ESSAYS & MEDIA Pinkwashed Market by Sara Broek, Drake Magazine, Spring 2007. Are you curious how much of the money you spend on pink tic-tacs, muffin tins or vacuum cleaners goes to the charity you'd like to support? This article is an examination of the consumer/philanthropy conundrum in relation to breast cancer. I am proud to say that my thoughts are featured in the article. Marketwatch: Organizing Cancer Care After Diagnosis,Thanksgiving, 2007. This article shares some good life experiences of how some folks coped with their cancer diagnosis . MSN.com: Celebrate Your Divorce Ten ways to celebrate your divorce! Two of my ideas made it into the article. Check out numbers 4 and 7! This article clearly has resonance -- it has been picked up by many other websites and forwarded around the globe. Zeroing in on 40 in the Vancouver Columbian, shines light on that magic number. Too Many Masterpieces, in Long Island's Newsday gives a few tips on how to manage kid art -offering a new take on clutter. Project Procrastination, in the Vancouver Columbian is a new take on your unfinished project. A New Year and Nu, You? by Gari Julius Weilbacher Originally published online in the Philadelphia Jewish Voice, October 2006 Autumn arrives and thoughts of High Holidays dance in our heads: early or late, chicken or brisket, Aunt Ida or nemesis Cousin Gloria. Before long we stop and think about Rosh Hashanah, the new year, and what it means to us. Reflecting on the state of the world and our place in it, we consider struggles, losses and accomplishments. We may pause and remember those people we have lost this year - thoughts that walk us down the road of our own mortality. Resolutions surface: better nourishment, both spiritually and physically; less weight, emotionally and literally; and more action. The shofar gloriously confirms the birthday of the world. It is a new year and with it, a new you. However, I have another way of looking at it. I see it as a new year and, nu, you? Nu: this small, Yiddish kvetch of a word is a prod, a question and a pause. It is pregnant with untranslatable meaning. It can be a mother's whine: "Nu, are you done?" It can rest curiously alone: "Nu? Well?" Or it can stand right next to you: "Nu, what about you?" It is a new year. Nu? This year don't re-invent yourself again. Instead, wonder if you have been the juiciest you that you can be. It is the question the Chassidic master Reb Zusia asked himself in the oft-told story. He wondered how he would present himself to God since in his lifetime he had not been as strong as Joshua or as brave as Moses. In a moment of clarity, the humble rebbe realized that the hardest question he would be asked by the Divine was not "Why were you not like these mighty men," but "Why were you not Zusia? Zusia, were you the most you could be?" The question can get you right in the kishkes. Are you the most you can be? Not the richest or prettiest person around. Simply the most. Reflect on the times in your life when you lived in accordance with your best self and knew what you stood for. Do you still? Peel the world off your weary body and soul and think about your connection to your values. Are you living in harmony with your principles or is there a gap between your beliefs and behaviors? As you connect to your values, you live the authentic life that has always been yours to create. That is easier said than done! Stay with this concept. An authentic life is a more effortless life even if the journey back to it is tough. Perhaps your dreams have given way to oppressive goals and your desires have led to endless habits. Self-reflection may have become self-absorption. You may have to work to rediscover your truth, but as you do you will become freer to do good work in the world, create, laugh and play more too. People feel healthier and more connected to others when they finally listen to the quieted whispers in their hearts. Less is more. Less distraction, less fluff, and less stuff leads to more peace, more knowledge, more focused action, more you, and more ease. An easier life. Hmmm, this is a tough one for Jews. Is an easy life meaningful? Must we not struggle to repair a broken world and our broken selves? The concept of an effortless life is foreign and intriguing, but easy is not necessarily simple or painless. Being human is to encounter pain and suffering. My story includes breast cancer and the loss of two parents within three short years. I have two daughters on the cusp of adolescence, and I awake each morning knowing that this thing called life is tough. The traumas are part of me just the way my joy and enthusiasm are. I honor those I have lost and heal my own sadness when I live in integrity and wholeness. When I am my truest self, I flow choosing how and where to put my valuable energy. Tikkun Olam, repair of