One of the things I’ve really struggled with since my diagnosis, has been the way that my body had clearly been in trouble for a good while before I even had an inkling that something wasn’t right. How can that be? How can I have experienced so much life while it was all unfolding inside me? I look back at the last few years - my wedding, honeymoon, holidays, job interviews - and I’m left speechless by how silent my body was.
Cancer has made me listen to my body in new and intense ways. It’s become, inevitably, the primary focus of appointments, consultations, even conversations with family and friends. But what has become just as important to me, is listening to what is going on with my mind. And writing, for me, is the way that I am able to do that.
When I sit down to write, I am giving my mind space and an audience. And when I write, I know that I’m opening up a conversation with myself. It’s not often an easy conversation - it’s usually fairly messy, confused, raw - but it feels good to find my voice and for myself to be heard. It sounds pretty crazy, I know, talking to myself using a pen and paper, a laptop, or a phone! But just as I’m now listening much more carefully to my body, my writing is helping me to listen more carefully to my mind.
And they’re not separate, my body and my mind, so writing also feels like a way that I can take back a bit of control over my whole mind-body combo through this - frankly rubbish! - journey. We know that there is a really strong link between mental and physical health, so paying attention to this in some way seems like a sensible thing to do. For me, it feels like writing about what’s happening to my body and how this is playing out in my mind, helps me to pay attention and open up to the conversations I need to have with myself to be able to keep going along this road.
