Turning Points - July 2022

Dear Friends,

Those of you who read my blog know that my breast cancer, which metastasized to my lungs in 2011, has been progressing in the past few months. In Chinese medicine, grief is related to the lungs. In the eleven years I have been living with cancer in my lungs, I've wondered if I have grief stored up in my lungs that needs to be expressed.

When we think about grief, we often think about momentous, heart-breaking losses. We think of it as something unpleasant and uncomfortable to get through.

Sophie Sabbage, in her book The Cancer Whisperer: Finding Courage, Direction, and the Unlikely Gifts of Cancer, showed me a new way of looking at grief. Grief is not about closure, but about connection. She says:

She had lung cancer and believed grief was the emotion she had most neglected in her life. As part of her healing process, she asked: "What have I not been grieving and why?"

I've been asking myself the same question, not just looking at the big deaths and endings, but also the less obvious hurts, regrets, and disappointments, making lists of past events and experiences that could have been grieved, but felt too inconsequential at the time. There are many.

Sophie says:

I had a profound experience of this when my cat, Pretzel, recently died. So profound that I wrote a story about Pretzel which you can read in the Healing Story section, below. Pretzel's loss has given me something concrete and immediate to grieve about and my heart is full of love and gratitude.

Exploring grief has been such a rich experience for me, I am excited to go deeper into its lessons. Mark Nepo has been an insightful teacher for me and I am looking forward to attending his upcoming 3-session webinar in August called Pain, Fear, and Grief: The Deeper Teachers (Aug 7, 14, 21, 2022, 1-2:30PM ET). There is a link to more information in the News section.

If you are interested in gaining more insight on this subject, I recommend The Cancer Whisperer, by Sophie Sabbage, as well as Mark Nepo's upcoming webinar. You don't have to have lung cancer to have unexpressed grief. I think we all have some.

As always, I welcome your comments; to reply please click here.

I don't know if Pretzel rescued me or if I rescued Pretzel. After breaking up with my partner in the beginning of a pandemic, I was suddenly alone. As a cat lover, I had cats most of my life, but had not replaced the last two who died 7 years ago. I had been traveling so much that another cat didn't make sense, but the pandemic changed that. Since I wouldn't be traveling as much, another cat seemed like a great solution for me.

I made an appointment at Happy Tails sanctuary, picked out three potential adoptees from their website, and went to meet them. The first one was totally blah. Just lay there while I tried to make contact.

Pretzel was the second one I met. She was in a room with about 5 other cats. When I went in and sat on a chair, she was on my lap within 2 minutes, wanting to be petted, and purring. No need to meet the third cat. . . . Continue reading

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