a broken world, beckons and I can follow with clarity. When you peek at the new year ahead, habit may tempt you to list what you need to accomplish and what you should do. This year, change the paradigm and meet your authentic self at the top of the list. You can be the most that you already are with ease, grace and integrity. On this Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, take the time to fully celebrate creation — yours. Nu? Faith Zap Love. Today. By Gari Julius Weilbacher copyright 2004 Originally published online in the Philadelphia Inquirer Online and Ritualwell.org Although it rarely makes a difference to me, most people feel more comfortable knowing how to pronounce my name. It's "gar-ee"-- the first syllable rhymes with star or scar…three of them to be exact, and they are mine. Picture a clock superimposed on a beautiful breast. My breasts were never standout, but since I'm telling the story, picture a beautiful breast. On the left breast at 12 o'clock there is a scar hovering where a large fibroadenoma was removed. This large tissue mass was allegedly non-cancerous but could change over time. At 2 o'clock, a small scar signals where three sentinel nodes were taken, the result of which was the blessed all-clear regarding terrifying lymph node involvement. At 4 o'clock -- a thin line remains on the surface of the surgically eliminated, early-diagnosed, good- prognosis, estrogen-based cancer. Four zaps/five days a week/seven weeks. Arms in reverse stirrups over my head, I am in awe of the growing hair under my arms…thankful to have it and shocked at how naturally it grows after being mowed down for 34 years. As this phase of my treatment begins, I wonder what other people think about while on the radiation table. These have been the deepest moments in my sentient experience, and I want to know how it is for everyone. It's too personal a question to ask my compatriots in the waiting room. What would I say-- How do you organize your thoughts, Mr. Man-with-face ablaze? Do you pray, lovely Young-bald-mother-with-kids-at-hand? Who here listens to the music -- Enya better than Frank, no not Motown. Old-lady-in-wheelchair, do you weep? Do you plan your day, Executive-woman-with-one-breast? Do you recall other quiet moments in your life Mr. Veteran Marine, Sir? Do you tremble with fear? Does your chest heave? Is the table the only place that you are completely alone and relaxed? What else do we have in common? Zap one: Hear oh Israel, Adonai our God, Adonai is one: an ancient prayer said by Jews both daily and in redemptive dark moments, minutes before death. An affirmation that God is present. God is here in my cancer moments. God is in the doctors who treat me, the surgeon who cut me, the therapists who heal me, the nurses who prep me, the radiologists who zap me. God is in these buildings, in these minutes, in the radiation and in the guiding hand of my father…himself succumbing to cancer less than ten months ago. God is in me. Zap two: Blessed are you, sovereign of the universe for bringing me to this moment. This prayer is often reserved for happy occasions with family and friends gathered round. A prayer said to welcome a new holiday or first fruits. A prayer that says, I am Here, thank you, on a table receiving radiation -- the good kind? -- in this moment. And I am grateful. Zap three: I love my family and I pray: I love my husband, I love my Hannah, I love my Molly. My Molly my Hannah my Michael my Molly my Michael my Hannah. Whoops, where am I in this equation? I change mantra number three quickly: Gari Michael Hannah Molly Molly Hannah Michael Gari Hannah Michael Molly Gari. I am an integral part of this foursome. Don't take me out yet. Zap four: I panic! I only have three scars and each meditation focuses on a surgical site as if my thoughts could harness and direct the radiation. If I don't have a mental scenario then the radiation will zap my breast randomly, uncontrolled. I am desperately bound to live the lesson I must learn. There is no control and I cannot harness the destructive radiation used to kill any (and I pray, all) stray cancer cells. I am forced to live in this moment, in this day. Zap my entire breast, caress it with deadly radiation but please give me today…HaYom…om…ommmm. An acquaintance asked if I would be one of those women who define herself via her cancer. What's up with that question? Even if you don't wear pink ribbons the rest of your life you cannot come out of this the way you entered. Will I advocate for accessible and reliable mammograms for all women? Will I take on cavalier corporations who tell me that their levels of toxins are acceptable? Will endless fundraisers, galas, conferences and seminars beckon? Will I quietly write checks and act as though this never happened? Will I wait for your call, telling me your