Tag Archives: cancer

the five year mark…

22 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Cancer, photography

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(This is the post I wrote last Friday before the ice storm. We had been home two days when the storm came and so I thought this post could wait for more current events!)

Many of you were not following when I started my blog nearly five years ago.(a very early post you might enjoy here) I started it while having radiation treatment in Darwin, 1000 miles from home. It was a soul searching, solitary, and challenging, but also very rewarding 7 weeks.

Alone in the light.

Alone in the light.

I have just returned from my five year consultation with the surgeon, and the tests that confirmed, all is well. The surgeon told me in October, five years from when I started the aromatase inhibitor medication I will be able to discontinue it. Further, she told me that the mammogram imaging has improved so much that I will be able to discontinue the difficult breast MRI test, unless the high resolution mammogram shows something unusual. (Mammogram remains an extraordinarily painful compression of one’s sensitive body parts, however!) Five years is a significant benchmark and I was greatly relieved, feeling very very fortunate.

The lady in the corner quietly crying into her tissues reminded me how far I had come.

For many years walking and enjoying nature has been a calming habit for me. It keeps me centred and feeling normal, even when things are abnormal. The recent week we spent in Adelaide began with a breast MRI the first day, and ended on the last day with the mammogram and surgeon consultation. In between were five days. I hesitate to say it was an uncertain time, because nothing in life is certain. But no doubt our awareness of uncertainty is sometimes heightened. One morning I told my husband I need to go find some light to photograph. The Adelaide Botanic Garden is not far from our hotel and I thought that would be the place. He wanted to join me, which was fine. He understands my frequent stops and contortionist positions to capture images I’m chasing. Here was my therapy for that day.

Banyan tree in morning light
lovely dead lily pads
homage to Georgia O’Keefe
Gingko with dew
Autumn Ginkgo

For all of society’s increasing interest in taking photos, there are still life moments that escape being photographed. The moment of certainty (however temporary) in the surgeon’s room, was not a Kodak moment. But this set of photos above, taken during that week, will be in my mind for a very long time.

This final photo is no prize winner, but it was a shared meal with our daughter and my husband, a good bottle of wine at our favourite Chinese restaurant with my husband’s grateful words;

‘Here’s to good boob health!’ Always a good toast!

'Here's to good boob health'

‘Here’s to good boob health’

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

05 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by in Cancer

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tattoo-radiation

radiation tatto on centre line

tattoo-radiation

radiation tattoo on side coordinate

These are my ‘tatts’. My ‘tit-tatts’, I guess you could call them. (I don’t wish to be crude, but I want you to remember the message of this post.) These are the tattoo dots that are etched permanently into the positions the radiographers used when I had radiotherapy treatments after surgery for breast cancer. No, the tattoos didn’t hurt. The radiation didn’t hurt either, at the time. But it made me tired, and I had a nasty heat rash all over the area where I was treated, and there were after effects. The treated breast tissue is changed by the radiation and remains larger. New bras, girlfriends. I needed physical therapy treatments as well as continued self treatment to loosen the muscles of the underarm area which painfully tightened.

I was lucky.

I had treatable cancer and it was caught early. And that is the reason for this post. A routine mammogram was the key factor. A talented radiographer saw in my very dense tissue a ‘spot’. To you and I it would look the same as all the other dense spots of tissue.

But it wasn’t.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Take care of yourself and urge your loved ones to do the same. Get routine mammograms and do self-testing. Life is precious. We are precious to someone; and we must be our own advocates.

family-1956

Dad, brothers, Grandmother, me, Grandfather

This photo was taken the same year my paternal Grandmother had a radical mastectomy. She lived another 30 years and did not die from cancer. I am the 3 year old little girl holding her hand. Believe me, my life would have been the poorer if she had not survived. I had breast cancer at the same age as her. I knew about her cancer because she and my own Mother, who is a nurse and cared for her, talked about it. But there was a lot I didn’t know about it, and have since learned.

