisterhood: My cousin happened to send me three back issues of the Breast Cancer Action newsletter. I read them cover to cover, absorbing information, thrilled to find other women who had confronted the disease and managed to keep their wits about them and their dignity intact.
I am deeply grateful that Breast Cancer Action was there for me when I needed it most. It is one of the few voices of clarity and consistently feminist determination within the vast sea of pink ribbons out there, and I’m here to ask you—implore you, in fact—to help it not only survive but grow.
I know it can, because when I published my thoughts on the pink ribbon culture—in Harpers last October—I was deluged with letters from women saying: Thank god, somebody feels the same way I do! Here’s a project I’d like to see BCA have the resources to launch: a website for women don’t want teddy bears and ribbons, who want ACTION! I’d like to see an interactive website to connect these women to each other, because this is what I needed a year ago—not to mention probably for the rest of my life. I’d call it “bad girls of breast cancer”—like the BCA t-shirt. This is MY dream for BCA and I hope you’ll help make it possible.
Because we don’t need to be infantilized when we’re dealing with a potentially fatal disease, we don’t need to be patronized with cosmetics and jewelry, and told to keep smiling, no matter what.
We don’t need more “awareness” of breast cancer—we’re VERY aware, thank you very much. We need treatments that work, and above all, we need to know the cause of this killer, so we can stop it before it attacks another generation.
And we certainly don’t need a breast cancer culture that, by downplaying the possible environmental causes of cancer, serves as an accomplice in global poisoning—normalizing cancer, prettying it up, even presenting it, perversely, as a positive and enviable experience.
What we need is a truly sisterly response to this ghastly disease—one that is both loving and militant, courageous and caring, willing to confront the Cancer Industrial Complex and, when necessary, the entire $16 billion a year breast cancer industry, including the medical profession.
Are you with me? Will you be with me if my cancer returns?
Good!—then this is the time to stand with BCA and give them what you can—your time, your talent, your money!
www.bcaction.org
Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing conventional therapy even while suggesting that she did not believe it was very effective.
HERE IS THE TALK Barbara Ehrenreich gave at Breast Cancer Action in San Francisco, CA:
Actually cancer was not my first run-in with a breast-related disease. About 20 years ago, the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons announced that small-breastedness is itself a disease: "There is a substantial and enlarging body of medical information and opinion to the effect that these deformities [small breasts] are really a disease." They even gave this disease a name—micromastia.
I was myself a sufferer from micromastia. It wasn’t easy. Oh, I managed to hobble around, raise my kids and get my work done, but I knew how ill I really was.
Then just 3 years ago, a doctor told me that I didn’t have to worry about breast cancer too much, because my breasts were small.
Now there’s a doctor who doesn’t have to worry about brain cancer too much…
Here’s another relevant personal fact: In the 70s I was an activist in what we then called the women’s health movement. We campaigned for safe contraceptives, against unnecessary surgery, for the option of unmedicated childbirth, for the right to choose abortion.
In the area of breast cancer, we battled against the practice of proceeding directly from biopsy to mastectomy, without even letting the patient wake up to make the decision herself. We wanted women to have the information and the right to make their own health care decision. We even took on the psychiatrists, with their peculiar theory that ambitious or outspoken women were suffering from “penis envy.”
Anybody here ever envied a penis? Wanted to be one?
Anyway, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 years ago, I did what any veteran of the Women’s Health Movement would do: I started researching, looking especially for support and information from other women who had the disease. I ordered a half dozen book, mostly women’s accounts of their breast cancer experiences. I waded out into the net and found scores of breast cancer websites, which I nervously devoured. I was looking for tips, ways to survive the treatments, questions to ask the doctors, and of course emotional support—sisterhood. I was sure that I would find the Women’s Health Movement alive and well and able to help me.
I found a lot. But what I found shocked me. Yes, I found useful tips and information, but I found something else—that a whole culture (I don’t know what else to call it) has grown up around breast cancer. And it certainly did not contain the sisterhood I was searching for.
How to define breast cancer culture?
It’s very pink and femme and frilly – all about pink ribbons, pink rhinestone pins, pink t-shirts and of course a lot about cosmetics. The American Cancer Society offers a program called “Look Good…Feel Better” which gives out free cosmetics to women undergoing breast cancer treatment. The Libby Ross Foundation gives breast cancer patients a free tote bag containing Estee Lauder body crème, a pink satin pillowcase, a set of Japanese cosmetics, and 2 rhinestone bracelets. And no one, so far as I could determine, was complaining about the strange idea that you can fight a potentially fatal disease with eyeliner and blush.
I found that the culture of breast cancer is highly commercialized. First, in the sense that many apparently grassroots fundraising efforts are in fact sponsored by large corporations eager to court middle-aged females. Among them: Revlon, Avon, Ford, Tiffany, Pier 1, Estee Lauder, Ralph Lauren, Lee Denim, Saks Fifth Avenue, JC Penney, Boston Market, Wilson athletic gear. Where were they, I wondered, when the Women’s Health Movement was fighting for abortion rights and against involuntary sterilization?
More amazing to me though, was the number of breast cancer-related items you can buy today: You can dress entirely in a breast cancer-theme: pink-beribboned sweatshirts, denim shirts, pajamas, lingerie, aprons, loungewear, shoelaces and socks; accessorize with pink rhinestone broaches, angel pins, scarves, caps, earrings and bracelets.
