How did this poem find me today at exactly the moment I needed it and how have I never seen it before? It said everything in my heart before I had articulated it. I gave me comfort.
To die is perhaps no stranger than being born or falling asleep each night to journey who knows where and we don’t fear it. We simply enter it and accept it on waking each day. A little piece of magic we take for granted. Living is the hard bit. We are amazingly tough creatures and we are capable of surviving such a lot of difficulty.
Today I had another one of those ‘I’m afraid it’s bad news’ days at the hospital. Having dug deep last Tuesday in the Alsace with delayed results that were deferred to today I was weirdly looking forward to the big reveal. Or at least, getting on with the next stage of treatment and taking some action.
But still no results so I still don’t know if it’s breast or lung cancer and I still can’t start treatment. Well tick fucking tock guys. Are they sitting up there smoking weed or what? The clinical team at Charing Cross have complained on my behalf and encouraged me to complain through formal channels. I do love to write a complaint letter. There was some bad news at least (!) ; my biopsy confirmed the cancer is in my lymph nodes but I thought that was the case anyway so it wasn’t really news. The good news is that I’m still asymptomatic. I keep wondering what other bad news they could give me when I hear that ‘I’m afraid….’ sentence start.
‘I’m afraid you’re already dead and we forgot to tell you?’
‘I’m afraid you’re a unicorn and we have no idea what this is’. The husband says that is still a possible outcome.
Maybe the young doctor with the cow eyes means ‘I’m afraid you’re going to fly off the handle and try and biff me like you did during the biopsy when you hallucinated under sedation and thought you were the incredible hulk.’
Yes that’s probably it. He is… very young. But youth was never a barrier to brilliance.
It’s fucking annoying but over the years I have developed a series of little steel boxes in my head to put things in that stress me out. I keep them patiently caged in a sort of ‘pending having an emotion’ place. Shh sit there quietly. In these soundproof metal boxes I have generously engineered some breathing holes so that the pacing panthers, tigers, bears, my father in law…can breathe but cannot be heard.
In all this frustration I noticed that yesterday’s encounters on our magical island (if you’re just joining me, that’s Johnson’s Island in Brentford by the lock where I have my art studio and community) gave me the clarity and the strength to get through today with some degree of grace. For the first time in a month since my diagnosis I had felt fully awake and back in the world. I was marching down the street like I was off to battle. Going a little gentler would be better but some momentum was better than nothing.
Specifically, I found my way back to myself again yesterday through others. We cannot do any of this life thing alone although I often think I can and pretend I need no one. It’s a life habit borne out of dealing with my mother’s cancer from the age of 17. A ‘just got to get on with it’ sort of attitude.
I got up without wanting to hide under the covers. Managed to be downstairs for a bit and make a magic porridge pot before the kids went to school. The fear had gone. I expect it will be back but for now it has dissipated.
Did a bit of gentle PhD prep for my final viva exam next Wednesday… and as I prepared I realised I had left out the table of contents and a paragraph at the end of chapter 1 which ate into chapter 2. Making no sense at all. In my defence I think I may not quite have been thinking clearly when I submitted it in a hurry a few days before my results in January. I will simply have to enter on an apology.
And then I headed to Johnsons Island to paint a bit and was so happy to see my friend Suzanne, one of Brentford’s most unique and talented beings. Suzanne, is the island’s psychic counsellor. She has a beautiful little studio on the island which opens on to the river. Full of soft pinks and crystals, art, incense, cushions and light. She invited me for a reading. Now before you judge me dear reader, dear rationalists, this is the most life affirming process. I consider myself a sceptic but Suzanne has a very special gift, not just tell you about the shape of things to come but to tell you about yourself. It’s like someone holding a mirror up to your subconscious. She calls it psychic counselling as it’s more about where you are now and where you’re going rather than exactly what’s going to happen. It’s an art form in itself. Flashes and visions, words and phrases and numbers full of characters from your past present and future and loaded with metaphorical meaning.
Now I’m not going to tell you what was in my reading today. That’s private. I’m just going to tell you a little about the process and how it made me feel. Suzy can tell you about herself, or rather yourself, if you want to book in with her. It’s worth it. Her instagram is Thegift202suzy or ask me.
I’m not sure if it was brave or foolish to let in the prospect of news of the future today but Suzanne is an amazing woman who has lived through ‘most things’ as she puts it and she has a wonderful way of working. Before a session she channels you for a day or half day. For that day she is you and she opens herself up to everything that comes her way, everything she sees and hears, everyone she meets, any voices that come in and then she does something like automatic writing and interprets the signs.. Today she had channelled all the ancestors, gurus and angels coming in to help me and even if I do not fully believe it all I will seriously take all the help I can get! I know I have Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, atheist and pantheist friends praying and chanting for me. Believe me, I appreciate and value it all.