As well as the cancer category of this blog, where I talk about my time in treatment, here are a couple of things that you, or someone you love, may find useful or interesting:

The Emperor of all Maladies – A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Amazon paperback (This book tells the history of cancer and treatment and is very readable and interesting, except for a chapter or two that are a bit ‘scientific’. A word of caution; it is somewhat confronting in its honesty about past treatments and about prognosis of certain cancers. I read it the same year I was treated and had to put it down a time or two, but was very glad to have read it when I finished)

Courage Through A Lens – A breast cancer journey (I wrote about this photographic journey in a past post. It was a remarkable, if confronting, ebook, link on old post here.)

I donate to http://www.abcr.com.au/about/ because 100% of their proceeds go toward research.

I do not dwell on this event, any more than I dwell on other major events/lessons one has in life. However, it is my goal to shed light whenever I can. I learn things and share them.

Live, learn, share.

Repeat.

~Ardys

For those of you unaware, you can read my ‘about’ page; I started this blog while in treatment, to let my family and friends know about my journey since I was 1000 miles away from home for the surgery (Adelaide), and 1000 miles the other way from home for the treatment (Darwin)

Kicking it with Kiki

28 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by in Books, Cancer, Health, photography, Recommendations

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A few days ago I selected the ‘publish’ button on this post.  But you didn’t see it, did you?  That’s because, for some reason (operator error!) it didn’t publish.  And I’m glad.  A few hours after thinking it had published, I wished I had written it differently.  Sometimes the Universe and I are on the same wavelength and I get a second chance at things! Has that happened to you?  Well, let me try again…

Kiki was an Australian resident who migrated here from Netherlands a few years ago.  She was a 27 year old photographer, with a husband and two young children when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She chose to document her very difficult journey using her photography skills in an e-book titled ‘Courage Through A Lens – A breast cancer journey’.  This book is raw and beautiful, confronting, and heart wrenching, especially for those of us who have been on part of that journey. It explains and photographically documents the journey of breast cancer in a way I have never seen it done.  It is the book I wished I had two and a half years ago.  Kiki passed away, as I understand it, very recently… within weeks. But she has done something for women everywhere that will live on and be remembered.

selfie

‘selfie’ taken two and a half years ago

During this time of the year when we sometimes have difficulty staying centred, here is a reminder of what is important.  If you have a daughter, sister, girlfriend or Mother who has survived breast cancer, be grateful. This book might help them share their experience. If you have a loved one who has breast cancer now and you would like to be better informed about what she is going through, I recommend this book.

As for cancer, I’m kicking it with Kiki… it’s butt, that is.  She was an awesomely ordinary woman who stepped up and did an extraordinary thing to help others. I just want to do my little bit to keep things kicking along.

Thanks Kiki, regrettably I won’t get to tell you this in person.

(This is an e-book, so it works on your iPad or other tablet device, or your computer.  It is downloaded as a PDF document.  Half the proceeds go to benefit breast cancer.)

Have the conversation.

15 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Cancer, Health, Life, Uncategorized

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Two years ago this week I had a routine mammogram that showed I needed a needle biopsy.  Less than a week later I had flown 1500km to have the biopsy as quickly as possible, and a few days later, back at home, May 31st, I was told I had breast cancer.  Last evening we saw in the news that Angelina Jolie has taken preventative measures after learning she has the BRCA 2 gene.

Many are calling her courageous and, yes, I do too, because all women who face this decision have not only the difficult decision itself but the pain and consequences inherent in such a decision.  But let’s be clear about what leads to this courageous decision and course of action. What is the conversation we need to have?  First, have the conversation with yourself about getting routine checkups.

The thing I have learned about cancer (read: ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’ by Siddhartha Mukherjee) is that almost every single case is unique.  Try to get your head around that.  Each human being is unique, and each cancer is as well.  The combinations of possibilities are endless.  If we don’t do our part to look after ourselves and to have checkups is it any wonder in which direction that behaviour will tip the scales?