You can decorate your home with breast cancer candles, coffee mugs, pendants, stained glass pink ribbon candle holders, wind chimes and nightlights. You can pay your bills with special “Breastchecks” or a separate line of “Checks for a Cure.”
To me, the most disturbing product, though, was the breast cancer teddy bears. I have identified four distinct lines, or species, of these creatures, including “Carol,” the Remembrance Bear; “Hope,” the Breast Cancer Research Bear; the “Susan Bear,” named for Nancy Brinker’s deceased sister Susan; and the new Nick and Nora Wish Upon a Star Bear, available, along with the Susan Bear, at the Komen Foundation website’s “marketplace.”
Now I don’t own a teddy bear—haven’t had much use for one in 50 years. Why would anyone assume that, faced with the most serious medical challenge of my life, I would need one now? And that wasn’t all: The Libby Ross tote bag that I just mentioned also contained a package of crayons—something else I haven’t needed in many a decade. I began to get the feeling that this breast cancer culture is not only about being pretty and femme—it’s also about regressing back to being a little girl—a very good little girl in fact.
There is, I would point out, nothing similar for me. At least men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer are not given gifts of matchbox cars.
But the worst of it, for me, was the perkiness and relentless cheerfulness of the breast cancer culture. The “Breast Friends” site, for example, features a series of inspirational quotes: “Don’t Cry over Anything that Can’t Cry Over You,” “I Can’t Stop the Birds of Sorrow from Circling my Head, But I Can Stop Them from Building a Nest in My Hair,” and much more of that ilk.
You don’t find a lot of complaining in breast cancer culture. Sure, people acknowledge that breast cancer is a terrible experience in many ways—you’ll lose a breast or 2, you’ll go through chemo and lose your hair and your immune response, you might get lymphedema and lose the use of your arms.
But guess what? You would turn out a better person for it—more feminine, more spiritual, more evolved. You would be something better than a mere cancer-free person; you would be a “survivor.” Some quotes:
As “Mary” reports, on the “Bosom Buds” message board:
I really believe I am a much more sensitive and thoughtful person now… I enjoy life so much more now and am much happier now.
Cindy Cherry, quoted in the Washington Post, goes further:
If I had to do it over, would I want breast cancer? Absolutely.
And I’ve heard even worse on the health channel: gushing descriptions of breast cancer as a form of spiritual upward mobility. Something that a woman should be happy to experience.
Is there any other disease that has been so warmly embraced by its victims? (And yes, I use the word “victim”—that’s another part of the perkiness—the failure to acknowledge that some of us are in fact victims of a hideous disease.) No one thinks TB, AIDS, or heart disease is supposed to be a “growth opportunity” and make you into a better person. No one is thankful for colon cancer, diabetes or gonorrhea. Why, I began to wonder, is a disease that primarily attacks women supposed to be something they should be grateful for?
So when I went looking for the Women’s Health Movement to sustain me in my breast cancer ordeal I found something very different. In the 70s we used to get angry and militant about women’s health issues: we barged into medical meetings, picketed hospitals, showed up uninvited at Congressional hearings. In the case of breast cancer, all that fighting spirit had been transformed into…pink cotton candy.
As for my own mood a year ago, when I was undergoing treatment. It wasn’t sweet or spiritual or “feminine” in the old fashioned sense. I was angry, as angry as I have ever been in my life. I wondered if it was possible to express this anger in the breast cancer culture I’d been exploring. So I wrote a letter and posted it on the message board run by the Komen Foundation, the largest of the breast cancer foundations. What I said was:
I was diagnosed 6 months ago and have been through a mastectomy and chemotherapy. I don’t think of myself as a “survivor” because too many women have gone thru the same “treatments” only to have their cancers recur a few years later.
What I am is angry.
Angry about “treatments” which are in fact toxic and debilitating.
Angry about all the emphasis on “early detection” when there is no way of knowing how early any detection is. Some small tumors are very fast-growing and some big ones are very slow. But no one seems to be making the distinction.
Angry about insurance companies: I’m not battling cancer, I’m battling Aetna, which is still refusing to pay for the biopsy…And what about all people without insurance? (Bush wants to cut help for them in his next budget, and I don’t hear anyone from the breast cancer groups screaming.)
Angry about all the sappy pink ribbons, breast cancer teddy bears and other cute accessories when the fact is WOMEN ARE DYING.
And finally, angry that with all the money pouring into research, no one knows what the cause of breast cancer is. If I want to protect my daughter, we need to know the CAUSE.
Anyone else out there sick of the breast cancer hype?”
That’s what I wrote; that’s what I was feeling at the time.
The responses I got were alarming. “Suzy” wrote to say “I really dislike saying you have a bad attitude towards all of this, but you do, and it's not going to help you in the least.” Several women offered to pray for me to achieve a better state of mind.
“Kitty,” however, thought I’d gone around the bend:
You need to run, not walk, to some counseling…Please, get yourself some help and I ask everyone on this site to pray for you so you can enjoy life to the fullest.
It was at this point that I realized that there is nothing feminist—and not much even sisterly—about the culture that has grown up around breast cancer. Because one of the first principles of second wave feminism was that you honor women’s experience and respect their feelings. You don’t tell a woman who’s been raped or assaulted or subject to medical maltreatment to “cheer up” and stop whining. We thought there was something powerful and constructive about anger—I still think there is—because it was anger, more than anything, that made us into tireless activists for women’s health.
