Breast Strokes

Cathy Edgett is a writer and Rosen Method Bodywork Practitioner.  She is a long-time student of Sensory Awareness and Essential Motion.  She met Jane through Eyes of the Beholder, a series of workshops that changed her life. She is married to Steve and they share two handsome sons, Jeff and Chris, and two beautiful daughters-in-law, Jan and Frieda. 

 

 Jane Flint has a background in human development, health advocacy, health communications.  She is a wife, a mother, a writer and poet, and with, Karen Roeper, is the creator of the integrated movement work, Eyes of the Beholder. 

 

 

 The Report from Within

- Cathy

 

 What is to give light must endure burning.

  - Viktor Frankl  

 

Like many my age, I believed that a diagnosis of cancer meant death.  I now know from personal experience that this is not always the case. I also know that a cancer diagnosis is a journey, one that is unchosen, but is  intriguing nevertheless.  

 In my case, there was also an immersion in a level of acknowledgment and support that I hadn't imagined would exist in the medical community.  I was raised with a heavy dose of Christian Science, mind over matter.  If you are sick, change your thinking. 

 I knew though, when I learned of a lump in my breast, and then cancer in my lymph nodes,  that I could not do this alone.  I needed some practical help and I needed support. 

The word heal derives from the word whole. I was on a journey to becoming a community, to becoming more whole.  Though I knew I might not be cured, I knew my place was to unify the support of doctors, nurses, receptionists, caregivers, family, and friends. 

I also understood the words of Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Wherever you go, there you are."  There was no route out. 

After surgery, I was depressed, so my son Jeff suggested a blog, an on-line journal, something I had never heard of, but he set it up and I eagerly began to post.  I discovered that people were interested in my journey, in what I was experiencing and what I had to say about it.  Cancer is not an either-or.  It isn't that you have it or you don't.  It is a process, like life, and through my blog, I gathered a community to support me as I journeyed on this strange new path. 

 I also had the support of Jane who was writing with me each week-day morning.  With all this support, how could I run away?  Periodically, a beach in Mexico would sound tempting, but I was curious, so I stayed right here, in the moment, trying to figure out what I was supposed to learn from this unexpected cancer diagnosis.  

 What I learned is that the words, "Ask and ye shall receive," are true.  I had only to ask and I received.  I also saw that the people who were giving were receiving too.  We were circling like a flock of birds in love, connection, joy, and support.  

Charlotte, Selver, the founder of Sensory Awareness, who lived to 102, used to say, "A moment is a moment."

I learned through cancer treatment to understand those words. Chemotherapy administers poison with the intention of healing.  I could no longer label "good" and "bad."  What I might have perceived as toxic was being used to cure me.  In that, I began to understand that "each moment is a moment," and each moment is whole and complete.

There is something known as "chemo mind" or "chemo brain." I definitely entered a float.  I could balance on one word for hours, or so it seemed.  Yes, I was spacey. 

Our intention with this book is that you experience my mind with me, through me, and perhaps learn more about yours in the process.  Are you willing to follow where I go?

I lived the world of the child, the world of non-judgment, the world of noticing what is here now. "Oh, this is pain.  This is joy.  Gratitude."  

Breast Strokes: Two Friends Journal Through the Unexpected Gifts of Cancer, will give you the unexpected gifts of traveling with two minds for nine months. One is focused on family, work, and her friend.  The other is cared for enough that she can sit in a chair without expectation as to accomplishment and explore the unexpected gifts hovering there in a world devoid of expectation or criticism.

 

 Full moon, where will you be going from here?

     - Into a retreat.

Why do you take a retreat after fullness?

      -  To make myself an empty vessel in order to be filled again.

 

            - Hazrat Inayat Khan

 

 Photo by Bob Dresser - Cronkite Beach - Marin

 

 

 

 

 

 

        photo by Danielle Buoncristiani

 

                         photo by Terry Lorant

 

 

The Report From Within - Jane 

 

Breast Strokes is indeed a report from within.

I believe one of the things that distinguishes this book from the myriad of other amazing books about breast cancer available these days, is that Cathy shows us the experience.

Although she does occasionally reflect about her journey through cancer after the fact, for the majority of the book we are there with her for the events as they happen. That this book is written by someone who has attuned herself to physical sensation through many years as a student of Sensory Awareness and has spent time refining the craft of language, makes it, to my mind, all the more believable, accessible, and moving. I consider it a great privilege to have been there beside Cathy, before, during and after her illness and to have helped in the realization of this book.

 Even before Cathy¹s diagnosis, I had considerable exposure to illness. I was a candy striper at age twelve and worked as a nurse¹s aid in a geriatric hospital during high school. In college, I was fortunate to intern under Dr.James Pearce on the playroom staff of the pediatrics unit at Mt Zion Hospital in San Francisco. That exposure led me directly to a Master¹s degree in Human Development and a thesis about my experiences with young women in an adolescent psychiatric hospital in South Carolina. Throughout school and into my adult life, when I worked as a Child Life Specialist at UCSF Children¹s Hospital, I frequently witnessed the difference that having someone who listens and having an outlet for expression made in people¹s experience of illness, even for those who did not survive.

During Cathy¹s illness, I felt this belief grow stronger. At a certain point, I realized I had stepped outside my professional roles of health advocate and health communicator. My experience became more personal.

The Stoic philosophy that "all we have is on loan from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission," started to become very real for me. I began to see, really see, that my path to happiness lie in the direction of wanting the things I already had, desiring this life, the moments I have right now, with all their pleasures, pains and contradictions.

 Even the act of writing has changed for me. Storytelling and poetry began to transform from an act of creating something using language, to the act of using language as a tool of observation, of sensing all the qualities of a given moment. While I still delight in seeing words on a printed page, the process by which they get there is even more delightful for me now. It is as if, through my witnessing of Cathy¹s illness,  I¹ve found a way for all that is positive in my life to exist side by side with all that is negative without one denying the other.