Be pro-active.  In my own case, I live in a remote area of Outback Australia but I made the habit of getting a routine mammogram from the time I turned 50.  There was a lot of cancer in my Dad’s family.  His mother had breast cancer at about the same age as did I.  Dad had prostate cancer which is what is called a ‘soft tissue’ cancer and has some influence on the inherited tendencies.  At the age of 47 I had an upper endoscopy and was told I had what could potentially become esophageal cancer. After following the doctor’s advice a follow up endoscopy last year (12 years later) has shown the problem has been reversed.  I have had 13 moles removed, 12 of which were the type that turn into melanoma.  At the age of 52 I had my ovaries removed when I had a hysterectomy.  At age 58 I had the breast cancer followed by 7 weeks/five times a week, radiation treatment.  And all this while one of my closest friends, about whom I’ve written on my blog (read: Remembering Ivy) was battling breast cancer and eventually died from it, having had a preventative double mastectomy!!!  Let me repeat that, she had a preventative double mastectomy.

Here is the rest of the conversation you must have with yourself and with others, if you can.  Discuss options.  Be as open as you can about your experience, if you have had cancer or loved someone who has.  There are no guarantees in life.  I have lived healthy, am not overweight, have exercised, tried to reduce stress, breathed clean air, don’t smoke, wear sunscreen etc. etc.  I got cancer.  Ivy was the same.  She died of secondary breast cancer at the age of 58.  There are no guarantees.  Have the conversations, have the tests and have the treatment.  Give yourself a better chance.

Be pro-active.

Be pro-active.

Happy Dancing

21 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in Health, Life

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The original intent for this blog was to enlighten anyone who was interested about not just my journey with cancer, but to enable others who have not had this disease, to relate better to those who have had it by describing some of the specifics one experiences.  This week was a milestone for which I am very grateful.  Another year free of cancer.  For the one year (and all subsequent) checkups I fly to Adelaide (1500 kilometres away) to see the surgeon who treated me last year.  Without alarming me (much!) she told me the unhappy news that the aromatase inhibitor (hormone treatment) part of the ‘after’ treatment had not had the desired effect on reducing the density of the tissue in my breasts.  Normally this drug reduces the oestrogen in the system, which, in turn, reduces the density of the breast tissue, allowing easier diagnosis of future lumps with a mammogram.  In my case the tissue has increased in density, making it even more difficult for the doctors to spot any potential problems.  This, and several other factors, have put me in a ‘high risk’ category for future cancer.  When I first learned this it really spun me around.  For a week or so I felt rather stunned.

The surgeon offered to order an MRI for a more accurate assessment of the situation.  At first I decided to defer it until next year, as she said that would be fine.  But very soon I realised I would be living in the shadow of uncertainty for a whole year if I waited until next June to have the MRI at the same time I had the next mammogram.  As we already had a vacation trip planned for Adelaide a month later, I decided to go ahead and have the MRI and see what happened.  The problem with MRI’s is they are notorious for ‘false positives’… but of course you don’t know they are false until you have had the needle biopsies and followed up.  Needle biopsies may sound like small potatoes, but my own experience last year was worse than the surgery to actually remove the cancer!  This is not true for everyone, but for me it was no small decision as I could be opening a Pandora’s Box of ongoing unpleasantness!  Nevertheless, knowing seemed preferable to living with the uncertainty.  That’s always been my preference in life.  Give me the facts, ma’am, just the facts…

