A reflection on being ten years out from the end of treatments. I honor this anniversary as an important pivot point in my personal narrative. I am grateful to be here and healthy all these years later. This is a story about love. It is also a story about death, cancer, and the ways we hold each other together during times of peril.

Update of the now: My life is quite different in these two pictures – the first one taken at my final infusion in 2014, and the other taken a decade later in 2024 on a neighborhood walk with Joe.

These days Joe and I are largely empty nesters. (Though very happy to have our beautiful grown lads home for winter break this week from their university studies.) Neither of us is working at the Scorcher anymore, both are working with young people. Joe works at the High School teaching math as part of a program helping at risk students graduate. I spend my time fully immersed in art – split between making art, and teaching art to either children or workshops for adults. In September I started a new job with Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, going into the schools to provide monthly art lessons to 3rd-5th grade classrooms. Separately I am contracted by two additional non-profits, AWE Astoria & DJHCC up in Ocean Park WA, teaching art weekly for their respective afterschool programs. Summer 2025 has two adult offerings on the schedule so far, next July I will teach a three day book arts workshop at Sitka, and in August the 6th iteration of a week long indigo dyeing immersion Indigofest 6.0 – is happening.

As far as my art goes, my most recent show was in November. I curated Madder Reds: Nurturing Interconnection – the second in a biannual series of international exhibitions I am organizing. (The first, Indigo Matrix happened back in 2022) The madder show included my kinetic installation “Temple of the Oracle” which invited viewers into sacred space defined by rotating madder dyed wool walls. 12 other artists I invited contributed beautiful work as well.

Having weekends off is a novelty of our new schedule that I hope to spend either outside, or in my studio working on personal art projects.

This last year has included quite a bit of anxiety. It feels like everyone I speak with is feeling the uncertainty of these times we live in. Reflecting on a period in my life when things were so dicey on the personal level reminds me of tools I gained then that feel helpful for facing the uncertain world unfolding before us now. Stronger together has never felt more important.

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Gifts of the past carried forward, or what I want to remember about dancing near death

Ten years ago in December of 2014 I received my last infusion of Herceptin – which is a monoclonal antibody drug used for breast cancer. It blocks the HER2 receptors on tumor cells, disrupting signaling for cell growth. This was the end of twelve months of having my life paced by a slow metronome of infusions beating every third Tuesday. Not long afterwards they removed the port, a surgically implanted device that facilitates infusions directly into a vein just above the heart.

Just a few weeks prior to that last visit to the chemo room, I was part of the team supporting my friend Meg at the end of her life. Including preparing her body for a home funeral, and making all of the arrangements for her natural  burial at a local cemetery. My husband and oldest son were pall bearers at the service.

The handwoven casket she was buried in was obtained through a connection I had with a woman named Cynthia, a natural burial advocate. Cynthia drove the casket up from Eugene to Portland, so we could rendezvous at my brother’s home when we traveled into the city from Astoria for one of my infusions. It was full on wet November weather in the PNW- so we needed to drive home with the casket inside of our Volvo station wagon rather than on top. It extended over the back seat, leaving just enough room for my then 12 and 16 year old boys to sit on either side of it on the trip back to the coast.

Meg’s family was struggling with her impending death, and they felt uncomfortable having the casket in her garage. As we don’t have a garage, and as my family wasn’t comfortable having a coffin in the middle of our house, we spent a week driving around town with it inside of the Volvo.

It was difficult for my family that I was doing death work. It felt too close to my possible outcome. being as my friend was dying from the same disease I was in active treatments for. I had promised Meg months before that I would help her have a home death and funeral when her time came. So there I was with my inch long hair at her bedside, part of the team measuring doses of morphine and feeding her spoons of applesauce. Even though I had no hospice training, the work was not triggering to me at the time.  It felt like something I both needed and wanted to be doing. It felt like a privilege, and strangely like a birth. The hospice nurses and chaplain were like angels.

Chemo had not only made all my hair fall out, it substantially changed my brain – my memories of the seven years after chemo are very spotty, vague or non existent. My memories of those two weeks with Meg are some of the most clear. She loved to sail, and on the last day of her life, I had a vision of her sailing into the golden light of the west. I sat next to her on the bed and sang her a song about it, a song of release – hoping to support her journey to the other side. She died just a few hours later. The day we buried her the sun came out for the first time in weeks.

That winter, two other friends also died of cancer. Prior to illness all three were very creative and vital people. My own rather remarkable remission could not have had a stronger counterpoint than these three deaths. 