But here I was—expressing my heartfelt feelings—and being told by other women who had been through similar experiences to shut up and put on a happy face. To be a “Stepford patient.” I began to suspect that the purpose of the breast cancer culture—with it’s teddy bears, and crayons and cosmetics and pinkness—is to get us to regress to a child-like state, to suspend critical judgment, and get us to accept whatever the medical profession wants to do to us.
Now of course there are—or have been—rationales for all the aspects of breast cancer culture I found so offensive:
Being cheerful is supposed to save year life. Everything depends on your attitude, I was told again and again by the books and websites I consulted. Anger and sorrow will kills you; being upbeat will save you. Having an upbeat culture of breast cancer survivors—with their public displays of energy and athleticism—is justified again and again as a way of getting women to come forward and have their mammograms. If women neglect their annual screenings, it must be because they are afraid that a diagnosis amounts to a death sentence. I was told by doctors and breast cancer establishment figures that beaming survivors, proudly running races and climbing mountains, are the best possible advertisement for routine screening mammograms, early detection, and the ensuing round of treatments. Trouble is: neither of these rationales holds up under close examination.
The idea that attitude can save your life was based on studies purporting to show that women who participate in breast cancer self-help groups are both happier and live longer than those who don’t. More recent studies show that women in support groups may be happier, but they don’t live any longer than the sourpusses and social isolates who don’t go to groups.
I’m all for support groups—it’s just that they don’t count as form of treatment! And I’m all for being happy, but it won’t save your life.
As for the need to have a highly visible, cheerful, breast cancer culture in order to get women to get “squished”—the Oct 20 issue of the Lancet carried a study of past studies of the effectiveness of screening mammography—a study showing that all the past studies were flawed and that mass mammography screening does nothing to lower a country’s breast cancer mortality rate.
We haven’t heard the last word on this, and the breast cancer establishment is scrambling to find some new evidence that mammograms are worth it. But for now: fact is, they don’t seem to do much, as some doctors have suspected for a long time. Ten years ago, the famous British surgeon Michael Baum called routine screening mammography “one of the greatest deceptions perpetrated on the women of the western world.”
In other words, the establishment breast cancer culture—represented by the races for the cure, the pink ribbons and teddy bears—rests on a paradigm that has been disproved and discredited.
We don’t need to be cheerful. And we may not need to get those mammograms every year—which means we don’t need all this breast cancer “awareness’ that the corporations and the foundations are always encouraging.
So what does it hurt to have this massive breast cancer culture? You could say: whatever gets you through the night…
But there are at least 2 major problems with it:
First, the breast cancer culture has encouraged a dangerous complacency about current medical approaches to breast-cancer treatment. Implicit in all the pink ribbons and the drumbeat for regular mammograms was the promise that your cancer could be cured—if only you bring it to the doctors' attention early enough. In other words, there’s nothing wrong with the so-called treatments—the burden is on you to get your tumor detected “early.”
But as I wrote to the Komen message board: not all small tumors are "early" and more easily treated. In fact, there is no single disease “breast cancer”—probably a multitude of diseases of various degrees of virulence. But right now, they’re all being treated as a single disease.
Worse, current treatments—surgery, chemotherapy and radiation—carry no guarantee of long-term survival and are notoriously debilitating and disfiguring themselves. Every year, more than 40,000 American women die of breast cancer, large numbers of whom had duly submitted to screening mammograms and to the nightmarish treatments that ensued.
Even mammograms are something to worry about: Only one carcinogen has been definitely established as a cause of breast cancer, and that is ionizing radiation of the kind emitted by mammography machines.
A second big problem with the pink ribbon culture: While they want a cure—we ALL do—they say almost nothing about the need to find the CAUSE of breast cancer, which is very likely environmental. This omission makes sense: breast cancer would hardly be the darling of corporate charities if its complexion changed from pink to green.
But by ignoring or underemphasizing the issue of environmental causes, the pink-ribbon crowd function as willing dupes of what could be called the Cancer Industrial Complex: by which I mean the multinational corporate enterprise which with the one hand doles out carcinogens and disease and, with the other, offers expensive, semi-toxic, pharmaceutical treatments. Breast Cancer Awareness month, for example, is sponsored by AstraZeneca (the manufacturer of Tamoxifen) which until 1999 was also the fourth largest producer of pesticides in the United States, including at least one known carcinogen.
So the more I immersed myself in the pink ribbon culture – during those awful months of chemo last year—the more disgusted I got. But I had one lifeline, one source of hope and genuine sisterhood: My cousin happened to send me three back issues of the Breast Cancer Action newsletter. I read them cover to cover, absorbing information, thrilled to find other women who had confronted the disease and managed to keep their wits about them and their dignity intact.
I am deeply grateful that Breast Cancer Action was there for me when I needed it most. It is one of the few voices of clarity and consistently feminist determination within the vast sea of pink ribbons out there, and I’m here to ask you—implore you, in fact—to help it not only survive but grow.