A breast MRI is not like a normal MRI, and it may be like some others, I don’t know, I have not had them.  All I can tell you is that I had a bone scan with dye injected into me last year and I coped fine with that one.  I was lying on my back and breathed quietly while the ‘noisy tube’ did its job.  But this time was different.  First of all, a person always feels more vulnerable with almost no clothes on, and a paper dressing gown open at the front!  The medical technician inserts a cannula into a vein in your arm because they don’t inject the dye before the test, but about two thirds of the way through, and the timing has to be fairly precise.  I was led into the imaging room where I was asked to climb onto a ‘frame’ that lay on top of the normal MRI ‘bed’.  I was told to position myself so that my breast bone and stomach bore the bulk of my body weight while my breasts hung loosely in the holes of the frame.  I rested my head into an oval padded cut out (as for a massage table) and my arms stretched above my head onto a pillow.  And then they asked “Are you comfortable?”  Compared to what???  The lack of dignity one feels as one’s breasts are dangling in the space of the frame, while the rest of you is unattractively draped over the rest of the frame is hard to describe!  But the most challenging part of the process was that I was instructed NOT to take a deep breath, but to breathe as quietly as possible for the entire 20 or so minutes!! And of course, knowing that you are inside a tube and cannot pull yourself out if you feel the need, doesn’t help.  And last, but not least, the test itself is very noisy, sounding much like a jackhammer.  They gave me a headset that muffled the noise somewhat, but this kind of makes you feel even more ‘detached’ from potential safety.  Still, the noise was so loud I cannot imagine having nothing to muffle the sound.  I could have opted for a headset playing very loud music but that didn’t sound very attractive either!

I managed to keep it together for the first 12 minutes. (But, of course I had no idea how long it had been because you have no sense of time during the test)  And then a panic quickly took over me like nothing I have ever before experienced.  I could only say that I was having a panic attack.  I squeezed the ‘panic button’ they had shoved into my left hand before I went into the tube, and a voice that sounded very feint asked if I was having a problem?  That question sounds laughable now, but at the time I answered quite seriously and with tears in my eyes, “I can’t breathe.  I think I’m having a panic attack”.  The voice said “okay, stay still and we’ll get you out.” Stay still?  Could I actually do that?  True to his word they quickly extracted me from the tube and I immediately felt the other technician beside me, her cool hands on my back and my arm.  Cool hands.  Confirmation of the outside world.

She calmly said to try and stay still and asked me how I was feeling.  I told her I felt I couldn’t breathe, that I needed a deep breath but knew I wasn’t supposed to.  She encouraged me to breathe deeply several times but to try and stay still, in the same position.  As I did I realised I was quickly calming down.  I was right, I thought, I needed to breathe deeply!! (And of course, this is our own inbuilt coping mechanism when we are stressed, to breath deeply to calm ourselves)  She told me I was 12 minutes into the test and there were about 8 minutes left and that would be the most crucial in terms of stillness.  The dye would be injected at this stage and they would not be able to stop the test again without losing the results.  No pressure.  After half a dozen or so breaths I felt much more calm, amazingly more calm… and while I was not keen to go back into that tube, I also didn’t want my effort thus far to be wasted so I said I thought I could finish.  There was a chance, they told me, that when the dye was injected it would cause slight nausea or even a metallic taste in my mouth, or a cold feeling when it went into my arm.  Thank God none of those things happened.

At the end of the test when I had to get off the ‘bed’ my whole body was trembling.  But I had done it.  It was over and I could get dressed and be a normal person again.  I walked out into the cool winter air and looked up at the blue, cloud studded sky and wanted to do my happy dance.  That’s probably not a pretty sight so I did it inside my heart, and felt the joy one feels on the last day of school!

I have gone over things in my mind many times since the MRI, to try and think if there is anything I could do differently, so that the outcome could be less distressing for me.  The biggest difficulty I felt was the weight of my body on my breast bone and stomach, which meant that I could not even take a shallow breath easily.  There is nothing I can do to change that, unfortunately.  I did have a bad dream and several breathless awakenings at night the following few days.  I hasten to add that not everyone finds this process as distressing as did I.  I know of one person who says she fell asleep while having an MRI.  I can only imagine she was very sleep deprived beforehand!  However, I do wonder now that I am very clear about the process, if that may not reduce future anxiety.  One can hope!

I have an entire year to think about (dread?) next year’s MRI but the surgeon tells me she can prescribe something to calm me beforehand if I choose to go ahead.  She assures me there are many women who struggle with this test, which is why she doesn’t routinely suggest it for her patients, unless there is strong reason.  But hey, the test results were clear and once again I’m doing my happy dance inside!

