Making Peace, Not War, With Cancer

Three years ago, as I approached the end of chemotherapy for breast cancer, I received an invitation to attend my first cancer fund-raiser. I was excited by the promise of being in a room with so many other women who had gone through the cancer experience. I thought it would be healing for me. I invited my best friend, Susan, to come along. When she hesitated, I was astonished.

Then I found out why. A step ahead of me, Susan had already dipped her toe into the cancer culture. She tried to warn me, but I plunged right in.

The women at my table were great--everything I’d hoped for. I would have loved to have had more time to talk to them. But, too soon, our attention was called to the front of the room. Over box lunches, the talk from the podium was not about healing but about warfare.

The keynote address was delivered by a TV actress who bounded about the stage, demonstrating how she had used the strength of her will to kick cancer’s butt. Cancer was no match for her. Through positive thinking, she had accomplished what lesser mortals sometimes failed to do: ridding herself of all signs of the disease.

She was followed by a tough-as-nails public official, a woman in her 60s who was receiving an honor for her legislative work in support of the fight against cancer. She used the occasion to boast about making it to work every single day of her treatment. Not only that, but reconstructive surgery had given her the breasts of a 20-year-old. She, too, had prevailed.

Susan and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It’s not that stories about the victory of the human spirit over cancer don’t inspire us. Who wouldn’t cheer on these women? But for those of us who are mere mortals, I wonder if the inspiration comes at at a huge expense to ourselves.

Many of us have become exhausted by the cancer culture’s overreliance on the macho terminology of warfare and survivorship. We would like to lay down the sword and seek out new metaphors for healing that are more in keeping with our own innate values.

Common sense--and the more holistic approach to body-mind-spirit that I’ve been following since the 1960s--suggests that when your body is ill, you need rest. I’m not talking about becoming a couch potato or about giving up and going into hiding. But I am suggesting that we all need balance in our lives. There are times when we can drive ourselves through pure force of will, and times when we must nurture ourselves by letting go and relaxing deeply.

This is doubly true for people dealing with serious illnesses. Cancer cells are parts of our bodies that don’t recognize their own boundaries and limitations. Ironically, the cancer culture honors exactly those traits that may have contributed to our immune system’s exhaustion in the first place: raging, racing and fighting to win.

From the beginning, I related to my cancer differently. I was an anti-war activist in the 1960s. I made peace, not war, and when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I refused to wage war against my own body--even the part of me that had gone awry. Surely there was some other way to look at it that could be both inspirational and life-giving.

I found my metaphor in my journals, the daily record of my spiritual quest. For years, I had been learning to surrender control and to have faith in myself and God. Could my breast cancer be a spiritual initiation into deeper levels of understanding and experience--and not just a test of survivorship?

At this point of my life, allowing myself to be vulnerable, even if that carries pain with it, is a better way for me to be in the world. Unlike survivors who have battled their cancer to emerge victoriously unchanged, I have been cracked open at the very core of my being. But it is through these very cracks that a deeper appreciation of music, poetry, love and friendship have taken root.

I don’t want to deny anyone’s inspirational comeback, nor do I want to deny anyone the right to find strength in “battling” cancer. What I want to do is to carve out a little niche in which we women can talk about our illnesses in a way that reflects our deepest values, come what may.