Prior to experiencing cancer, my psychotherapy practice had specialized in eating disorder and trauma work, which I continue to do and love. This weeks blog is inspired by the difficult and life changing work that these clients take on as they heal, and the parallels I see with healing emotionally from a life threatening illness.
Reaching towards… it is an act of bravery, reaching towards how you want to feel and be, through the walls and barriers that have been constructed in order to keep that you safe. The protection that may have once been necessary in order to survive, but now has become so life limiting that it threatens the very life the walls were built to protect.
Reaching towards… it is an act of faith, because you are reaching towards something that will hopefully serve you well, while recognizing that their is great uncertainty in its outcome.
Reaching towards… it is an act of breaking the stagnancy, of recognizing you have done what you can emotionally and physically to take the next step, and now the one thing left to do is to take the next step.
Reaching towards… takes us out of the zone in which we feel comfortable (even if it is not comforting), and into the zone in which we grow.
When you have cancer, there can be a sense of urgency to make important changes within one’s life and self, especially if you have been given the gift of a clean bill of health. This urgency can become paralyzing at times, especially when we are feeling vulnerable to what we have been through.
If this is the case for you at this time, what might you imagine that first step to be? How might you begin to reach forward in your life, while safeguarding some time and energy for processing what you have been through?
It is times like this, when I look for inspiration in the poem “The Journey”, written by Mary Oliver. Sometimes the voices she references are those of others who perhaps hold us back; however, sometimes the voices she references come from the fear we hold inside about the unknown. Whichever may be true for you, can you take the spirit of leaving it all behind, in order to reclaim your own unique voice?
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determine to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.
– Stephanie McLeod-Estevez, LCPC, is an art therapist and breast cancer survivor, who works as an oncology counselor at the Dempsey Center. She began Creative Transformations to help others who are healing from a life threatening illness or injury. Through Creative Transformations, Stephanie works with people in person and online to offer cancer coaching, a DIY Individual Art Therapy program to enhance any healing work you are undertaking; workshops; and this weekly blog. Sign up today so you never miss one by visiting our website, Creative Transformations, where you will also find the links to our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.