I know it can, because when I published my thoughts on the pink ribbon culture—in Harpers last October—I was deluged with letters from women saying: Thank god, somebody feels the same way I do! Here’s a project I’d like to see BCA have the resources to launch: a website for women don’t want teddy bears and ribbons, who want ACTION! I’d like to see an interactive website to connect these women to each other, because this is what I needed a year ago—not to mention probably for the rest of my life. I’d call it “bad girls of breast cancer”—like the BCA t-shirt. This is MY dream for BCA and I hope you’ll help make it possible.
Because we don’t need to be infantilized when we’re dealing with a potentially fatal disease, we don’t need to be patronized with cosmetics and jewelry, and told to keep smiling, no matter what.
We don’t need more “awareness” of breast cancer—we’re VERY aware, thank you very much. We need treatments that work, and above all, we need to know the cause of this killer, so we can stop it before it attacks another generation.
And we certainly don’t need a breast cancer culture that, by downplaying the possible environmental causes of cancer, serves as an accomplice in global poisoning—normalizing cancer, prettying it up, even presenting it, perversely, as a positive and enviable experience.
What we need is a truly sisterly response to this ghastly disease—one that is both loving and militant, courageous and caring, willing to confront the Cancer Industrial Complex and, when necessary, the entire $16 billion a year breast cancer industry, including the medical profession.
Are you with me? Will you be with me if my cancer returns?
Good!—then this is the time to stand with BCA and give them what you can—your time, your talent, your money!
www.bcaction.org
Friday, October 29, 2010
Scared Witless
Today I had a needle aspiration of an enlarged and highly suspicious lymph node which might be the sentinal node, the catcher's mitt/drain of cancer cells that get infected first. Not pleasant, but using meditation, I went through it with a compliment by the radiologist who asked what I was doing, since I was so quiet and calm during very very deep penetration of the needle.
As I entered Sloan-Kettering accompanied by British granddaughters, I noticed a table dedicated to integrative medicine at MSKCC. I was overjoyed, since I had been told that S-K was way behind in alternative/integrative methodology. Not so, and I was very pleased as she described their offerings. Every session I take is prepped by the entire team to my specific medical records and treatment, even the relaxation massages. The one thing they are cautious about is the use of herbs, since it is not yet known how they interact with the traditional therapies, and we often don't know what their true content might include. I asked if the director, Wendy Miner, had heard of Ken, and indeed she had.
Upon arriving at home after a fancy East Side NY luncheon with my two gorgeous charges and a day at the Met, I noted that there is a class called Grace and Grit!! I immediately left a message with the LCSW who teaches the program, since the book is at my side constantly now.
Treya's journey began with a lump; I began with an abnormal mammogram which I endure faithfully every September. As with my care providers, her doctor decreased her fear that the lump could be serious, but sent her to a surgeon nonetheless, as did mine. He examined her much as mine did, with similar findings:
p. 31, Treya's diary: "If malignant there is often a slight puckering of the skin over the lump. Since my skin does not do that and the lump is unattached to anything, this doctor also feels that it is probably just a cyst." But when he tries to aspirate with a needle, he hits something hard, and recommends its removal within 3 weeks. Being advised not to treat it lightly, she sees a cancer specialist who recommends a lumpectomy the next day.
How do you feel about the operation, her doctor queries; do you want somethihng to calm you down?
p. 34 "That won't be necessary. I feel fine." (Studies have shown that women who are most afraid before having a lumpectomy for suspected malignancy are less likely to have cancer; those who are calm are more likely to have cancer.)"
Why is this?
I am presuming that it is because the cells "know" in some way whether there is a disease process at work. I will be writing and reporting on this aspect of the UL/UR as the days, weeks, and months go on.
When Ken and Treya receive the aweful news about the lump, Ken writes:
p. 35: "Strange things happen to the mind when catastrophe strikes. It felt like the universe turned into a thin paper tissue, and then someone simply tore the tissue in half right in front of my eyes....A tremendous strength descended on me, the strength of being totally jolted and totally stupefied...As Samuel Johnson drily commented, the prospect of death marvelously concentrates the mind."
My own reaction was guided by old patterns born from a lifetime of dealing with unpredictable psychotic breaks by relatives: I became stone cold hard. As the nurse fussed around me asking how I was doing hearing the very bad news, I shot back at her dismissively by holding out my steady hands: "Does it look like I'm not handling the news?" But of course I really was not handling the news well at all.
I was stone cold hard angry. At everyone. At the cancer. At the professional environment that over 2 1/2 years of harassment caused my immune system to cease protecting me and that led the doctor to inform me that such an environment was "a recipe for breast cancer." At some of my colleagues who were too nervous to come to my defense.
I was vaccillating wildly between flight and flight. From childhood I had learned ther clever adaptive trick of dissociation. I could feel the tug on my self to flee, to blank out, to become numb. I could register no emotions at that time, but knew that somewhere there was a child tugging at mommy's skirt pleading to get away from this scary place.
I stalked out of my local cancer center, so beautifully, tastefully and softly appointed to soothe the most frazzled patient. "You don't fool me", I warned it mentally as I glared back at it over my shoulder. I'm in for a horrible time and nothing is going to substitute for the pain and fear that will engulf my life from here on out.
The other thoughts spearing me as I got into my car to return home did not include, "why me?" Of course it was me. The shitty things in my life just keep on coming, don't they? And here I thought magically that once healed of a virulent form of PTSD, I had done my time in hell. Wrong, solider, you have to re-up, this time in the Cancer Zone. Bad karma? Prior life I did something really really aweful? Maybe my mother was right, and there IS a curse on our family?
p. 39-40 From Treya's diary: "This is real. This is happening to me. I lie in bed rigid with shock and disbelief as the world lies quiet around me....I have cancer. I have breast cancer. I believe this is true and, at the same time, I do not believe it; I cannot let it in....
