Heal Others With Your Story

One Woman's Breast Cancer Journey Helps Others Heal

I’ve been writing since I was five years old. Because of my narcissistic mother, things somehow didn’t feel real unless I anchored my reality in writing. Once it was in writing, I had proof that my version of reality had actually happened. I’ve done a lot of therapy since then. But somehow, the act of getting it down on the page- and trying to make what is often quite ugly into something beautiful- still grounds me and comforts me.

I know I’m not the only one. I’m preparing to teach a one day online Zoom class Heal Others With Your Story. (Today is the last day to save $100. You can register here.) It’s for people who have been writing memoir material or journaling for therapeutic purposes, but now you’re thinking about sharing your story publicly- either in writing or in some other format. Turning our stories into art not only helps us heal; it also can profoundly heal others.

Imagine what the world would be like if we didn’t have Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Liz Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, Tarana Burke’s Unbound, and every book Anne Lamott and Mary Carr have ever written? All of these books are stories of traumas turned into art that heals not only those who tell the stories but also those who read, listen, and feel.

Think of all the cult survivors comforted by the memoirs of other cult survivors, the refugees healed by other refugee memoirs, or the memoirs of those who have lost a loved one that provide refuge for those who are grieving. Think of the stories of marginalized people who help heal racism, homophobia, sexism, or xenophobia by telling their stories and enlightening us all. Think of sick people who help heal and offer hope to other sick people or survivors of narcissistic abuse who validate that others like them are not crazy or foolish. 

Creating art from your story in whatever form it flows out is the first step to letting your storytelling be medicine for your therapeutic process. When we exercise agency and take control of our story, transforming it into a work of beauty and grace, even if it’s also painful, we help solidify the neurological process of “memory reconsolidation,” not only rewriting our story into one of transformation but also rewiring our neural pathways to prepare for the neurophysiology of healing, rather than trauma.

It’s a brave moment when your story becomes your power and your power become your purpose- to help others heal the way you have at least started to heal, whether you’re preparing to tell your story via memoir writing, fiction writing, art-making, playwriting, songwriting, public speaking, blogging, social media, a podcast, a YouTube channel, or some other creative outlet.

I’ve invited another Substacker to join me for my online class. Emma Jarrett, who writes the Substack Scars of Gold, will be sharing her experience of not only writing the one woman play she wrote about her breast cancer journey Breastless- but about choosing to act it out on stage and then share it on Substack. I’d like to share her opening post from Breastless here. (You can read the rest as she releases it here. I’ve heard the whole thing get performed and it’s truly stunning in how spectacular it is.) Emma has been so brave in her coming out story- and I know she’ll have something wise to share with others about the impact of telling your story publicly- both the positive and the negative aspects of going public.

Opening Excerpt From Breastless (by Emma Jarrett)

Dear Facebook Friends. 

I can’t keep up this pretence any longer. I’ve been buying time as I tell my family and loved ones, but now I’m ready to remove the wig and share this with you:

I have breast cancer. 

Me, a woman who values her intellect and wit but, to be honest, probably only close second to my blonde, feminine appearance. If you were told enough times from the age of 6, “Ooh! You look like Marilyn Monroe with your blonde hair and that beauty mark on your face!”, you might also get lost in a distorted view of what to value about yourself.

So now I’m no longer a blonde who, supposedly, was having more fun and I’m finally calling Bullshit!

Some of you knew me as a young teen, both vain and self-hating, confidently convincing yet so confused; wearing my father’s baggy sweaters and voluminous shirts to shield my adolescent body from the unwanted looks of men who should have known better.

And now my breasts pose a different risk.

Oncologists call this a “high burden of cancer”. I am treating it as a wake-up call. I have researched all manner of conflicting expert opinion on causes and I’m now overwhelmed with treatment options, so please don’t bombard me with recommendations of boiled sock juice and tumour vanishing miracles. I’ve heard it all and now it’s time to trust my choices.

I would love your support though.

Let me know you’re thinking of me, hearing my fears and rage; still seeing me as your friend under this cancer cloak I am currently wearing. I still want to laugh with you, celebrate life, even listen to your problems. Just because mine are the unthinkable doesn’t make yours any less valid.

Please stay in touch, but don’t tell me to be strong; to beat this evil thing and sucker punch it to the floor - I’m not fighting cancer, I’m healing. I need to fill-up on joy and love, not more fear and hate and “being strong”.

What does ‘Be strong!’ look like, anyway?

Was I strong when I let myself rest in bed longer this morning and trusted my children to get their own breakfast? 

Or when I eventually got up, smiled through the nausea as I made lunches, reminded them about the bus and chivvied them out of the door to school? 

Was I strong when, as the front door closed behind them, I dropped onto the bottom stair and sobbed loudly at the hell of it all? 

I think it might have shown greater strength to have cried right there with them. And allowed space for their tears and fears too. 

When you regularly get told to be strong when facing cancer, what do they want you to do? Maybe it’s simply human-speak for, “Please stay alive”.

I’m doing the best I know how, but I’m facing some impossible decisions about how to treat my body, about what I truly believe is at the root of this diagnosis and what I can trust to turn it around. 

And I’m left here asking; what do I cherish about myself? My body? My mind? Or something more?        

*Please consider subscribing to Emma’s Scars of Gold. And if you’d like to subscribe to my Substack, you can do that here.