Plastic-Free Shopping next to the River Otter

I can very gratefully say, that I am now almost three years post hospital treatment for cancer. I’m healthy and I’m okay. I appear from the outside, perhaps, to be totally fine moving through life as before. However, this could not be further from the truth. Barely a day goes by when I don’t think about my cancer experience, often getting consumed by it. The thing that I’ve recently come to realise is that an illness, like this, is actually often initiatory. I have and I am going through a huge transformation, an initiation back into life and it looks like nothing’s happening from the outside. I have also found that there is little acknowledgement, understanding or support for this process. That’s not to say I’ve had no support, what it is to say, though, is that there has been no long term holding of my experience from the wider society. I haven’t been able to communicate this very well thus far, for I only just realised it myself thanks to reading ‘Descent and Rising’ by Carly Mountain. In this book Carly cleverly uses the ancient myth of Inanna alongside modern day real-life stories to show the descent into the underworld often felt by people including those who have illnesses. Up until this point, I simply thought something was wrong with me, that I was failing to recover emotionally. So, this daily onslaught of emotions manifests for me in many ways. Mostly, it takes a lot of headspace, meaning not a lot left for anything else. It also takes a lot of energy as I try to hold the tension (a phrase I’m so grateful for from ‘Wild Power’ by Alexandra Pope and Sjarnie Hugo Wurlitzer) as I try to hold the enormity of my feelings, feel them, not shy away from them, acknowledge them and behold myself alongside functioning as a human being and as a mother. Emotions of anger, grief, sadness and guilt flow through me on a regular basis. I try to think of them as boats passing me on a river (a technique I learnt by attending a course run by Force Cancer Charity); I know they will go past and I won’t feel like that forever. But the boats can turn round quite quickly and sail back up the river, demanding constant attention. Thankfully, my cancer-related fatigue stopped around the end of 2021, this level of fatigue is another thing not widely understood in our society. It was debilitating making it almost impossible to look after my children. However, the fatigue was replaced with being tired almost all the time. There’s a difference in that the fatigue never got better with rest but the tiredness can sometimes be eased. Fast forward to June 2023 (when I wrote this blog post), quite a considerable time has passed but I’m tired a lot of the time. I can’t plan much, I wouldn’t feel safe driving for more than about 30 minutes, I have to base my days around the essential tasks and by that I simply mean ensuring we are fed and clothed. In between this I rest. A hard learnt thing is rest. It also takes up so much energy to deconstruct the capitalist norms I’ve internalised about my value being linked to productivity. Rest is not simply stopping, the mind needs to be stilled as well. This relearning to rest takes a lot of headspace and energy. I’ve recently read ‘Wise Power’, another excellent book by Alexandra Pope and Sjarnie Hugo Wurlitzer and learnt the term ‘snudging’ which is what I now base my days around, doing just enough to get by (whilst being aware I miss people’s birthdays, lose touch with friends, stay partly in the underworld as there isn’t enough energy to emerge and this in turn creates grief which takes so much energy). This is hard, extremely painful, overwhelming and lonely work for me, however, I now can see it as an initiatory process with gold at the end. I’ve stripped back so much of my life as I entered the underworld and I’m now slowly finding new, boundaried ways of emerging. I feel, to be honest, that I’ll rise just in time to hit another initiatory process, menopause. At aged 44 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, menopause seemed a long way off, not even remotely on the horizon, now aged 47 it’s within sight. Maybe, I’m already in it (I’m taking oestrogen suppressing medication so I could be), almost everything written in ‘Wise Power’ a book about menopause sings to my experience but this could be because the initiation I'm experiencing is archetypally like other initiatory processes. I would say, for sure, that trying to recover emotionally from cancer merges with perimenopause, a lack of energy having my oestrogen (medically) supressed along with parenting without a village. It’s a difficult mix. However, on the surface, in some respects, I carry on with everyday life: I wash the clothes, hang them to dry, do some work (though not what I was doing before), pick up the kids, make packed lunches, clear up after dinner etc. But this is just snudging, doing enough to get by whilst trying to trust that being in this unknown is okay, that I will fully emerge back into life, a new life, a much more authentic life with more ease and joy. I get glimpses but, of course, it’s not the linear process we have been taught to expect. This is hidden work going on, not just for me, but for others experiencing illness, the initiation into parenthood, menopause and other initiatory processes. But in the hiding, wider understanding is lost. But in the telling, the teller/the sharer, puts their vulnerability in the hands of others, unless they can simply behold themselves. So, that leaves me to enquire can I see myself clearly enough, can I say this is who I am and how I am for the greater good of the wider society gaining some understanding and for me being my authentic self? Or do I just leave this as a file on my laptop, gathering metaphorical dust as the risk of being vulnerable is too big right now? Well, the dust gathered for six months, I recently received a PTSD diagnosis related to my cancer experience and I snudged my way to this point. I decided to share this now in case anyone else is in need of the strategy of snudging but also to say this is me, this is how it is. This is my truth.