Sword Fighting in the Redwoods
Survivor. Fighting Cancer. War on Cancer. Latest weapon against cancer. Battle the disease.
I’ve never liked this terminology. 10 years ago I was polite and patient with it for the most part with my breast cancer adveture 1.0, but now I’m just fed up as I navigate this adventure 2.0. Wait, is navigate a war term!?
Here’s a well-put email from a friend who is a martial arts instructor, I loved this one:
The attitude you’re taking toward this cancer is typical of you; but that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect you all the more for it. Courageous, open, and positive, I cannot begin to tell you how admirable I find the way you’re going forward: it is perhaps inevitable that people will compare you to a warrior, but in the post-Millman world, people say that about any Way of dedication and power. When I say you’re behaving like a warrior, I mean something a little more specific: I mean you’re confronting the situation openly and honestly, and engaging it instead of retreating. You’re not only out of the closet, you’ve blown the closet to splinters that will take a while to settle out of the stratosphere.
swords in the redwoods
More power to you!
Blessings and good faring,
Gereg
So tell me what you all think of this war talk, and any alternatives you can come up with!
ps: Both photos taken by me at my son’s sword fighting class 3 years ago.
pps: Please do be honest with me in the comments: tell me also if I’m over-reacting and need to get over it, maybe there is a place in the war on cancer for these terms. Really, I can take it! Remember: I’m now a 10 year survivor, I must be stronger somehow.
Tell you that you are over-reacting and to get over it???? Are you kidding? This adventure, war, journey, what ever you want to call it is so personal and different for each and every one of us that it has touched.
I cringe when I hear these war terms, because I also dealing with stage 4 cancer, have never felt that those words resonated with me. I have never felt that I was in battle. In fact, I have felt the opposite, trying embrace my cancer and to find out what gifts/lessons it has brought to me. And it has indeed brought me many gifts, it has changed my life. In a weird way, I am thankful for my cancer.
Julia, I applaude you. You are brave and strong. You are a warrior. The words in your friends e-mail are so perfect, you truely are confronting your apponent head on with humor, anger, tears and laughter.
I applaud you for both your positive attitude and your willingness to fight this enemy within you. Marshall your natural killers cells with your good outlook as recommended in positive imagery. You are brave and strong. Keep it up!
Hi Julia, I agree; war metaphors don’t work for me either. I rather think of my full-time relationship with caring for myself in the midst of cancer as a “devotion,” not a battle. Here is an excerpt from my last blog entry where I discuss the same topic:
What is the appropriate conceptual lens for what sometimes feels like my evil twin? I struggle with the way to view my cancer. Is “my” even the correct term? Does it harm me to think of it as evil? Is it bad to call it “it”? Does it belong to me? Is it actually me since I grew it out of my own cells? Or have I been invaded by an alien? If this cancer is “a growing being” within me, another growing being, does that mean I am its mother? I don’t feel maternal or protective of it. In fact, if I had a chance, I’d get rid of it! (Perhaps this is another good reason I’m not a mother.)
Choosing a conceptual lens feels important to me. I spend a lot of time in meditation, visualization, or what I prefer to call creative imagination inquiring about the nature of my physiology and anatomy, exploring the state of my body as a host for this unwanted visitor, and hoping to find a way to make my internal environment unwelcome for cancer, while being very welcoming for the rest of me.
I have never resonated with battle analogies. It doesn’t feel right to spend a lot of time trying to kill my cancer. There might be too much collateral damage. I feel violated enough; I can’t withstand any more violence. I tend to be more comfortable with the idea of withholding the unwanted cancer’s main fertilizer (estrogen) and making my internal milieu unwelcoming for cancer. How can I feed myself, but deprive my tumors of what they need? I feel like I’m doing this with my diet, my supplement regimen, with hands-on work, with Continuum, with movement and breath, with mindfulness, with acupuncture, and I have sacrificed my own desire and need for estrogen in the pursuit of eradicating or controlling things. So far it all seems to be working.
Jim Jealous, an Osteopathic teacher of mine used to say, “When you find yourself in a rat’s nest, don’t play with the rat.” I’m minding his words, and attempting to address the atmosphere or the environment in which the rat lives. Maybe if I turn on all the lights and air out the nest, the rat will choose to leave.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I know Just What You are Going Through (Just kidding – invoking the least favorite response of friends). As the parent of a child with Down Syndrome – I used to hear too often ‘you are a saint’ ‘you are truly blessed’. WHAT? No one called me a ‘saint’ for raising my non-disabled child. They probably called me a lot of things – - but not a saint. I guess they just don’t know what to say – and they are grasping for a ‘compliment’ of some sorts – secretly thinking “if I compliment them god will know how truly concerned and kind I am and will not afflict any of my family members” When my friend Kate and I would go out we would always throw in one more dollar ‘tip’ as karma money so that nothing bad would happen to us (sort of kidding – really an excuse to be good tippers since we had both been waitresses). Even when we were parking valet for her chemo we would throw in an extra dollar. “Hasn’t what we were trying to avoid already happened?” I asked her. The Warriors and The Saints – really good names for sports teams; but not for us.
I have used battle terms without really thinking about how it sounded till now. A fight is usually instigated by fear and you have already overcome cancer because you have defeated it’s strongest weapon by removing fear. Not that it doesn’t rear it’s head now and then. Being 12 years out, I too sometimes worry about the “other shoe” that may drop but I always liked what Anne Lamott wrote about a friend living with stage 4, something along the lines of “I’m tired of fighting a life-threatening disease, I’m just going to live a disease-threatening life”. I guess live strong is about the best way to put it. It’s really cold in Nebraska, enjoy you weather.
The “battle” imagery is very common in western medicine, and I’ve always felt uncomfortable with it. At least I think there could be more nuance in looking at a dis-ease than just trying to blow it up. Just like the rest of our human experiences, life offers so many different shades and angles, and war or battles are but one of them. So while I think there are times when doing battle will seem like the right path in regards to one’s body, I think that looking at the entire cancer experience as one gigantic battle field probably deprives you of a whole range of other paths toward healing, both body and soul. Perhaps just like in politics, the best path might be to look at your different body parts and human experiences as friends with different opinions that can be loved besides the struggles and conflicts, and save the war as a last resort.
I don’t know, Julia. You and those who’ve faced cancer know better than I what conceptual framework helps you most to keep going. I don’t feel qualified to judge how you choose to frame cancer, but I just want you to find what works best for you and for you not to feel guilty or like you’ve taken the wrong course, or will be judged by others for your choice of metaphor. Maybe the picture of Graydon sword fighting will bring you energy and strength. If so, why not use battle imagery? I would only urge you to not judge yourself too harshly.
All of your comments are perfect. thank you so much. Here’s another great response I received in my inbox… from a friend… and I don’t know if he wants to be public, so we’ll just call him a friend! Yes, he’s a 17 year post cancer person. in ‘remission’. another word I find annoying, or I did before my cancer returned!
-fourcry
War is as old has society. It is ingrained in mankind psyche and thus
I’m not surprised it has and will continue to pop up in reality and
metaphor. Problem is that no one really “wins” in war. Both sides
lose people and it radically changes where we are headed as a people.
War is really about people vs people. Cancer is a people vs.a
unthinking, unfeeling action in our cells. You can’t personify it.
We as a society just have to figure out how to use out group thinking
power to correct it. When science fails, then we must use whatever
we have to put ourselves in a place where we can enjoy the time we
have here.
Thanks my 2cents,
Hi Julia–
It drove me nuts during chemo when people said I was a “trooper.” Maybe I should have complained more? So many people deal with so much shit all the time. Why does cancer put this halo around our suffering?