Finding the Courage to Dance

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
~ T. S. Eliot, “East Coker,” Four Quartets

“…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Psalm 30:5

As I entered the radiology department, the receptionist directed me to a door decorated with a large pink ribbon. I was the last patient for the day. I opened the door and found a comfortable seat. The facility was very still and quiet. However, my mind was anything but still, or quiet. Rather, it was a knot of information about cancer, treatments, tests, uncertainty, and yes, an overwhelming fear. I tried to calm myself by paying attention to my breath and the surroundings. It was a peaceful room with pastel colored paintings, magazines on the table and a coffeepot in the corner. As I looked around and stilled my mind, I noticed the music quietly filling the room. The words began to fill my soul – “And when you get the chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.” A song (“I hope you dance” sung by Lee Ann Womack) I used in a graduate social work class years ago.

A flashback from the past: I am twirling and dancing in the center of a large circle of men and women who have participated in my Expressive Arts Therapy class at a public university. As I sing the words, I invite each student to join the dance as we celebrate the closing ritual of an intense series of workshops based on the many modalities of Expressive Arts Therapy. Thirty students are dancing inside the circle.

And here I am sitting in a cancer clinic re-membering, re-connecting to those moments of great joy, authenticity, creativity and connections and at the same time waiting for the test that will indicate if the cancer has gone beyond the tumor in my left breast, perhaps, to the lungs, bones and/or liver.

Unreal. That is how my life has felt this past month. I never had imagined that the term cancer would be associated with my life. And yet, here I sit writing these words with the first of many cycles of chemo completed. A scene radically different from the one in which I am dancing for joy with students celebrating creativity and life.

Diagnosis: Less than a month ago tomorrow, I was diagnosed with HER 2 positive breast cancer. The test I was waiting for (that I mentioned above) indicated that it had not spread to other areas, but it is an aggressive cancer and needs aggressive treatment.

Treatment: So we decided on a treatment of chemotherapy and Hercepton [a humanized monoclonal antibody (also called a biologic therapy). Antibodies are part of the body’s normal defense against bacteria, viruses and abnormal cells such as cancer cells. Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies are created and produced in a laboratory through a complex and resource-intensive process.] and then surgery and radiation. The treatment cycles started November 12th – A long (6 hours) chemo treatment every third Monday (5 FU and epirubicin) and weekly IV of Hercepton. This part will continue for four cycles. After that, I begin a new regiment of weekly doses of another Chemo drug (Taxol) and Hercepton for 12 weeks.

“The gifts can only be found when we are unafraid to dance.”

T.S. Eliot suggests that the stillness can be the dancing. I meditate on this when my body tells me to stay still and rest during the overwhelming feelings of exhaustion after the chemo treatments. This is the when the courage is needed – courage to let go of all the things on the to do list. Courage to reach out to others, asking for help, and first discerning what that help looks like! Letting go of fears and storylines that take me far away from the moment.

I re-member the courage I needed at that moment when I would step into the circle of students and dance. I re-member the joy as each student took my hand and joined me in that dance of saying, “yes” to life.

This moment in my life is indeed a different dance. It is a dance of stillness and waiting. It is a dance of patience and trust. It is dance that needs courage.