"CANCER. CANCER. CANCER. This cannot be undone, this cannot be erased. CANCER. A cloud of voices, images, ideas, fears, stories, photographs, advertisements, articles, movies, television shows arises around me, vague, shapeless, but dense, ominous. These are the stories my culture has collected around this thing, 'the big C'"
p. 42: "Illness" versus "sickness"....This distinction stayed with me since my first reading. Ken defines "illness" as the actual disease process facing the person, be it a broken bone or a malignant tumor. It has medical and scientific dimensions, and is more or less value-free. A typical LR entity.
"Sickness', on the other hand, is how the person's culture faces him with that illness, with all the judgments, fears, hopes, myths, stories, and values---typical LL entities. "If the culture treats a particular illness with compassion and enlightened understanding," writes Ken, then sickness can be seen as a challenge, a healing crisis and opportunity. With the recent publication of books on ther "breast cancer enterprise", we would do well to look closely at the LL aspects.
As of tonight, I have been able to rest pretty staqbly in Kosmic consciousness, supported and surrounded by being aware as a manifest being experiencing this pain, and an infinite being who hasd never entered time or space. Neither can be held alone; both must be understood, or else there exists spiritual bypass OR endless suffering.
As I entered Sloan-Kettering accompanied by British granddaughters, I noticed a table dedicated to integrative medicine at MSKCC. I was overjoyed, since I had been told that S-K was way behind in alternative/integrative methodology. Not so, and I was very pleased as she described their offerings. Every session I take is prepped by the entire team to my specific medical records and treatment, even the relaxation massages. The one thing they are cautious about is the use of herbs, since it is not yet known how they interact with the traditional therapies, and we often don't know what their true content might include. I asked if the director, Wendy Miner, had heard of Ken, and indeed she had.
Upon arriving at home after a fancy East Side NY luncheon with my two gorgeous charges and a day at the Met, I noted that there is a class called Grace and Grit!! I immediately left a message with the LCSW who teaches the program, since the book is at my side constantly now.
Treya's journey began with a lump; I began with an abnormal mammogram which I endure faithfully every September. As with my care providers, her doctor decreased her fear that the lump could be serious, but sent her to a surgeon nonetheless, as did mine. He examined her much as mine did, with similar findings:
p. 31, Treya's diary: "If malignant there is often a slight puckering of the skin over the lump. Since my skin does not do that and the lump is unattached to anything, this doctor also feels that it is probably just a cyst." But when he tries to aspirate with a needle, he hits something hard, and recommends its removal within 3 weeks. Being advised not to treat it lightly, she sees a cancer specialist who recommends a lumpectomy the next day.
How do you feel about the operation, her doctor queries; do you want somethihng to calm you down?
p. 34 "That won't be necessary. I feel fine." (Studies have shown that women who are most afraid before having a lumpectomy for suspected malignancy are less likely to have cancer; those who are calm are more likely to have cancer.)"
Why is this?
I am presuming that it is because the cells "know" in some way whether there is a disease process at work. I will be writing and reporting on this aspect of the UL/UR as the days, weeks, and months go on.
When Ken and Treya receive the aweful news about the lump, Ken writes:
p. 35: "Strange things happen to the mind when catastrophe strikes. It felt like the universe turned into a thin paper tissue, and then someone simply tore the tissue in half right in front of my eyes....A tremendous strength descended on me, the strength of being totally jolted and totally stupefied...As Samuel Johnson drily commented, the prospect of death marvelously concentrates the mind."
My own reaction was guided by old patterns born from a lifetime of dealing with unpredictable psychotic breaks by relatives: I became stone cold hard. As the nurse fussed around me asking how I was doing hearing the very bad news, I shot back at her dismissively by holding out my steady hands: "Does it look like I'm not handling the news?" But of course I really was not handling the news well at all.
I was stone cold hard angry. At everyone. At the cancer. At the professional environment that over 2 1/2 years of harassment caused my immune system to cease protecting me and that led the doctor to inform me that such an environment was "a recipe for breast cancer." At some of my colleagues who were too nervous to come to my defense.
I was vaccillating wildly between flight and flight. From childhood I had learned ther clever adaptive trick of dissociation. I could feel the tug on my self to flee, to blank out, to become numb. I could register no emotions at that time, but knew that somewhere there was a child tugging at mommy's skirt pleading to get away from this scary place.
I stalked out of my local cancer center, so beautifully, tastefully and softly appointed to soothe the most frazzled patient. "You don't fool me", I warned it mentally as I glared back at it over my shoulder. I'm in for a horrible time and nothing is going to substitute for the pain and fear that will engulf my life from here on out.
The other thoughts spearing me as I got into my car to return home did not include, "why me?" Of course it was me. The shitty things in my life just keep on coming, don't they? And here I thought magically that once healed of a virulent form of PTSD, I had done my time in hell. Wrong, solider, you have to re-up, this time in the Cancer Zone. Bad karma? Prior life I did something really really aweful? Maybe my mother was right, and there IS a curse on our family?
p. 39-40 From Treya's diary: "This is real. This is happening to me. I lie in bed rigid with shock and disbelief as the world lies quiet around me....I have cancer. I have breast cancer. I believe this is true and, at the same time, I do not believe it; I cannot let it in....
