Reflections…

Grab a cup of tea, this is going to be a long one…

After giving a lecture to the NY Guild of Handweavers last month, titled Thou Shalt Wash Thy Fabric when it comes off the Loom (which incidentally I am also giving at Convergence in Long Beach, CA in July) a Q and A session developed.  I love Q and A’s, they present thought provoking questions, ones that I don’t always have rote answers for, and the subject of my journey with breast cancer came up for discussion. After posting a blog that mentioned the lecture, I got this comment in one of the posts.

“Daryl, you gave an inspiring, educational, fun program, and the NY Guild of Handweavers was delighted. You are always so energetic, positive and enthusiastic. During your talk, you referred to your breast cancer diagnosis as freeing, and discussed how facing cancer had made you fearless, unafraid to experiment and make “mistakes” My question is this, how did you become fear-LESS? How is it that you did not become fear-FUL i.e.-that there is not enough time/life left to create all you want, explore your ideas, etc? When advised that we should “live every day as if it were our last”, that thought only provokes panic and despair in me. If it is not too personal, would you be willing to share your insights on this subject in a future post?”

This one’s for you Gail!

It was 10 years ago today, 2/22/2002 I woke up from surgery and the surgeon said to me, “I’m sorry, it’s cancer”.  You cannot imagine what goes through your mind, silly stuff, stupid stuff, disconnected stuff.  My response, the only thing I could think of was a quote I heard once on NPR.  “Nothing bad ever happens to an artist, it is all fuel for their work.”  And I really believed at that moment that this was just one more path in the journey, one more chapter in my book.

The morning of my mastectomy, the pastor from the church where I attended met my husband and me at the hospital.  He said to me, “I’m sure you are asking why me?”  I kind of looked at him in surprise, since that had never occurred to me, “Why not me, why would I be exempt from cancer?”

Those first days of my diagnosis were tough, because so much is thrown at you so fast.  You have to make instant decisions on things that can make a difference if you live or die.  So many well meaning friends wrote about all kinds of alternative treatments and helpful suggestions.  My family took the diagnosis pretty hard.  It was kind of surreal, kind of a bad dream, one where you wake up and think, crap, this isn’t going away.

There is a bit of trust that has to come, if I could give anyone one initial piece of advice, it is to find someone you can trust to guide you through this nightmare.  I chose a surgeon I instinctively knew would make decisions in my best interest, and an oncologist that I felt comfortable with, and could also trust to steer me in the direction that was best for me.

I had two young kids.  I had a wonderful husband who was having his own issues about what was happening to me.  I had a loving and supportive family even though they took my diagnosis really hard.  I had a career that I adored and I’d done some amazing things in my 46 years.  I had not a single regret.  The first order at hand for me was to come to terms with my own mortality.  It wouldn’t have been my choice to die at 46.  I really really wanted to raise my kids and see how they turned out.  But sometimes we don’t have the choice.  And I knew that to move forward for me, I needed to be OK with the fact that I might die.

One of my oldest and dearest friends, Candiss, came and stayed with me for a few days.  We cried together, we laughed together, we talked about what I’d done with my life and what I still wanted to do, and together we worked through the possibility that this aggressive, invasive thing might win.  Again, not my choice, but I decided I would accept with grace the path before me, fight with everything I had, and keep my head held high, and not be quiet about it.  I shared with anyone who asked, always with a smile, because I discovered really really early on, that people are attracted to humor and a smile, and no one wants to hear a rabid string of complaints even though they are really really well deserved.

There wasn’t Facebook then, or my blog, email and the telephone were the main ways of reaching a large amount of caring friends at the time, and I encouraged friends and relatives to use email and not the phone and asked everyone who wrote, to please send me really funny, raunchy jokes, things that would make me laugh so hard, that for a brief moment, all was right with the world.  Everyone jumped on that request and I started to measure my days with how many times I had to change my underwear from wetting myself from laughing too hard.  There is some really funny stuff out there…

And so, dear Gail, we come to your query.  How does one face the unfaceable.   You do because you have to.  It isn’t about what happens to you in life.  We all have a story.  It is ultimately what you do with it that really counts.  I knew if I lived through this ordeal, that I’d be stronger, and better able to reach and teach my students and since I spend a lot of time working with my students on body image and self awareness, having lost a breast to cancer made me able to stand on their side of the table and understand like no one else can.  But I had to live through it for that to happen.

I did everything I was told.  And I was really really lucky.  Early detection is critical, especially when the cancer you have is aggressive.  I found the lump myself.  I acted immediately.  It probably saved my life.  And I spent many many hours just hanging in the studio, thinking about who I was as an artist, a mother, a wife, a teacher, a writer and about a hundred other things.  I’d done well with what I’d been given so far.

I remember walking into the studio after one of my 3 hour chemo treatments.  I fared pretty well through chemo, the steroids and pre-drugs gave me manic energy and I had the problem of not being able to sleep.  I looked at my stash, the one I’d accumulated over the course of a lifetime, and I got sort of sad, thinking gee, wouldn’t it be a shame if I died and never used even a quarter of all the stuff I’ve acquired.  What was I waiting for?  If I lived through this, what would I do differently?  Would anyone really care if something I produced wasn’t completely wow, and what good are raw materials when they just sit on the shelf and collect dust?