(A very interesting book about the history of cancer and its treatment is “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddhartha Mukherjee and is available on Amazon.  I highly recommend this to those who have had cancer or who want to know more about it.  It is very readable and helps understand the complexities of this disease and the treatments) 

“If you cannot be the poet, be the poem” – David Carradine

07 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Family, People

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Today I received a copy of a poem written 70 years ago by my Grandmother.  She was a remarkable woman for her kindness and quiet strength, her piano teaching talent and her poetry that she often included in our birthday cards.  She led a very humble life.  She survived breast cancer, raised four children and had a husband who was at worst abusive and at best completely self-centred.  She took delight in her grandchildren and she made us all feel very special.

We would sit on her kitchen table watching her cook in the summer heat, with one arm twice the size of the other, swollen from the effects of breast cancer surgery, and never complain.  When she baked a cake she used to pull a straw from her broom, wash it carefully and dry it and use it to test the cake’s doneness.  Who needed toothpicks?  She had the most devilish twinkle in her eye when she would make us milky ‘coffee’ when we were only children… she called it ‘rat poison’.  We knew she was kidding.  She loved peanut butter, possibly more than any other food in the world, except maybe Reese’s Cups.

In my young naivety, I never thought to ask if her life was at all happy, despite her very difficult marriage.  I hope it was.  She certainly gave us many happy memories.  Reading her poem today reminded me how a person can create something beautiful from a situation that is anything but.  When she signed the papers for my Dad to enter the Army Reserve so that he could leave school and leave an unhappy home, I’m sure it was a very difficult time.

I stood beside my cottage gate,

That sunny day we said good-bye;

And watched my son, in uniform

His fearless eyes, his head held high.

 

And now, although the hour is late,

And I beside my fireside sit;

I see again that boyish form,

Between the stitches as I knit.

 

Somehow, I feel it in my heart,

Tho many miles apart are we;

My son, while answering duty’s call,

Most oft times thinks of home and me.

M.C.

Mary Elizabeth Carlisle Corsi with great grandson

It also reminds me that if we can’t always find the words to be a poet, we can look inside and find the strength to be the poem.  My Grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Carlisle Corsi was both.

What’s in a Number?

04 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by in Books, Life, Uncategorized

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hand turned tea cups

I am not a superstitious person.  Nor am I a person who follows my horoscope regularly, or any other discipline, except that which ‘feels true’ to me and which is a useful ‘tool’ for understanding myself and Life.

However… some years ago I did participate in a series of workshops about colour therapy.  Within those workshops was an overview of Numerology and how numbers and their energy (vibrations) relate to colour vibrations, and therefore are useful in therapeutic situations.  As I understand it, this is a discipline that attempts to explain all things, based on numeric values which have inherent vibrations.  (Apologies to devotees, if I oversimplify this, I welcome your comments…)  If it helps, most of us learned in high school science that each colour has a different ‘wave’ of energy assigned to it, red being larger, blue being smaller etc.  Carry this idea of energy to the broader world to understand that everything, even our thoughts and prayers have ‘energy’ to them.

The way I was introduced into this concept was through assigning numbers to each of the letters of my name and birth date (the numbers are specific, not at my discretion).  Eventually, the numbers are reduced down, by adding them together, to a single digit, except in the case of the numbers 11 and 22 as they have a special meaning.  (consult a book called ‘Numerology and the Divine triangle’ by Javane/Bunker, if you want a more detailed explanation)  In my own case the numbers 7, 11 and 4 were very significant.  The number 4 was the product of the procedure for finding one’s ‘Life Lesson’ number.  As I have understood it,  a person’s life lesson is about why they are here on earth, and what they are meant to learn from experiences in life.

The number 4, among many things, is about balance and building foundations in one’s life (as in the four corners of a building).  When you have a number for your Life Lesson, you will also find that multiples of that number have significance as well.  So in my case, 2, 8, 12 and 16 will also bring to bear on the experiences contributing to my life lesson.  Are you still with me?