"CANCER. CANCER. CANCER. This cannot be undone, this cannot be erased. CANCER. A cloud of voices, images, ideas, fears, stories, photographs, advertisements, articles, movies, television shows arises around me, vague, shapeless, but dense, ominous. These are the stories my culture has collected around this thing, 'the big C'"
p. 42: "Illness" versus "sickness"....This distinction stayed with me since my first reading. Ken defines "illness" as the actual disease process facing the person, be it a broken bone or a malignant tumor. It has medical and scientific dimensions, and is more or less value-free. A typical LR entity.
"Sickness', on the other hand, is how the person's culture faces him with that illness, with all the judgments, fears, hopes, myths, stories, and values---typical LL entities. "If the culture treats a particular illness with compassion and enlightened understanding," writes Ken, then sickness can be seen as a challenge, a healing crisis and opportunity. With the recent publication of books on ther "breast cancer enterprise", we would do well to look closely at the LL aspects.
As of tonight, I have been able to rest pretty staqbly in Kosmic consciousness, supported and surrounded by being aware as a manifest being experiencing this pain, and an infinite being who hasd never entered time or space. Neither can be held alone; both must be understood, or else there exists spiritual bypass OR endless suffering.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
In Situ Experience
In situ, for those with some medical/biological knowledge, is the "best" kind of breast cancer to have. It refers to tumots that have not grown beyond their site of origin and have not invaded neighboring tissue. I did not have that type of limited cancer, which they can basically scoop out. The other meaning of in situ means "in the site of", and it is that situated awareness that involves me tonight. I wanted to go back to Grace and Grit which I had put off reading until just a few years ago. It is an unforgettable, moving and unbearably touching love story for the ages. But I am not situated anywhere near that tender, frightening, ennobling, and transformational context. As my doctor told me, "You have run-of-the-mill breast cancer." I am going back into Ken's and Treya's story to glean what I can of the spiritual journey taken by both of them, and to understand where I am situated, personally, medically, and culturally.
Page 19: "The essence pf mysticism is that in the deepest part of your own being, in the very center of your own pure awareness, you are fundamentally one with Spirit, one with Godhead, one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and unchanging fashion."
I grew up in a schizoid-inducing household which required the greatest adaptive talents my little self could muster in order to keep Spirit alive. I was, from my earliest memories, a mystic, and was encouraged to follow this aspect of myself by my wildly creative mother. I received no direction for my own development, but heard enough family-authenticated stories to know that my mother was capable of rare, esoteric mystical abilities which I could never match. She was such an adept at self-hypnosis that universities would call on her to demonstrate her rarest of abilities: cessation of bleeding when a knitting needle passed through her arm; writing with both left and right hands simultaneously; and having eye surgery with no anesthesia at 87 years of age while in a self-inducedf trance with rapid healing, no pain, and no bleeding. I knew that some people could access these rarified states of consciousness, but it seemed to me at the time that they were joined with severe pathologies. It was not until adulthood that I came to tease apart my mother's mystical abilities from her pathologies. In other words, why would I want to follow her in developing mystical abilities if it seemed to be joined with pathologies?
What a relief it was later in my life for me to read about mysticism, and the Self! What a gift to be offered a clean, clear Identity!
But decades had been lost to my constricted attitude towards any "development" or exposure to mysticism. Instead I turned to political science and law, which I saw as bright line understandings of the highest level of human development and action. Growing up in the South, in Dallas, with the John Birch Society, White Citizens' Council, KKK, and Kennedy's assassination framing my maturation, I was more drawn to that pathological aspect of humanity and what caused it. How might the Lower Right be best designed to contain and to elevate those who hated? Surely education and understanding of the brilliance of our Founding Fathers could provide a rational framework to demonstrate to those capable of "right action" to work for the reparations of the poor and marginalized, and thus marginalize those who hated.
I basically walked through the '60s enamored of Amber values. One reason that I eshewed the sex/drug/guru influences was that I had intuitively reckoned with Green's misunderstanding of its Red followers. I saw it again and again, in Dallas, in New Orleans where I went to college, and at Columbia where I did my graduate work. If Green could not *grok* the toxic effects of its Red camp followers, then I certainly had no respect for the group and had no interest in following along. So I missed out on the benefits of the hippies' parade, and dubbed myself a "situationist", meaning that I would assess each event on its own merits, and either concur or turn my back.
We will pass through more decades, with the '70s containing my employment and marriage and increasingly unbearable personal life from within and without. The miracle at the end of the decade was the birth of my daughter, and my final embrace of "cutting-edge" health ideas centering around childbirth. I did my usual obsessive informational search when I found myself pregnant in 1979, and discovered that there was a birthing method that had the safety of the hospital with a more natural birthing experience. I became trained in the Bradley Method, and fought with the hospital to permit me to give birth sitting up. For those much younger readers, the doctors had imposed on women in labor that they do calesthenics by doing sit-ups: lay down, then pop up for a contraction and push, then lay down again, and repeat....I won my battle, and can proudly state that I was the first woman to be permitted to give birth while sitting up!
