Healing Connections

I’d mentioned earlier about driving (more like, sloughing through a never-ending mire of idling vehicles) in New York City in mid-May. My main reason for traveling to the area was to attend a “Breathe Now” AYA cancer survivor retreat in Chester, New York. I’d discovered the retreat over the winter when searching for more AYA survivor retreats to add to my spreadsheet of programs that I’ve been sharing with other AYA cancer survivors. The “Breathe Now” Retreats are special weekend retreats for survivors and their partners run by the Dear Jack Foundation. It was the only retreat I could locate that involved the caregiver, too, and I’d harbored this desire to locate a trip where my husband and I could both attend ever since I attended the surfing program with First Descents two years ago. After all, both of our lives were flipped upside-down by cancer in 2020. Noting that I had to be 1-3 years post-treatment to attend, I realized this May was my last chance to snag a spot! This spring, I marked my 3rd year out of “chemo lite”, the last piece of the puzzle that was my time in cancer treatment (Jan. 2020-April 2021). I quickly applied, and the rest is history.

It turns out this retreat was exactly what I needed. It taught me to slow down. To reconnect with my husband. To re-establish my priorities and our family’s priorities. To remember that it’s okay to take time for myself. To feel at peace with some of the truths of survivorship and to grumble about others with those who understand. To connect with other women in their 30s who shared the terror of a pregnancy diagnosis and survivors and partners who also suffered through pandemic-era treatment and its many shortfalls. To heal from trauma that I am impatient to heal from, but to remember that, like all tough things, survivorship is a long process. To have a place to share about cancer without feeling that we’re bothering cancer muggles or drawing pity or bringing people down.

Often, I overestimate the importance of slowing down my focus. Every once in a while, post cancer, it’s as though my body panics that I won’t have enough time to get everything done, so it tries to absorb all external stimuli at once. That correlates to a full, overwhelming calendar and a disjointed mental state. This happens at work, with writing, making plans with friends, etc. For instance, with writing alone, since my diagnosis, I’ve written three books, finished another that was sitting for a year “in progress”, and outlined or started three others as well as a handful of short stories (and writing on this blog). Though I sometimes feel my writing is going nowhere, I have to admit that is a LOT of writing considering I also have a full-time job, three kids under ten, and a quasi-hobby farm. 😅 The querying process is where I get stuck so often, but a lack of focus and feeling of being overwhelmed only amplifies my querying anxiety. After a while, I find a smooth niche of focus; I ride it as long as I can to check things off my to-do list, but I found that these calm moments of focus appear more often when I take more time to slow down. It’s a mindful process, and I’m slowly building this skill.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dear Jack Foundation (@dearjackfoundation)

This spring semester I bit off more than I should have, taking on two extra classes, and I felt my focus veering off kilter once again. This retreat grounded me as I cut off from my school life for a bit, right at the end of the semester (an incredibly difficult time to do so, but my supervisors and I made it work!). We five couples took time out to focus on relationships, whole body health, and the future. You can see a brief video recap of the retreat to the right created by Val, the amazing, unstoppable one-woman social media team of Dear Jack; we were lucky to meet her at the retreat.

I’m so grateful for opportunities like these and for every time I hear about another program or retreat available for others like me. Two other women in the support group I run at Mayo Clinic also went on patient/survivor retreats this past month run by different organizations. And all three of us attended a local retreat at the start of the month for female survivors of all ages hosted by a cancer survivor and caregiver who now works as a “cancer doula” locally. That retreat was close to home and another wonderful, relaxing weekend of connecting with other survivors.

With both retreats, I find that I’m appreciating the value of integrative medicine and I wish that it was prioritized more. I’ve met people who are very much enamored with alternative medicine, and I don’t think that’s quite my jam, but neither am I convinced that conventional Western medicine, the focus here in the US, is the only answer. I think we could take bits from both worlds and consider the whole body and our overall health rather than just healing the immediate, emergent problems, putting a Band-Aid on the others for now, and then hurrying patients out the door. I’m incredibly grateful to Mayo Clinic and Dr. B and Dr. W and my entire awesome team for saving my life, but I can’t help but wonder if the survivorship part of the process would have gone more smoothly if I wasn’t booted out the door with a “well, now you’re NED! Hurrah! See you in 6 months” and was instead connected with a team of people to heal the mental, physical, and emotional issues that exist long after (and as a result of) chemo, surgery, and radiation. I think that’s a part of the missing piece I’m hoping to try to fill with my support group, but I’m realizing many things: that I need more time and connections to truly make the impact that I want to make, that it’s okay to still exist in this cancer realm years after treatment, and that helping others in this realm is more important to me than I initially anticipated. ❤️