Last year when I turned 58, I confess to the sceptics, I was aware that this would be a number 8 ‘year’ for me, all year, and that it had a strong ‘4’ vibe to it, but I had only made note of the fact and pushed it to the back of my mind.  My birth day (17th) and month (05) adds up to 13 which is reduced to a ‘4’ and then you add the year, 2011, another four, which made it an ‘8’ year all up, but because I had turned 58, which also adds up to 4 made my Life Lesson ‘4’ vibration very strong for the year.  Three days after I turned 58, on the 20th of the month (a ‘2’), I received a phone call that my mammogram had something unusual on it and I needed to have another one.  On the 26th (an 8) I had the mammogram and ensuing needle biopsy the same day.  On the 31st (4) I received the news that I had cancer.  By this stage I was not surprised.

On the 2nd of June I learned I had ductal carcinoma.  On the 16th (16/06/2011 = 8) I had the surgery.  I was in room #4, bed #2 and was operated on in theatre #8.  The day I left the hospital, the 17th (8) Don and I had lunch at a little café around the corner from the hotel and when we sat down I noted the table was #4. (I did not consciously orchestrate any of this.  I did not choose the date on which I was operated, or the room I would occupy etc.  However, I do acknowledge it may be possible to subconsciously ‘cause’ these things to happen on these dates etc. based on vibrational energies, though I profess NO skill in this area.  Also, there are many ways to interpret numbers in numerology and it’s entirely possible someone else would interpret them differently.)

On November 20 (20/11/2011 = 4) my dear friend died of breast cancer (see ‘Remembering Ivy‘), and in February our daughter left home to begin her new life and I noted… it was the 4th. (see ‘She is gone‘)  I’m not trying to draw any conclusions, on which to base future decisions or life path, but likewise, I don’t believe in coincidences.  I do think there probably is some significance in all of this.  What it is, I’m not sure, but of one thing I am very certain.  There is no doubt in my heart that I have been on my true path the passed year.  I’m also certain that numbers bring with them an energy, just as colour has ‘waves’ of energy, and our thoughts, words and deeds are accompanied by energy.  If you doubt me, look for a book by Gary Zukav called ‘The Dancing Wu Li Masters’.  It explains the ‘new physics’ called Quantum Physics, so that the non-academic reader can (mostly) understand it.  There are many things in this world/Universe that we don’t understand, and I like to think I can expand my mind to at least include the possibilities they represent.

What did I learn from my #8/4 year?  That I am extremely blessed and loved.  What greater lesson can life hold?

(I began writing this several months ago, and have only finished it today.  Just now I looked down at the calendar on my computer desktop to see that it is indeed the 4th.  I swear I didn’t plan this.  My year of 4’s was over on the 17th of May 2012, but as you can see, there is a lingering energy, perhaps trying to help me make sense of it all… or perhaps the Universe is just revealing its wonderful sense of humour!)

May 20th

20 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Inspiration, Life

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All week I have been saying I would not get out of bed on Sunday morning.  I wouldn’t even answer the phone or the door.  On this date, the 20th of May, the last two years I have had bad news.  Two years ago our 16 year old family pet was hit and killed by a car.  One year ago on this date I received the phone call that the radiologist had found a spot on my mammogram.  It was a challenging year.  I got through the cancer surgery and radiation and started hormone treatment, did some travelling, attended a dear friend’s funeral, our daughter moved away and I visited my aging parents in the USA twice.  A big year by anyone’s standards.

