Skip to main content

Struggle or Swim

Once faced with the diagnosis of cancer, my biggest challenge was in choosing what approach to take.

It felt like a cruelly urgent "do or die" exercise in learning to trust my own intuition AND rational thought when faced with the expertise of medical science (and the $7 billion cancer industry lurking behind it), the art and efficacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the experience of others who have walked their own path with cancer and the opinions of those who know me sometimes better than I know myself.


And the day I realized that there was no single, right pathway to take with a promised, certain outcome, was monumental. I woke up to the fundamental truth that I had no control over whether I would live or die. I was frightened beyond words, yet liberated and relieved at the same time. My breathing calmed and expanded and everything looked brighter and more miraculous.

This poem was my best way to describe how it felt to me, and it still gives me shivers as I remember the darkness and horror of having to choose, and then the surrender that followed.



Will you 
Struggle or Swim 
frantic or form
to escape murky waters below?
Will you thrash and flail or flutter and crawl,
choose to float and go with the flow?

The Struggle;
a breathless, self-righteous 'can do';
"I’ll beat this predicament, I’ll show ‘em who’s who".
It will keep you busy, feels like control
Exhausts you from kicking at shadows below.

To Swim;
takes learning, trusting the science
stroke by stroke; total reliance
on those who have studied, know what it’s all for
- to increase your chances of reaching the shore.

And then there’s the Flow
the inexorable pull, 
the ebbing tides, pale moons new and full.
There’s floating and sinking, 
washed up on rocks,
a soft, sandy footfall, 
barnacled docks.

And slowly, slowly while moved through time
the choices are clearer, the peace is sublime.
There’s choosing between, 
there’s trusting it all.
There’s praying for miracles, 
and scaling the wall.
And once on top absorbing the view
of each moment to come, each choice fresh and new,
a smile shines your lips
feeling glad that you came
to know that life’s precious - a marvellous game
of perspective, relationship, grind and grace
no longer a fight or unwinnable race.

I wish for us all to wake up to the wonder
we knew as a child or when death threatens plunder
of our golden hearts, our fondest hopes.
May we live in each moment, relinquish our tropes.

When in deep water, dark below
Will you struggle, swim and

Go with the Flow?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Evelyn Glennie shows how to listen | Video on TED.com

I saw this remarkable woman in the live West End production of Children of a Lesser God many years ago and she still amazes me. Little did I know then that I would become the proud mother of my very own daughter with a hearing loss.  My hope is that Evelyn becomes an inspiration to Freya too. From a professional perspective, as one who teaches observation and "listening" in all its guises, this piece particularly caught my eye. At 5'38" Ms Glennie gives a most wonderful physical and musical demonstration of the difference between using a lot of effort to "make" a connection to her instrument and music, and then simply not using that effort - the difference is immediately obvious. THIS is part of what I mean by more success for less effort .   Check it out! http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html Emma Jarrett, ITM emmasjarrett@gmail.com www.emmajarrett.ca 1-250-992-7634

Moment of Choice

It has been a while.   Life has been colourful - to put it mildly.   I seem to be out the other side with a clarity about what truly matters to me.   Hence renaming this blog, In This Moment. We are right here in it, after all. And hello to you as you choose to spend this moment of yours reading my words. Hello! Take a breath and settle in, if you choose to stay. It’s your moment of choice. It has taken a humbling tussle with cancer to open my eyes to the moment I am in. Moments which can be a few seconds; a fleeting interaction, a happy thought. Or periods of time delineated by some external structure; a work day, a treatment schedule or a plane trip. And then moments as life stages; mothering a newborn, high school education, a career, even dying well as you acknowledge your last days. All these hold a context for the minuscule moment which is accompanied by my next breath in and subsequent release.   How am I going to spend this moment that I am present to?