Language of Healing: Daily Comfort for Women Living with Breast Cancer

Introduction

Like so many other women, we, the authors, have lived through the shock of breast cancer diagnoses. One of us was thirty-four years old, a single woman living on the West Coast who had her whole life ahead of her; the other, a post-menopausal, married, fifty-six-year-old Midwesterner, eagerly anticipating the birth of a grandchild. We didn't know each other as we made our separate ways from diagnosis through treatment and recovery. We met when we were asked to explore the possibility of working on a book about confronting breast cancer. We agreed, and as we shared our individual stories, we discovered that while our lives are very different, our breast cancer stories have much in common.

We experienced the same sense of loss and disorientation. We shared similar questions as we wandered through the wilderness of medical opinions, options, choices, and terror. In recovery, we both struggled in the aftermath of the physical, emotional, and psychological effects to our lives. We had to redefine what normal meant to us. We began to live life with a renewed sense of the value of each and every day. Most importantly, we found immeasurable support and guidance in listening to the stories of other women facing breast cancer and in sharing ours. By reflecting on the advice and insights offered, we responded to our individual challenges in confident, thoughtful, and healing ways. Acceptance overcame anger, understanding overtook confusion, and courage diminished fear. Moment by moment, breast cancer became an unexpected journey of self-discovery, new friends, and new beginnings.

As we talked more about a potential book, we knew it had to include a diversity of voices, our own as well as those of other women who have a point of view and a deeply felt commitment to helping you on your journey. The result is our personal experiences mingled with those of other women in a down-to-earth volume that is the sum total of many perspectives, interwoven and laid out one upon the other. The scope ranges from the first shock of diagnosis to the ultimately transformative powers of the breast cancer experience—and many of the fears, insights, and even joys in between. You might say that The Language of Healing is like a breast cancer support group between the covers of a book. It is exactly what a woman recuperating in her hospital bed or at any of the other milestones of treatment and recovery might need—the accumulated coping devices, insights, wisdom, and inspiration of other women who have preceded her in confronting breast cancer.

Gathered here are moving anecdotes and practical information of value to every woman concerned or diagnosed with this disease. It is built upon the experiences of women of all ages, from twenty-three to eighty-four; women who have undergone all types of breast surgery and treatments, from lumpectomy and mastectomy to radiation and chemotherapy; women who are single, married, divorced, widowed, straight, and gay. The reflections correspond to the progress of varied experiences. Each one begins with a quotation to bring the topic into focus and ends with an affirmation that you may use as guided support in your recovery. You will touch on topics as universal as fear and grief, and as intimate as sexual relations. And you will find wisdom and healing strategies as varied as the individuals who offer them.

Approach this book as you like. Read through it in sequence, or read at random, based on your own shifting questions and needs. However you use it, our hope is that you find The Language of Healing to be encouraging and uplifting. It is a place to gain insights into your own experience and discover ways in which others have coped. It is a private place for you to feel supported and understood, a place to share your grief, anger, and sense of loss. Above all, it is a resource to strengthen you in your journey of self-discovery as you live moment to moment, with a newly deepened appreciation of life.

Pat Benson and Linda Dackman

Part I.

After Diagnosis

A Time to Cry

Finding Out

Suffering . . . no matter how multiplied . . . is always individual.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

What follows a breast cancer diagnosis?

Shock. Disbelief. Fear. Numbness.

The question: Cancer?

The answer: Yes. Cancer.

And then what?

Then you cry.

I let the tears come, the first thing I do for myself.

Shock

Oh Lord! If you but knew

what a brimstone of a creature

I am behind all this beautiful amiability!

Jane Welsh Carlyle

No matter how calm we may appear on the surface, we are standing on unstable ground. No one can absorb the news of breast cancer simply by hearing the diagnosis. The overwhelming reality of it becomes instantly buried under a protective shell of shock.

But reality cracks through our shock, our fear, our denial, little by little, until we are ready to face it. Remember, no matter how together and in control we appear, even to ourselves, we want to respect and acknowledge the chaos beneath.

I acknowledge the chaos underneath the surface as I struggle to face my diagnosis.

Grief

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I have breast cancer, you say to yourself over and over again. Yet you do not fully grasp the meaning of these words. The impact approaches and then recedes, is painfully clear, then muffled. You are inside and outside yourself all at once, aware that something awful has happened, but at the same time you expect to wake up from this terrible dream. You are rocked by shock and fear and grief. Suddenly, you shift. You are above it all, floating calmly, looking down at the world. You see the shattered pieces of yourself on the floor.

I will feel the grief, then gather my energy for moving forward.

Disorientation

Though the body moves, the soul may stay behind.

Murasaki Shikibu

The world moves, our body moves, and our mind rushes off without us, to visit some distant, narrow place at the end of a long, dark tunnel, although our thoughts cannot stay there long.

Our soul stands still, holding on to the world we once knew, the world before we took the word cancer inside us, the world we understood before everything changed.

Despite my disorientation, I continue.

Denial

Of course it will never be quite the same.

But what ever is in this life?

Alison Lurie

Cancer sneaks up sideways, quietly. It whispers, sends subtle signals, until it nudges past denial to get our attention. We see the doctors and have the tests. Whether the results are delivered gently or roughly, the diagnosis is clear—breast cancer.

The bad news settles on the surface. We can't fathom our death, and we can't fathom living with this disease. We sit quietly, unable to find the words to comfort ourselves, or the people we love. There are next steps to be