But this morning, on the 20th of May I woke at my normal time and put on a pink top and enveloped myself in my billowy (also) pink cardigan to ward off the winter chill while making myself a cup of coffee. (Pink is the colour of self love, but I assure you on this occasion it was a very subconscious action)  After breakfast I went to the grocery, then for a walk, and it wasn’t until I was nearly home I realised the date!! I was happy that my inbuilt optimism had overcome my trepidation for the date and gotten me out into the world.  As I walked up our street I began thinking about the preceding year and I wondered who of my neighbours had also had challenges.  Walking passed one house after another I realised… they had their car stolen… she had breast cancer… they had a large tree fall into their pool… she lost her husband… she has fibromyalgia… both of their mothers are very ill… they are getting a divorce… she had a stroke… and those were only the events I knew about!!  Everyone of us experiences things that challenge us and many times we never know what others are facing.  It made me realise even more how important it is to be kind to each other.

Yesterday my friend sent flowers because she would not be here today to wish me well on what she knew had been a difficult day.  It brought tears to my eyes and a hug from my husband.  I said I felt a little silly but he said it was natural to give some thought to the events of recent years.

In my pink cardigan

This afternoon I sat in the winter sun, wrapped in my pale pink cardigan which I wore to the mammogram a year ago, about to sip a cup of tea… and the phone rang.  For a moment I forgot my resolve to not answer and I picked it up… it was a dear friend in Darwin calling because she had felt a strong urge to talk to me.  How can you think there aren’t guardian angels?

Too Old for Encouragement?

12 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Inspiration, Life, People

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Life Drawing 11/3/12

Today I found myself wondering about ‘encouragement’.  You hear the word ‘support’ a lot these days and that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t seem quite imbued with the emotion that the word ‘encouragement’ conveys. Perhaps it is just semantics, but whatever you call it, it’s what we give to those who are either struggling or who are working at something. We validate their efforts.  It needn’t be a verbal thing, it can be a smile or a nod, or it can mean just ‘being there’ for someone… and it needn’t even be physical presence, but the kind of enduring relationship where the other person knows you are ‘there’.

More specifically, I was thinking today about an experience I had yesterday which was immensely satisfying.  I’ve been attending Life Drawing sessions for a few weeks, twice a week. Last week was an awful session where I was sure I had some stranger’s hand attached to my body, it was so unwilling to do what I wanted!  I found myself questioning why I was pursuing the Life Drawing and I really had no rational answer, except that it just felt like something I wanted to do. (I’ve learned to pay attention to that still small voice that encourages me, even though I am not sure why!)  I’ve never been particularly interested in drawing or painting the human form but for some reason last year I had the urge to take it up again (we had to do it years ago at University and that was mostly where I left it except for a few very brief encounters).  I had gotten only a few sessions under my belt when cancer and travel interrupted me for the remainder of the year.  When I emerged from the challenges of last year, I found my first thought was to get back to Life Drawing.  Wow.  Where is that coming from?

But even after the unhappy result of last week’s session, something moved me ahead.  Out of the blue, a friend offered me some new paper and some pastels, and then I put one foot in front of the other… a little sketch, an experiment with materials, an instructional DVD, a card from the newsagency with a pastel drawing of Degas ballerinas.  I had the feeling they were all feeding something inside me, and then… Yesterday when the time came for Sunday morning Life Drawing, I was just glad to be there again, with no expectation of a particularly good result, but ‘hope springs eternal’.  in a very short time, I found myself ‘in the zone’, and the drawings, while not masterpieces, were flowing and had some life to them, and something had shifted.  My fellow artists were complimentary, and not in a general way.  They had specific comments that I recognised as ‘true’ and sincere.  It was so encouraging.  It was… life affirming.  I was in the creative flow again, and the reward was joy.

Life Drawing II 11/3/12

This morning Ali’s email said she is finding it a struggle to settle on a topic for her first essay of her Master’s Degree program, and to wade through the academic reading to find what she needs.  Indeed.  I will write to her and encourage her, because I have realised if I am not too old for encouragement to be helpful, her 23-year-old-self certainly is not!  Are we ever too old to enjoy words of encouragement?  I hope not.

‘Sneaking up on it’

06 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Inspiration

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'Shedio' two years ago.

Have you ever been at a loss as to how to tackle a writing project, or painting, or how to start to assemble that scrapbook you’ve talked about doing for years, or to sew a quilt, or grow a herb garden or clean your office… well you get the idea.  Have you ever just wanted to do something but didn’t know where to begin?

