Welcome ...

The first post. I'm taking a deep breath and leaping in.

So I’m starting to write a bit more publicly. I’m pretty nervous about it - it feels exposing and I’m wrestling with the inevitable critical voice in my head telling me it’s self-indulgent, and the kinder voice reminding me it’s an attempt to connect with others about the complexities of being alive that we don’t always find space to talk about. I don’t know if it’ll be a blog, a journal, essays or just mildly interesting and maybe amusing posts. I don’t know how often I’ll write and I can’t promise it’ll be the most well-honed writing - I am four years into an incurable cancer diagnosis for which the average life expectancy is three to five years. I’m doing well, still on my first line of treatment, but my awareness of time has changed (I’ll probably come back to this a lot) and I try to choose carefully how I spend it. Crafting things to ‘perfection’ and putting pressure on myself to stick to unnecessary commitments are not priorities. So I’m aiming for good enough, often enough, and happy in the knowledge it may only be vaguely interesting to most.

I thought I’d use this first post to share some of my reasons for doing it.

Because my natural inclination and current situation means I am STUFFED with words, thoughts and feelings that need to come out before I burst.

As well as my own, I’m a collector of other peoples’ thoughts (a phone full of endless photos of bits of text), have a job which means I learn new and wonderful ways of seeing things on a daily basis, and have been through some stuff in my life - never more so than now - which has required a lot of digging deep. My lifelong insomnia is terrible and I know it’s because I’m whirring constantly. I need to get some stuff out. I’m also interested in what’s in there and what it might be telling me, so I need to get it out somewhere I can see it. Being an only child and a particular kind of white, middle-class, protestant English woman (all those characteristics are significant) has meant much has stayed in that in other circumstances might have come out and I feel blocked with debris. I’m committing to some of it coming out here.

Because my life is now a new and weird one in the history of the world and warrants some understanding, both for me and hopefully for others, as I think this way of living will become more common. I hope writing will help me do that.

With medical advancements, there are now more of us living in this land ‘between two kingdoms’, as both Susan Sontag and the wonderful Suleika Jaouad have called it - the narrow ridge between living and dying. With more advancements there will be even more of us (you) here. The thing that’s different is that we have terminal illnesses but are not always ill. We have terminal illnesses but we often look well and often may be well. We know what will kill us (unless we’re really unlucky) and we know it will be much sooner than many of our friends are imagining for themselves, but we don’t know when and have to be ever-vigilant to signs - any temperature warrants a call to the hospital. We live in short chunks, scan to scan - five-month plans rather than five-year ones. We make amazing new friends in the same boat, who really get it, and watch some of them die with heartbreaking regularity. And while we mourn what feels like the incredible freedom of our old ways of life, we also hope desperately that this new way will last a loooooong time. This is, quite literally, an extraordinary way to exist - a modern invention. It’s relentless, and it’s a headfuck. I don’t think I can go through something like this and not be profoundly affected. Four years in I’m simultaneously knackered, shattered, grieving, increasingly frightened, enlightened and enlivened by it. I am a different person - more deeply me in most ways, and new in others. I want to raise awareness of what this life is like and hope I can do so here.

Because I know cancer is a difficult thing to talk about, and suspect some people are fearful of asking questions.

I’m happy to talk about any of it - cancer, illness, dying, death, whatever - and inevitably all of it is on my mind on a daily basis. I much prefer it when it’s out in the open as when it feels unmentionable I also can feel isolated, a little mad, and that a huge part of me is dangerous and unwelcome. I describe it as holding a ‘cancer bomb’ - just by talking honestly about my daily life I can choose to blow up any conversation. It also leaves me sad when it’s not mentioned, as we will all face things like this, in ourselves or our loved ones, and I think the more we learn to talk about it the better we’ll be able to handle all sorts of situations.

I know though that it’s difficult for some people, or I’m not in regular contact with some people, and it’s not my job to force conversations. I hope that some of my writing here might answer questions people have but don’t know how to ask, and might facilitate conversations people would like but don’t know how to start.

It’s definitely not all going to be about cancer though.

Because I have an increasing conviction that to live peaceably we need to be connected by our internal lives not our external ones, both to each other and to the land we live on. And if I don’t have long left, I need to do something about it in more places than just my office.

I believe with more certainty each day that the only way to have a chance to live peaceably, generously, compassionately and full-heartedly (which the world needs so desperately right now - come on America, do the right thing) is in community and commune with others. As many others as we can, human, animal and beyond. And I believe more than ever that it is our internal lives that keep us connected and compassionate, not our external ones.

Externally, in this patriarchal, late capitalist madness that we live in, we’re invited to compare and assume and compete and consume and judge and defend and ‘move forward’. It’s hard to resist. As a psychotherapist I see daily the shame and pain and isolation that results from this - the ever-increasing discomfort that our internal worlds are wrong or defective and to be kept hidden. We are encouraged more and more to medicate or sculpt or restrict our way to ‘wellness’ - to allow a more narrow set of feelings. To be less human.

Internally though, we all grieve and yearn and fear and envy and long and love and rage and feel hurt and shame and sorrow and joy and excitement and passion. ALL of the feelings - that is being human. We hold internal songs and dances of joy and despair that we show to no-one. We are not meant to feel good all the time. To feel positive all the time. To feel like we know how to cope all of the time. To look forward all the time. Only looking forward is literally costing us the earth. Learning, humility and wisdom comes from looking back, learning from our own experiences and those of our ancestors. It is when we can dare to meet in these places - to offer each other our fears and hurts and yearnings and delights - that we realise we are all much the same, but kept apart by external divisions, prejudices , fears and needs. I know viscerally from my work that the more I know what is going on inside someone, the more compassion and tenderness I feel towards them. And I know from working in groups that the more pain the group dares to hold, without fear, comment or judgement, the more love and the more joy flows too.

So part of this is an invitation to any of you reading who fancies it to take a bit of time to share your internal life too. Too often I find myself having conversations where I let so little out. It feels like I just don’t have the surface area to let it all emerge, so what does (other than with a couple of people and Al who mostly graciously lives with the perpetual onslaught of my heart and mind) is miniscule compared with what’s going on inside. I’d love to let my inside life meet yours. I’m fascinated by the process of being human - my curiosity is less in the realm of ‘what have you been up to’ than ‘what was it like for you to be up to that - what did you think and feel, what were you frightened of or excited by, how did it swell your heart and sadden your soul?’

This will be my attempt at offering what it is like for me to be an alive human being, and I would love to hear anyone else’s responses to that or thoughts on what being alive is like for them.

Final reasons - because Al and my beautiful sister-in-law Penny have encouraged me to do this, not least to leave a part of me with them in some way.

Because cancer means I just have to either do things or not do them - there’s not much time for messing about in the in between. So I’m doing it.

I reckon all that’s enough not to put it off any longer.

Thanks for hanging out with me so far. This was a long one - I don’t think they’ll all be like this!

Next time I’ll write a bit about why I’ve called it ‘My Heart in My Two Hands’.

Till then

H xxx

Things I’ve enjoyed this week

Reading Between Two Kingdoms, by Suleika Jaouad

Listening to Joni Mitchell, especially The Circle Game and Chinese Cafe