A cancer diagnosis is a line drawn down the middle of a life: there is now a clear before and after. That before and after line brings with it grief. We grieve for the person we were before cancer, for the changes brought by cancer to the future life we expected to live, and we grieve for the ones we lose along the way.
There is a saying, that once you have experienced a cancer diagnosis, you live in the glare of cancer forever more. Non-cancer folks will say, "Yes, but anyone could die at any moment — I could get hit by bus tomorrow!" Cancer folks know it's not the same. To wake up in the middle of the night with the fears and worries is to wake up with the bus idling by your bedside, the headlights blinding you. There is grief in that.
A friend recently shared with me the difference between grief and mourning. She said, the grief is the emotions we feel while the mourning is the action we take as a result of the grief.
This pop up workshop is designed to give you the space to write about your grief — to mourn through writing — so that you have more space in your survivorship for hope. Hope to live, hope to be seen, hope to be and find acceptance within this illness.
Writing is a terrific tool for exercising curiosity about the self — and about the things that cause us grief. Writing through our pain helps bring new ideas and understanding, acceptance, or in the least, a little agency.
Join me on September 17 at our Pop-Up Writing Workshop on the theme of "Good Grief: Writing Our Way Through" to spend time with carefully created writing prompts to guide you into writing your way through whatever you are grieving right now in your cancer experience.