Two years ago in March my dream of having my own little studio space was realised.  Twenty one years previously, when our daughter was born I decided to put aside a superannuation policy, paid for out of my freelance work.  When I reached retirement age and the time came to finally convert a tiny shed at the end of the carport into a small studio/shed, ‘Shedio’, as we call it, we decided it was the perfect use for the funds in my ‘super’ account.  I collected samples and drew a plan, and became the contractor for the  project. But I digress…

The shedio was finished in late February, we locked the door and went off travelling as a gift to ourselves when my husband retired.  About 9 weeks later, in May, we returned, and five days after that our pet dog of 16 years, Storm, was hit and killed by a car.  It threw me into a spin.  The shedio would have to wait.

A few months later, in about August (2010), I felt I wanted to try and paint something to do with Storm.  It would help me work through my grief, and also get me into the, as yet unused, studio.  I had a short session one day and it felt very hollow.  I couldn’t work on the painting again, but had no idea why.  That was 18 months ago.  The studio patiently waited.

For all that time I asked myself ‘this was my dream, why can’t I make it happen?’  I had no answer.  I’ve learned something about ‘creative block’ over the years, and have dealt with it many times.  And somewhere in the back of my mind I felt this was sort of like that.  All the while I was in treatment for breast cancer, and all the while we travelled I had in the back of my mind that I wanted to work in my studio.  But  I felt overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start.  I use a technique that I call ‘sneaking up on it’ when I have a creative block.  And I felt that was probably what was needed in this case.  In 2011 when we returned from our second big retirement trip I was exhausted but I felt that once through the holidays I would try to get into the studio.  I would sneak up on it.

When we were in Paris I saw an amazing exhibition by an American artist, (deceased), named Diane Arbus.  The funny thing about it was we didn’t even know the exhibition was on, it had just opened.  We had intended spending that day at the Musée d’Orsay, looking up a couple of art works there, but it was closed due to industrial action!!  The queue to get into the exhibition was long, but for some reason we persevered, never having even heard of Arbus before.  Once inside, what really seeped into my being was not just her photographic images of people living on the fringes of Society in the 40’s and 50’s, but how she felt about and viewed what she did.  It resonated strongly with me.

The next thing that happened was when my friend Ivy died in Darwin and I went for the memorial service.  I spent time with my other friend, Gaye, a sort of life affirming thing to do at such a sad time.  Gaye is an artist and wise woman.  She also teaches adult painting classes.  She was telling me what she tells her students when they ask her ‘but how do I find my style?’  She said ‘You just paint’.  She meant it is in the doing that you discover.  I’m still not sure she wasn’t telling me that for my own benefit and not just as a matter of conversation, so I took it in as very welcome and personal advice!

I came home and thought, what I need to do is treat myself as I would treat a child who is having difficulty with walking… take baby steps.  I knew I wanted to paint and I had a couple of canvases I could ‘undercoat’, so they would be ready whenever I was.  I bought the paint one day.  I painted them another day.  I had an idea for a painting, so I sketched it onto the prepared canvas another day.  And then I felt overwhelmed again.  About that time I got an email from Gaye who told me she felt she had not yet ‘bonded’ with her new studio space.  Eureka!  That was my problem too.  But how to do that?  When you bond with a person you sometimes just need to be in their company, so I reasoned, I would just go and ‘be’ in the space and see what that felt like.  I would try to do that a little bit every day.  Some days I would just walk into the space and move a few things around, or just sit and look around, then walk out and lock the door again.

At Christmas I received a book I wanted to read so I decided to take it into the studio and read.  The skylight in the studio makes it a great reading space.  I did that for several days.  And then on Wednesday this week, I suddenly ‘knew’ that was the day I could paint.  I had developed affection for the space, the things in it, and I was armed with a mind full of inspiration and images.  Now I could begin.

And I just painted.

My studio now.