I feel compelled here to explain my lag in accepting and understanding what so many have grown up knowing and practicing when it comes to alternative methods of healing and birthing. I was no pioneer until 1979, and had to do years of catching up, including with my situation today.
In the '80s I became a lawyer with a heavy matrimonial and ctiminal practice. At the same time my personal life deteriorated into a daily battle to get out of bed and face.....well, let us try to compare it with being at war without the bullets, death, and physical destruction. I do not wish to recite the daily grief to which I was exposed, since I feel that is not in service of my current need to heal and strengthen. But by then I was on a search for someone...very special...who could synthesize the inner and outer experiences of my life. I found Ken's work in 1982, and followed a slow but steady path by reading through his bibliographies. I was so desparate for something to make my unmanageable life coherent. I figured that since neither law nor political science had the framework I needed, I would read through quantum physics, which I did, dfevouring over 100 books and taking copious notes, writing articles I never published, and creating lesson plans I never got to teach.
Yet there was Ken cautioning that modern physics was niot mystical and that adoption of a quantum theory would suffice for a spiritual worldview.
p. 21-2: "To use Plato's analogy of the Cave: physics gives us a detailed picture of the shadows in the Cave (relative truth), whereas mysticism gives us a direct introduction to the Light beyond the Cave (absolute truth). Study the shadows all you want, you still won't have light....If you hook your God to today's physics, then when that physics slips, that God slips with it." So quantum phsycis is a really neat thing to understand and to chat about with others, but it isn't IT. Where to next?
Finally, in 1990 with the death of my beloved father, I am plunged into learniung all about my Jewish roots which had not grown very deep in the hard red texas soil, learning to say Kaddish for him, joining the temple choir, reading, reading, reading, and then hearing Deepak Chopra talk about quantum physics and meditation. I began to watch him on TV, read his books, and took meditation lessons from his top aide. I then found out that Jews mediate too, gee, who knew? I began a daily and negative meditation practice while keeping a log as they had advised. Each day I wrote about my pitifully sad attempts to meditate, how I was one of those who would never get it "right"; it became hard to read my entries of defeat and I threw the journal away. But I kept trying, really really hard.
In 2001 I found I could no longer subscribe to Judaism and went into deep reading on zen, which suited my emerging understanding of what Ken had been writing about. In 2003 I started to work with Ken on Integral University and was exposed to so many brilliant teachers who basically continued the rewiring that Ken had begun on my consciousness. I began to pedal faster and faster to catch up with my age cohort, all who had had deep spiritual experiences and practices over decades. I was really a beginner, with more in common with the 20-somethings.
In 2006, with only 2 years left in my teaching career before I could retire with full pension and continue my legal and Integral careers, I entered a time at work of such bleakness and woundedness that it still inspires nightmares. Jealousy, revenge, power, all came into play in a situation where I had no means of fighting back or even leaving the game. I became chronically ill, and my doctor told me that my immune system had become so taxed by daily stress that it could no longer protect me. He blatantly told me that I would not live out 6 months of my last year of teaching. My lawyer told me my situation was the worst case of workplace harassment he had seen in his 25 year career against major corporations.
I left teaching on Dec. 21, 2007 with a confidentiality agreement and settlement in tow. I was diagnosed with PTSD and after leaving one therapist found THE one who could give me the spiritual healing that I badly needed. I finished this past summer, and was in the leave-taking part of therapy when I got a bad mammogram in September.
Treya's lump was discovered shortly before her wedding to Ken. As with me, she and I were assured by every medical provider that it was probably nothing. In my case I was repeatedly told that 80% of women with my...[name your symptom]...did not have cancer. Next bad news, and I was assured that 80% of that group did not have cancer....until I was told that 80% of women who have cancer have my type of cancer.
Off to Sloan-Kettering tomorrow for more testing and more information that I really do not wish to hear, much less absorb.
Page 19: "The essence pf mysticism is that in the deepest part of your own being, in the very center of your own pure awareness, you are fundamentally one with Spirit, one with Godhead, one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and unchanging fashion."
I grew up in a schizoid-inducing household which required the greatest adaptive talents my little self could muster in order to keep Spirit alive. I was, from my earliest memories, a mystic, and was encouraged to follow this aspect of myself by my wildly creative mother. I received no direction for my own development, but heard enough family-authenticated stories to know that my mother was capable of rare, esoteric mystical abilities which I could never match. She was such an adept at self-hypnosis that universities would call on her to demonstrate her rarest of abilities: cessation of bleeding when a knitting needle passed through her arm; writing with both left and right hands simultaneously; and having eye surgery with no anesthesia at 87 years of age while in a self-inducedf trance with rapid healing, no pain, and no bleeding. I knew that some people could access these rarified states of consciousness, but it seemed to me at the time that they were joined with severe pathologies. It was not until adulthood that I came to tease apart my mother's mystical abilities from her pathologies. In other words, why would I want to follow her in developing mystical abilities if it seemed to be joined with pathologies?
What a relief it was later in my life for me to read about mysticism, and the Self! What a gift to be offered a clean, clear Identity!
But decades had been lost to my constricted attitude towards any "development" or exposure to mysticism. Instead I turned to political science and law, which I saw as bright line understandings of the highest level of human development and action. Growing up in the South, in Dallas, with the John Birch Society, White Citizens' Council, KKK, and Kennedy's assassination framing my maturation, I was more drawn to that pathological aspect of humanity and what caused it. How might the Lower Right be best designed to contain and to elevate those who hated? Surely education and understanding of the brilliance of our Founding Fathers could provide a rational framework to demonstrate to those capable of "right action" to work for the reparations of the poor and marginalized, and thus marginalize those who hated.