Because of them I want to always remember that once upon a time I was cancering. I want to remember that it is a gift to be here now. That just as they are no longer here, I am here. Both outcomes are the result of some grace that we do not control. Life is miraculous from first breath to last if you think about it. It is not lack of faith or good attitude, or poor treatment choices that does people in. Cancer is not a war to be won – it is a station where you can get off this miraculous train for some other adventure. Death can in fact be as much of a gift as life. That I stayed on for a bit longer is neither good nor bad -that they departed is neither good nor bad – it is simply what is. Which is fundamentally a mystery and a wonder.

Awareness of mortality motivates me to make the most of my time, to make it count. When I lose track of the miracle of it all I fall into old patterns of too much busy, of too much stress, of trying too hard to somehow prove my worthiness to my internal critics. It is easy to lose track of the glimpses of that shining world that surrounds this one. To get lost in the mundane and fall into a spell of forgetfulness. 

This is understandable. 

The stories that we spend out waking hours in deny that other realities exists. Perhaps this denial helps us to keep slogging through our days so we can pay the rent, and buy food to eat. I have noticed that the more stretched I feel – the more I apologize. I apologize for everything. As if I am not a miracle. As if I am not worthy to take up space. When I am stretched thin I am vulnerable to the patterns laid down by generations of disempowered ancestors. This is what happens when I forget that once, ten years ago, I was cancering. My diagnosis was serious – it was advanced – and if I forget that it happened, I forget that I was granted a miracle on top of miracles. That in essence I am a miracle. 

Life has inherent value – we are each so precious. When I get busy I forget this. When I am overwhelmed, I think I have something to prove. The song of the other shining reality says that I have nothing to prove – existing IS the proof. If you are still on the train, you are a precious miracle too. It isn’t an exclusive thing- it is an expansive thing, because love is actually the foundation of this universe – and love is infinite. 

Which brings me down to the cellular level. Our healthy cells constantly signal each other in a symphony of sorts, an angelic choir, somewhat like the songs of a coxswain singing with rowers on a dragon boat to keep everyone in rhythm. Our bodies are alive with the affirmative messages between our cells. When our cells are cancering – they are not singing in tune with the cells around them – the signals get crossed. Cancering cells hear nothing but to grow, to reproduce – they become less and less like the cells around them. They forget to die. They no longer function as part of a harmonious whole.  Cancer is a selective communication problem. Cancer is a story of every cell for themselves.

It can be easy to believe the stories that do not serve us, society’s stories of disconnection, individualism, and smallness. Because life can be painful, these stories feel true, even though they diminish us and keep us small.

I believe that the patterns I learned as a tiny person, the survival strategies that I fall into so easily, are like discordant notes. When I am trying to please others I am not responsive to what is – I am enacting a script like an automaton – just as a cancer cell’s growth is an expression being out of sync with the whole.  The thing is, when we expand the sample space and shine, we give others permission to do so as well.

Being sick ten years ago taught me that we belong to each other more than we belong to ourselves. That part of how all this works is in how we signal to each other what kind of people we are. Our stories are contagious, which is why having consolidated media blasting manipulative stories that tell us we are ruthless, murderous and selfish is so dangerous. We need kindness to be our norm, not our exception. We need to broadcast to each other this underlying truth. We need to remind each other of this ocean of love we are all part of.

Three weeks ago we attended the memorial service of a friend who passed away after some years of living with dementia. Several people I haven’t seen for quite a while wanted to check in with me – to reassure themselves that I was still free of cancer. This is a common thing when I am out and about, because- a) I led a very public life prior to getting sick – and b) I became extremely reclusive after my diagnosis.  Spending so much time alone in the last decade has had some benefits – and some drawbacks. The biggest drawback is the tendency to fall into some of the old out of sync stories of smallness.

Being in a community space helped me reconnect to the song of us together. I felt the love well up within me for them, and felt their love for me. I want to remember that once I was cancering because I am still here ten years later, and that gives people hope – that connects people to gratitude. It is a reminder that I am both myself, and simultaneously I play many roles – one of which is as the woman who lived despite the odds. I need to remember because the experience of cancering while being held by my community awakened me to my role as a love amplifier.

When I forget, when I fall under the spell of ideas of unworthiness, I am letting my people down. Remembering that I am light allows me to reflect that light back to others. I also need to be reminded sometimes, and when people check in, they are in essence reminding me of that infinite love. 

Let this be your reminder. We are here – we are worthy – we are precious – we are literally a song of love. 

Anything else is just a small part of the big miraculous story.