Living in the moment and "stuff"

This is so important; being able to communicate with others who are facing a similar outcome.  Instead of pretending it's not there - like the "elephant in the room" it's something that is on one's mind from time to time.  Not discussing death I think, is unhelpful to our wellbeing.

I don't think it's something that needs airing often and for me, I have faced my mortality and have accepted its inevitability but I do bring it out now and then, have a look at it (in my mind's eye) and put it away for another time.  After all, it is what it is and thinking about it constantly is counter-productive.  Life is to be lived the best way we can and focusing on things that give us enjoyment and fulfilment makes the knowledge of our illness more bearable.

I guess we cope in different ways and there is no prescribed right or wrong way and whatever works for each of us is the right way.  I think that literature that talks about life after cancer is unhelpful as once we have that secondary diagnosis, until there is a cure, there is no "äfter cancer" because we are living with cancer every day and will be until our death.

For me, it's all about enjoying every moment I have.

Love, hugs and thanks for airing this topic instead of being all sweetness and light, because we know it is not.

Maggie

Thank you for being real. When i was first diagnosed with bc i thought i understood - it was a wakeup message from the universe with the timing all wrong - or so i thought. I went on an intense journey to find out who i was - somewhere in lives choatic journey i'd lost sight of me

i figured i was doing really well - i felt great, learnt to mediate, was much more mindful of the present moment. And then mestatsis - and my focus turned to getting well ,, the question of why, why now still stays unexpolred and slowly i've slipped back into the everyday doing, slowly becoming numb to life, to the wonder and the joy. A dear friend, close to deaths door and the question of my own mortality conveniently parked in some closed drawer of my mind.

Similar to Jessica i periodically take it out, open wide and feel what it feels like. My experience is more about those around me - by bringing death out into the open it becomes another phase of live, just part of the normal rhythm. Death itself, and thereafter is coloured by our belief sets - for my own, the analogy of a garden works well

Thank you, thank you, thankyou for giving this silence a voice

With love and blessings

Hazel

This is a really important topic.

The first time I hit this issue, I hit it obsessively and with enormous emotional pain and overwhelm. I was between chemo2 and chemo3, at a training workshop, and a tutor talked about  a client  of hers (who had severe hormone imbalances that were treated with intensive hormone therapy throughout her adolescence) who got breast cancer at 21 and over the next few years had 51 different cancer treatments for new growth, local and metastatic cancer recurrence. I did not take in that I am nothing like this person, I just confronted the fact that I currently have more reason than before my cancer diagnosis to expect to die within the next couple of years. I went into a total tailspin for about 12 hours.

My Jungian Analyst, who is a Buddhist, told me that many schools of spiritial development suggest that meditating on one's own death can be a valuable process, once it is disconnected from the current trauma that we all experience in getting breast cancer.

So I have found myself obsessed with  this issue three or four times since then. I am learning to go there with  the goal of learning to accept this idea as a reality, a possible future, but to recognise that it is just a possibility, not a certainty, and  that I do not  want to  waste any of my remaining life in a state of panic and distress about the idea of dying soon. It is not just about wanting to live in this moment, it is about not wanting to waste this moment by filling it with panic and distress. Until I am dead, I still have a life to live, and while the risk of dying is now, thanks to my breast cancer, a part of my present moment, so is the fact that I have a good chance also that I will not die for a few more decades.

Your post reminds me I've been thinking the same things. Yesterday I was reading a wonderful book in my local wellness centre which answers the practical aspects of this, called Mindfulness-based Cancer Recovery by Linda Carson and Michael Speca. It uses the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction approach to help deal with treatment and recovering your life after cancer. It talks about avoidance and also living in the moment which is something I find helpful because sometimes I feel like a total Pollyanna and other times I'm concerned that I'm a little fatalistic - there must be a middle way :).

How do we cope with difficulties? whether we use a problem-solving approach (good when we have options) or an emotion-focussed approach (good for when we don't). Putting off thinking about difficult things is a useful strategy early on when we're overwhelmed, we're just putting it on hold for a little while. Overthinking and becoming helpless is not going to help us at all when we need to make decisions about family, about life, not just about treatment. 

Ask yourself how you solve problems, how do you manage when emotions get overwhelming, what strategies do you have, what is most helpful to you right now and for later? Having a social support network and good friends and a professional counsellor to talk to are a vital combination of emotion-focussed and problem solving tools that you can use. 

Your post raises just the right question for me right now. Thank you

Cheers, Meg xxx