Optional ingredient #1: the Arts
After our journeys with treatment, Cancer survivors are quite concerned with finding their "new normal." In my case it was no different. I left a career as an Elementary Art Teacher when I was diagnosed with AML Leukemia, and due to a severely decreased immune system, there was no way I could go back to my old job with a classroom of 20+ sniffling young students. So, I had to reinvent my career. Fortunately, for me, I was an arts lover to begin with. The arts have been proven to help the healing process when faced with al sorts of things: depression, divorce, health issues, tragedies of war, and so many other uncertainties. For example, just look at the two examples below. One is from a student survivor of the Sandy Hook Elementary killings and the other a child patient explaining his experience at a hosptial.
Ok, these are both examples from children, but did you know that artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) suffered from childhood polio. Later, in 1925, she was in a traffic accident that left her in pain for the remainder of her life. Her famous series of self-portraits enabled her to objectify her physical sufferings, as well as the emotional turmoil resulting from her turbulent marriage to painter Diego Rivera. Other artists - such as Vincent Van Gogh who struggled with mental illness, Henri Matisse after a serious operation found it too painful to hold a paintbrush and turned to scissors in his final years, and Auguste Renoir taped a paintbrush to his wrist after suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. They all found their "new normal" and adapted to their new limitations in order to continue to thrive after their diseases/illnesses.
I have always been a theater/movie lover as well. Being in the audience and watching a musical production or a dramatic movie takes me away to another world. I forget about my issues for a while and I am lost in the storyline. Sometimes we relate to a specific character and can see our problems in a whole new way...perhaps even find a new way to deal with it.
To read a novel, or watch a play can have the same effect....but many authors attempt to resolve their issues by creating these stories we find so captivating and enveloping. They are healing as they write, and we are healing as we read.
And then their is music...I did used to play two instruments. Never composed anything myself, but simply reading sheet music and playing...allowed me an escape as well. What do you think Kelly Clarkson was writing about in her song "Stronger"? A personal experience of her own? Probably...although you and I may think about something very different. All in all...the effect is the same. The song will help us see our experiences in a new light and we begin to heal.
So seek out the arts when you are trying to or even after you have beaten cancer. It'll do your heart and mind good.
Stay tuned for the last installment - and one last optional ingredient - of the 5 Ingredients of Survivorship.
Blessings to you all,
Lisa