news? I run out in the morning counting down my days. Only 5 more zaps, I tell my girls, only 3, only 2. Tomorrow is my last one. On the last day I whisper goodbye to the table, the faces, the sounds, the gowns, the machinery, the waiting, the stirrups, the creams, the doctors, the nurses. My very own radiation has ended. And today, three scars remain on my now beautiful, standout breast – my very own constellation of love and faith. You Have Anxiety and I Have Cancer! By Gari Julius Weilbacher copyright 2004 Originally published online in the Philadelphia Inquirer Online How many of you Women-With-Breast-Cancer-Experience have heard this one…"oh, I am so sorry to hear that you had a lumpectomy. You know, my best friend's cousin had breast cancer and…" And before you know it, the woman has told you a story of horrible recurrent cancer in a young woman with kids -- who, coincidentally! -- happen to be your children's ages. And you're supposed to actually stand there and listen because she is trying to make you feel better! Hey, I get it -- There is a lot of anxiety around breast cancer. No shit. But I say to myself, as I stand there in painful disbelief, hey well-intentioned lady, you have anxiety and I HAVE CANCER! The randomness of my cancer terrifies you but the ease with which you align me with a struggling woman terrifies me. Once upon a time, all the women who have had breast cancer didn't have it. And those people who tell you their 3rd-4th- 5th-person horror stories don't want to cross that not-so-great divide. Perhaps if they talk fast enough, they can stay in the land of have-nots. I present The Inoculation Theory of Cancer Communication: Commiseration An emotion offered up as compassion, it often accompanies someone's cousin's cancer in some town 1,000 miles away, do you know her??? Or, with detailed conveyances of mammogram scares and repeated ultrasounds, these people are indeed sad that it was you who got it but so bloody relieved it wasn't them--not this time. In this scenario you are the silent totem, a talisman that wards off cancer because you have it. Like a flu shot. A bit of you goes a long way in prayerland. Don't trap me here to help you feel compassionate. A Numbers Game This is when you are subjected to the living cancer tree. The odds are 1 in 8 and sure enough, you know 8 people who can name 8 others. Those women with cancer know who they are. The others do too. But somehow naming them for you allows Ms. Fearful to remain part of the lucky 7. I never did the "Why me" thing. I was much more of the "Why not me?" Space Filler I listened to these women for way too many months because I know how terrifying the thought of breast cancer is. I knew that when these women talked to me they babbled incessantly because they needed to fill up the space around me quickly so that none of the cancer leaked out of me onto them. I've changed the aura around me so there are no gaps of vulnerability. They now have nothing to worry about. Neither do I. Now that my treatment has ended, I've left behind my daily cancer identity. I no longer have those conversations with people. Sure, folks ask me how I am doing but people are not so frightened of the answer. I look good, I feel good, my prognosis is good and I function like a regular woman. But I'm not. I am a woman who had breast cancer and I am wiser because of it. I stop people in mid-horror-story saying, "I have my own cancer story, thank you." I don't jump on the "I can't believe it" bandwagon because I do believe it -- I do believe that breast cancer is of epidemic proportions. And, I don't pretend to have conversations with people who do all the talking. I leave. I have learned what a strong woman looks like. It's the friend who says: "I will be by your side for this journey, no matter how difficult." I've learned the difference between someone who gives you healing energy and someone who envies that energy: "I didn't gain weight on tamoxofen for 3 months…I mean 5 months…I mean the side effects didn't kick in til 6 months…how long have you been on it again?" I've learned to gratefully receive every day with love and joy and humor and I don't care if people are uncomfortable around my cancer. I am wide and open, but I am no longer vulnerable to sad, empty eyes. So, Dear-Friend-With-Cancer, the next time a woman tries to project all her anxiety on to you, remember that she wants you to protect her from getting cancer. You already know that you can't. You don't have to listen to the stories, the stats, the names, and the docs. You have your very own stories to tell the people who really do listen to you. Tell her that you understand her fears and cut her Cancer Communication short: simply remind her that you are not contagious. Then, just for kicks…sneeze… |
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