As I wrote last week cancer affects everyone. My husband just returned from the funeral of a good friend who lost his battle with cancer. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year as well. So in honor of these two important people in my family’s life and for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I’m hosting Caryn Mirriam-Goldburg’s blog tour of her wonderful book The Sky Begins at Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body
Caryn is the 2009-2011 Poet Laureate of Kansas, and a long-time transformative language artist. As a poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, teacher, mentor, and facilitator, she explores and celebrates how the spoken, written and sung word can help us live more meaningful and vibrant lives. Caryn lives in the country, just south of Lawrence, Kansas with her husband, bioregional writer Ken Lassman, and their children. You can learn more about her here.
I loved The Sky Begins at Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body and recommend it to anyone going through breast cancer or a serious illness or who has a friend or family member who is.
I recently interviewed Caryn about her book and writing life by email. If you’re going through such a journey, I hope this interview and Caryn’s book inspire you to share your story with others.
An interview with Caryn Mirriam-Goldburg
This Mama Cooks(TMC): For me writing when I'm ill with even a head cold is impossible, but you kept a journal during your illness and treatment. How did you manage it? Was writing about your cancer journey an urgent need?
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg (CMG): Strangely enough, a head cold can be far worse at times than cancer, at least for me. I remember getting diagnosed and thinking, “This is so strange. I feel worse with a little cold.” Of course, chemo and surgery were challenging, and I probably didn't write daily during some of those times, but writing itself has always been a cure for whatever ails, haunts or scares me, so I wrote often.
This book actually started as journal entries I called “Chemopause” that I handed to my oncologist every time I came in for more chemo. To his credit, he put the pages in my medical records, and with my permission, encouraged nurses to read them too.
To get back to your question, yes, writing about cancer was an urgent need. No matter how scared, angry, confused or dazed I felt, I could still find some solace and clarity on the page.
TMC: You wrote The Sky Begins at Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body after five years of surviving cancer. How did reviewing your journal entries and compiling them for the book feel? Were you surprised by anything?
CMG: Actually, I started this book during cancer with “Chemopause” and then finished the first draft within a year and a half of my diagnosis, but then I tend to write fast, sloppy first drafts, and then revise, revise, revise. Lately, as I've been giving readings for the book, I'm surprised by how much I went through during cancer. Like the pain of childbirth, we tend to forget the intensity of anything so painful.
TMC: Years after recovery you still felt ill, but didn't exactly know why. You realized that part of the problem is that you did too much and were stretched too thin between work and family obligations. You wrote, "All I know is that to heal my life, I need to change my life.” So, you cut back and made more time for yourself. But still you find yourself doing too much from time to time. This is true for so many women, especially moms who work from home. Can we truly find a balance between work we love and our families? Any advice?
CMG: I am still very much a work in progress on how to balance work, family and my own self-care, and I still have bouts of time where I fail mightily when it comes to taking good care of myself (and yet always tend to want to put my work first). I'm learning though, and I see this kind of balance as an education in progress for the rest of my life.
It did help to start to think of my self-care as a part-time job, maybe because I'm so loyal to my jobs. Another thing that helped is to use the metaphor of a glass jar, and then rocks, pebbles, sand and water to put into the jar. If you put in the big thing first – the rocks – and then the pebbles, and then the sand and finally the water, you can get everything in. If you start with the water, you'll never get all the rocks in.
I try to put the big rock of my own health in first and not try to stuff it in later to a too-full jar. For me, this means going to yoga classes – where I now find my sanctuary and way to reconnect with my body – four to six times a week, and other days, walking or power-cleaning or doing something physical. It also means pulling back from pushing too hard and resting at the moments I'm feeling mounting stress.
Another big rock is family, and I try to remember, especially now that my kids are increasingly leaving home for college, the preciousness of that time too.
TMC: You were so lucky to have such an amazing group of supportive people (friends, family, colleagues, etc.) in your life while you were going through your surgeries and chemo. Many people, especially women, are reluctant to ask for help even when things get tough because they don't want to be a bother. Any advice why they MUST ask for help?
