It has been a while since I’ve written a blog post, but I was inspired by the beautiful words and images from a post on a website I recently discovered, CancerGrad. In moving and eloquent words and stunning images, Aniela, after having gone through surgery and cancer treatment, writes a love/apology letter to her body: “Now, I have done the unthinkable to you. I cut into you, had parts of you cut off, parts of you cut out. I...
A Powerful Example of Using Art to Heal the Blow of Cancer
In this article about the healing powers of art when faced with a life-threatening illness, expressive art therapist Stephanie McLeod-Estevez describes her journey of art-making in response to her cancer diagnosis and treatment. I love her words, “Using the arts is a way of accessing some of the process — to enable you to bring it outside of you and, like a suitcase, unpack what has been inside and ultimately putting it back together again.”...
How thoughtless compliments can hurt: noticing thinness when weight loss was unintentional
This moving essay (below) describes a distraught mother, coping with her daughter’s cancer, being envied because of her weight loss. What is the message to this woman’s daughters: one who is dealing with illness and the other with illness of her beloved sister? We’re so obsessed with thinness in our culture that we value it, by any means necessary. What a travesty. As the author says, “If you want to know how someone is,...
One Step at a Time: Coping with Cancer’s Depression and Anxiety
In the past few decades, research has shown time and again that the state of the body and the state of the mind are intertwined, with our mental and emotional health affecting our physical health, and vice versa. In this beautifully written essay, Robin Browne shares her experience of depression and anxiety with a cancer diagnosis. Many of us who have had cancer, not to mention the arduous treatment for it, have known both the shock of the...
Taking Another Look At Yourself Through Art
Eating Rituals. Bingeing. Laxatives. Distorted mirrors. Hopelessness. Self-hate/self-doubt. Vomiting. Comparing yourself to others. Distorted or magical thinking about your body. Diets. Advertising. The Scale. Do you recognize any of these common behaviors, or thinking spirals that conclude that you are “less than” others? Will you spend the precious moments of your life rating yourself on your so-called “flaws,” or on how well you loved, (and...