I basically walked through the '60s enamored of Amber values. One reason that I eshewed the sex/drug/guru influences was that I had intuitively reckoned with Green's misunderstanding of its Red followers. I saw it again and again, in Dallas, in New Orleans where I went to college, and at Columbia where I did my graduate work. If Green could not *grok* the toxic effects of its Red camp followers, then I certainly had no respect for the group and had no interest in following along. So I missed out on the benefits of the hippies' parade, and dubbed myself a "situationist", meaning that I would assess each event on its own merits, and either concur or turn my back.
We will pass through more decades, with the '70s containing my employment and marriage and increasingly unbearable personal life from within and without. The miracle at the end of the decade was the birth of my daughter, and my final embrace of "cutting-edge" health ideas centering around childbirth. I did my usual obsessive informational search when I found myself pregnant in 1979, and discovered that there was a birthing method that had the safety of the hospital with a more natural birthing experience. I became trained in the Bradley Method, and fought with the hospital to permit me to give birth sitting up. For those much younger readers, the doctors had imposed on women in labor that they do calesthenics by doing sit-ups: lay down, then pop up for a contraction and push, then lay down again, and repeat....I won my battle, and can proudly state that I was the first woman to be permitted to give birth while sitting up!
I feel compelled here to explain my lag in accepting and understanding what so many have grown up knowing and practicing when it comes to alternative methods of healing and birthing. I was no pioneer until 1979, and had to do years of catching up, including with my situation today.
In the '80s I became a lawyer with a heavy matrimonial and ctiminal practice. At the same time my personal life deteriorated into a daily battle to get out of bed and face.....well, let us try to compare it with being at war without the bullets, death, and physical destruction. I do not wish to recite the daily grief to which I was exposed, since I feel that is not in service of my current need to heal and strengthen. But by then I was on a search for someone...very special...who could synthesize the inner and outer experiences of my life. I found Ken's work in 1982, and followed a slow but steady path by reading through his bibliographies. I was so desparate for something to make my unmanageable life coherent. I figured that since neither law nor political science had the framework I needed, I would read through quantum physics, which I did, dfevouring over 100 books and taking copious notes, writing articles I never published, and creating lesson plans I never got to teach.
Yet there was Ken cautioning that modern physics was niot mystical and that adoption of a quantum theory would suffice for a spiritual worldview.
p. 21-2: "To use Plato's analogy of the Cave: physics gives us a detailed picture of the shadows in the Cave (relative truth), whereas mysticism gives us a direct introduction to the Light beyond the Cave (absolute truth). Study the shadows all you want, you still won't have light....If you hook your God to today's physics, then when that physics slips, that God slips with it." So quantum phsycis is a really neat thing to understand and to chat about with others, but it isn't IT. Where to next?
Finally, in 1990 with the death of my beloved father, I am plunged into learniung all about my Jewish roots which had not grown very deep in the hard red texas soil, learning to say Kaddish for him, joining the temple choir, reading, reading, reading, and then hearing Deepak Chopra talk about quantum physics and meditation. I began to watch him on TV, read his books, and took meditation lessons from his top aide. I then found out that Jews mediate too, gee, who knew? I began a daily and negative meditation practice while keeping a log as they had advised. Each day I wrote about my pitifully sad attempts to meditate, how I was one of those who would never get it "right"; it became hard to read my entries of defeat and I threw the journal away. But I kept trying, really really hard.
In 2001 I found I could no longer subscribe to Judaism and went into deep reading on zen, which suited my emerging understanding of what Ken had been writing about. In 2003 I started to work with Ken on Integral University and was exposed to so many brilliant teachers who basically continued the rewiring that Ken had begun on my consciousness. I began to pedal faster and faster to catch up with my age cohort, all who had had deep spiritual experiences and practices over decades. I was really a beginner, with more in common with the 20-somethings.
In 2006, with only 2 years left in my teaching career before I could retire with full pension and continue my legal and Integral careers, I entered a time at work of such bleakness and woundedness that it still inspires nightmares. Jealousy, revenge, power, all came into play in a situation where I had no means of fighting back or even leaving the game. I became chronically ill, and my doctor told me that my immune system had become so taxed by daily stress that it could no longer protect me. He blatantly told me that I would not live out 6 months of my last year of teaching. My lawyer told me my situation was the worst case of workplace harassment he had seen in his 25 year career against major corporations.
I left teaching on Dec. 21, 2007 with a confidentiality agreement and settlement in tow. I was diagnosed with PTSD and after leaving one therapist found THE one who could give me the spiritual healing that I badly needed. I finished this past summer, and was in the leave-taking part of therapy when I got a bad mammogram in September.
Treya's lump was discovered shortly before her wedding to Ken. As with me, she and I were assured by every medical provider that it was probably nothing. In my case I was repeatedly told that 80% of women with my...[name your symptom]...did not have cancer. Next bad news, and I was assured that 80% of that group did not have cancer....until I was told that 80% of women who have cancer have my type of cancer.
Off to Sloan-Kettering tomorrow for more testing and more information that I really do not wish to hear, much less absorb.
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