CMG: I found that asking people for help didn't just help me; it helped the people I was asking. We want to be value in this life, to step to the plate when we're needed and to truly do something that helps another. As I saw how much my helpers got out of bringing me food or taking me to the doctor, I realized it was fine to ask, and even more so, to accept their help. Asking for help also models for your community how others, when they face loss or illness, can reach out, and that's an essential step for transforming our neighbors into community, our friends into family, and our family into more functional family.
TMC: While Jewish, you also involved yourself with a lot of non-traditional, dare I say "new age-y" methods, such as consulting with a healer. Your doctors and medical caregivers were amazingly supportive and respectful of your wishes. Were you surprised? Did you get any push back from medical personnel or friends and family?
CMG: I did work extensively with an energy healer, but I don't think of this healing as “new age-y” but more ancient. My doctors ranged from tolerant to supportive on this. My breast cancer surgeon allowed my energy healer to be in the surgery room with me during two major surgeries, and the surgeon truly understood and supported this healing. My oncologist allowed her to accompany me to chemotherapy.
I wasn't so surprised because I actually asked each physician or surgeon if they would support me in blending energy and other healing with my treatment, and I was referred to physicians who friends told me were supportive of this kind of blending.
I don't think all my friends or family understood what Ursula Gilkeson – my energy healer – did all that often, but they were of the mind to support me nonetheless. I think it's so important for the person going through the treatment to take charge of her health and put forth what she needs.
TMC: It seemed that every time you told someone about your breast cancer, they had their own cancer stories to tell. It almost seemed that everyone you knew or had contact with was touched by cancer. Were you surprised to learn this? Was it helpful to you that people shared their stories? Or was it too much emotionally?
CMG: For the most part, it was very helpful to hear other stories, but in the beginning – that strange time between diagnosis and first treatment or surgery – it wasn't useful for me as much, especially when people told me of tragic and excruciating experiences with cancer. Because I've gone on to facilitate writing workshops for people with cancer and other serious illness, I generally hear stories often, and it helps me keep my eye on the preciousness of life and the amazing courage of humans.
TMC: You and I are of an age when we can remember back in the '70s when Betty Ford reveled that she had breast cancer. It just wasn't talked about then. Now we have races for the cure and wear pink ribbons as fashion accessories. You've made it a point to have your mastectomy scars photographed and passed around your breast prosthesis to show friends and family at parties. Is there still power or an importance in sharing these things?
CMG: There is a power in showing the scars and, at least for me, in laughing about the oddity of a prosthesis, yet I realized that after a while, my chest and prosthesis went from semi-public to private again. A friend of mine who survived cancer wrote a collection of poetry called Lifting My Shirt, and now she has some new poetry under the category of Lowering My Shirt, which I understand completely. So for me, I don't really share the scars so much anymore although I am planning to offer to show them to a dear friend of mine who is facing a double mastectomy.
AMR: Speaking of sharing, you've done cancer workshops where people share their cancer stories. Any plans to collect these stories for a book?
CMG: Funny you should ask. Turning Point of Kansas City, a center for hope and healing, is publishing a book I edited of these stories and poems this fall called My Tree Called Life: Writing and Living Through Serious Illness. It will be available on Amazon also, and we're doing a big book launch in early November in Kansas City.
TMC: How do you manage your writing time with having kids? Do you write at home or somewhere else (office, coffee shops, etc.)? Advice please!
CMG: I tend to write in coffee shops often with headphones on, listening to music that encases me in my own world. Because my kids are teens and older, they're busy with their own stuff, but even when they were younger, I would set up writing dates with myself.
I advise anyone who loves and needs to write to set up writing dates with friends or just themselves for an hour or two regularly. It will refresh you and make you a better mom too. Writing at home when my kids are around isn't so easy. They seem to have a sixth sense for interrupting me just as I'm coming up with a hard-won line, but even at home, the headphones help.
TMC: You are the Poet Laureate of Kansas. What exactly does that mean? Do you have any responsibilities? (You know, poems to the Governor telling him to stop being such a doofus on such and such a bill?)
CMG: As Poet Laureate, I hold a public office of sorts, and I do occasionally read and attend official events. I also am available to lead writing workshops and give readings and talking across the state. While some people would like me to be able to speak out in such ways, that's not really the role. Rather, it's all about helping spread the power of poetry and other creative writing in the state of Kansas, and helping people find greater meaning in their lives through reading and writing.
Cancer affects everyone
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