And breathe

Our retreat venue April 29-May 3

After my last diagnosis of breast cancer I noticed a pull to pay special attention to my body’s  reaction. Any surgery and diagnosis of major illness is a trauma which we hold in our bodies and perhaps not one we recognise enough. 

I was told a few weeks off normal activity and I would recover. I ached to take some time to just be still. I joined a mindfulness course (With Youth Mindfulness) which had four retreats in the year. I had applied before I was even aware of what I’d done. During the year I certainly deepened  my mindfulness practice and I learned how to deliver the training but mostly I recognised an almost primal need to pay attention to not just my mind-but also my body.

That experience drew me to approach my creative writing tutor Helen Boden ( i go to her class in which we write about art around galleries in Edinburgh) with the suggestion we jointly facilitate a retreat with creative writing, mindfulness and coaching. We’ve built up from one day to a weekend and this year at the end of April we offer a Monday to Friday opportunity to restore, reflect and review in the most beautiful of settings near Falkland in Fife. Jo has established a beautiful and mindful  home which we join for the week. We eat lovely food, walk ( if you can) mindfully in the glorious area, we write, we challenge ourselves to find our own path and we restore and recalibrate self care. If you want to join us; here is the link. We keep it a small group and there is excellent  accommodation in Jo’s house as well as space for local people to come each day. I’m so very much looking forward to it. 

I’ve recently read « The Body keeps the Score » which makes a compelling case for not only talking therapies after trauma but also helping to release trauma from our bodies. That’s not only important in relation to adverse childhood events but also those living with and through the trauma of serious illness or adult traumatic events. I recognise my healing from surgery is mind and body and I’m now f that retreats are a very good way to meet that need. My recent retreat in Cumbria (with the Sacred Space Foundation)  helped me leave behind a fog or exhaustion and helped face the next few months with my head up. Healing is so much more than medicine. It’s time to waken to that ourselves. In Mary Oliver’s words in her poem: 

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Our busy lives can serve to us ignoring our needs. My learning in my long and ongoing journey with pain and treatment for cancer is to improve, we need to give space and time to enable healing to happen. Medicine is not enough to do this. We need to create our own way of healing and it takes time and focus and self care daily. It’s taken me a while to understand this and in many ways I’m learning every day but I’m so grateful to know this now.

Wishing you to the opportunity and space to heal if you need to....and let’s be honest that would be most if us in some way. 

But it doesn’t match!

Remembering my Mum. 

I have a thing about things matching. I blame my mother of course. Throughout her life, until the end-two years ago this week- she liked to look nice. In our last photos of her she is wearing a beautiful cashmere cardigan in a variety of pastel colours that we had given her the previous Mother’s Day. In spite of   the evident fragility you see the beautiful woman holding on to the sense of herself she had managed to retain. 

So even as a slightly scruffy student, when my most treasured fashion item was my afghan coat I needed to ensure I accessorised in an ordered way. My mother never approved of it. Perhaps the smell it emitted didn’t help. It finally left home to make room for a tidier more practical replacement and order was restored. 

So I’ve been indulging in some retail therapy, in anticipation of my surgery in May. Given the gene mutation I carry I’m to have a mastectomy to reduce the risk of recurrence. But I’m not strong enough to have reconstructive surgery. So I will have one reconstructed breast and that’s it. I won’t match. I find myself searching for nightwear that will be comfortable post op and look less imbalanced. It’s a tough call I admit. And although I’m a strong believer in every crisis is an opportunity to shop, I strangely find myself at a loss. I know I will get a prosthesis and the scar will heal. But what happens when it’s just me and the mirror? And the reality of a body that is testing my OCD-ness beyond my edge. My current longer term plan is to have a tattoo. In my reflective mood I think I might have something like a wild rose working its way from my missing breast over my shoulder. But some days I just want to write F*** off Cancer.....sorry Mum!

At least.....

« At least you don’t have to walk the dog »she said 

I’d love to walk the dog

To see her run in circles of joy

Leaving her signature in the sand

I’d love to walk beside her 

splashing in the shallows,

chasing the seagulls and crows

who dance away- momentarily

only to return , laughing.

I’d love to throw her ball

Again and again

I’d love to walk the dog