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.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
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.
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