I looked at a loom that had been occupied by the warp from hell for more years than I care to mention in this post. (Translate warp from hell: 8 shaft block twill with two shuttles, 12 yards long)  It was embarrassing (the photo was dated 1996).  Fear is lack of control.  And yes, I had no control over the ultimate outcome of my disease, but I could give it my best shot.  What I did have control over was everything in that studio.  I could make stuff, and I could explore stuff and I could do what makes me really happy with whatever time I had left.

I tell students all the time when they look at the handwoven fabric in front of them and look at the scissors in their hand and just can’t bring themselves to make that first cut.  I tell them, “No one will die from what you are about to do.”  And I really mean it.  Nothing I’ve ever done or will ever do in my studio can hurt me.  I needed to stop thinking that bad choices and mistakes in fiber were really critical life decisions.  It is just yarn.  And the absolutely worst thing that could ever happen in my studio would be for me to make a decision that just didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped.  And for that, I have a pair of shears and I’m not afraid to use them.

The key for me was to put my trust somewhere, and let go of that which I couldn’t control.  And embrace what I could.  And so I dove in with abandon, making some pretty amazing pieces, with no fear, because I’m certainly not going to die from anything in the studio.  I might die from other causes, but not from a cone of yarn.  I finished the loom with the warp from hell, and made that into a pretty amazing coat.  I wrote an article for Handwoven Magazine on designing from the stash, to this day, after writing for 35 consecutive issues, that article still comes up as the most favorite from readers and students.

And bless Madelyn van der Hoogt, who gave me assignments and tasks and kept me rolling along.  When I woke from surgery, there were flowers waiting for me from Interweave Press, along with a note that the next issue was pending and they were featuring all the key players in the magazine and they needed a press photo from me and yes, they knew I had just had a mastectomy and could I put on some make up and fake it and get them a working photo in say, a couple of days?  I know that sounds cold and unfeeling but it had the opposite effect.  I had a future, something to focus on other than the tragedy that my body just experienced.  I probably wouldn’t have put make up on for months, but I came home, climbed in bed, still with the drains in my chest wall, and covered my face in make up and looked like I had the world by the balls.  My husband did a photo shoot, and for fun, we stacked up cans of my favorite comfort food, cling peaches, which is sort of a private joke, and we acted as if…  It was the greatest therapy I could have ever experienced.  We had a magazine to produce…

In the ten years since my diagnosis, I’ve lost a number of friends to cancer.  I’ve seen a number of friends go through the ordeal and come out the other side with many different interpretations of how to move forward.  The pastor who asked me the morning of my surgery “Why me?”; I had the opportunity to remind him of that question years later when he was diagnosed with cancer.  He didn’t make it.  In fact none of us know how long we have, or what kind of quality of life we will have with the life we are given.  We really only have today.  If I can get up and crawl under a loom and still find a way to use the day to celebrate life in some way, then I’ve done my job.  And if I can’t crawl under a loom any more, I’ll find another way to be creative.  It isn’t about what happens to you, it is what you ultimately choose to do with it that counts.

Cancer has a way of really defining what’s important in life.  When it comes right down to it, very little is that important.  Family is right up there, at least for me.  My relationship with my sisters really began in earnest after my diagnosis, my relationship with my husband wobbled a bit, but we got back on track stronger than ever.  And my kids and how they fared through all this was vitally important to me.  I now pick and choose where I put my energy.  I was able to cast off a lot of situations that were weighing me down and not in my best interest.  There is no greater excuse than, “I’ve got cancer”.  And I didn’t judge.  Many of my friends couldn’t be there for me through my ordeal, I understood.  I’m not always able to be there for everyone I love either.  Yet other “angels” stepped in when the need was there, they came in the oddest forms. One magazine reader wrote to me, “Daryl, I’ve just heard you have cancer and I’m devastated.  Please don’t die because I haven’t been able to take a workshop with you yet.”  If that isn’t enough fuel to keep me going I don’t know what is.  Another reader’s dog wrote to me in what turned out to be a year long correspondence.  Duchess had been diagnosed with breast cancer as well.  Duchess and I carried on a wonderful email exchange, and I mourned when Duchess’ owner wrote me to tell me that Duchess had finally died.  I was never alone, and never without the support I needed to make it down the path.  I just had to be open to finding it in places I’d never expected and from people I’d never expected were capable of filling that need.  We are all in this together.  We all walk along different paths, but they cross frequently, and sometimes parallel.  Life marches forward with or without you, and the worst thing I could do for my family and for myself was to drown in self pity and fear.  I wanted to live, but understood that I may not be one of the lucky ones, only time would tell, and I didn’t want to waste a minute of it waiting to find out.

So I made it through ten more years.  I hope there are many many more years to come, because somehow my stash, no matter how hard I tried, is worse than ever.  Way worse…  I want to celebrate each cone of yarn, each new thing I learn, each mistake I make, each seemingly insurmountable task.  And if I only have today, then it will be the most productive and useful day I can make.

Thanks Gail, for asking.  It is good to be reminded how vulnerable we are, how fragile life is and how those of us in the fiber community have a rare gift, that things that come from our hands are healing and will live well beyond our life expectancy.  As a matter of fact, so will that stash…