My late mother popped in to Suzy ahead of my session and she told her stuff to tell me too. I miss my mum hugely since she passed in 2017 although I am kind of glad she didn’t have to see me go through cancer twice. Suzy reports that my mum has been keeping her busy and making her prep the room as I like it. No incense as it makes me cough. Door open as I’d always opt for fresh air over warmth. An orange blanket. Suzy really does channel my mum’s wicked sense of humour and comments on all the things she would have pull led me up on. Not drinking. Staying calm. Keeping positive. No self pity. Very Practical. A phrase that stayed with me today.
‘I will not own this pain and it will not own me.’
I’m not sure she would have said that but she would have liked it. And that’s how she would have approached her own illness.
And during a morning of biblical rain, as we watch the canal fill up and the run off from the roof drip heavily against the windowpanes, Suzy says ‘your mum said the sun is going to shine and we’ll open the door on to the river to let it in and the swans will come’. I say I do not believe her. Five minutes in and the sun streams in. And as we open the 100 year old wooden door to the river which has seen fires and floods, I feel the sun on my face is just for me. Soon enough this is followed by the arrival of two greedy swans who come to greet us. I was so delighted that I gave them some of my Gails’ quiche. Probably cost me £2 in overpriced crust (which is no doubt not great swan food).
I realised part way through that Suzanne was doing something extremely brave and challenging as she looked into my uncertain future. To say some of the things she said, to step into that space was hard but she gave me hope and prepared me for battle. I feel the next six months will be physically very tough. But the session with her coalesced my barely surfaced thoughts and reflected my feelings back at me. Next she does a three month tarot which is great fun but perhaps the narrative only makes sense retrospectively which a doubter would have fun with I’m sure. Either way I am pleased to see the Empress and hear that this time round I will meet a lot of women and work with them, painting through our trauma and learning from each other.
Unusually for a Monday lunchtime most of the artists are in to meet a lady from a posh hotel in Chiswick that has offered us a group exhibition. It’s in 2026 though so I tell her my situation and say I might need a solo show sooner. This may have appeared over confident but I find myself being brutally pragmatic. It’s hard to commit to planning anything beyond next month or so right now (even though I know they will soon discover my unicorn gene and tell me they have no idea what it is and I am in fact made of rainbows).
I really struggle to curb my endless desire to plot and plan the future right now. It isn’t the right moment for big decisions. Just spontaneous and enjoyable activity.
Having said that I would like to have a solo show for my painting, or perhaps with a couple of other women, otherwise someone else will do it for me when I’m dead and get all my old tat out and put it on display. I am busy disposing of the evidence of extremely poor and pretentious attempts at art preemptively. Straight to the dump! Morbid isn’t it? Or maybe just a good excuse to tidy up. Also excellent motivation to finally put on a show.
I’d also like to put on a jazz concert together with friends and a fundraiser for Macmillan or cancer research but I need to put a band together. I worry I’ll organise it and be too sick to do it. Still worth doing.
It meant a lot to hug with all the artists who were there yesterday. They have become like second family even though we don’t all get together that often. We range from 20s to 80s and there is no community like it. When someone says ‘what do you do?’ on the island are never asking about your job. They are asking what you like to make. And there’s no judgment. You come there to make and to be and your thing is your thing and you’re free to do it in any way you like. It’s also very supportive and has given me a lot of confidence to keep trying. When I first started painting during lockdown four years ago I was hiding my work. One of the more experienced artists came in and said ‘if you love it, and you made it with a feeling, people will feel that too’. And she was spot on. It always amazes me when we have open studios how accurate people are in reflecting back the feeling I had when I painted a thing. We are creatures made of common feeling and energy. Beings of light connected to each other in so many ways we do not understand.
Leila, who sells beautiful things through her Vegan balms company, gave me lavender face oil and a cream balm. Suzanne gifted me a crystal which I lost in my bra till bedtime even though it is like a four inch stalactite. These felt like very special gifts.
The simplicity of the day and the love of the people in it made me feel immense gratitude. It’s only our communities that make us who we are, that lift us, that see us. The difference that one person can make is amplified by a group and we have infinite capacity to make a difference to another individual’s life in a short time. Just by seeing them. By allowing each other to feel seen. Never forget. Even if you hate your job, argue with your neighbours, fight with your family…. the friction and the energy of our ever developing narratives are the reason we keep going. So thank you islanders and dear readers for the protective cloak of good wishes you are throwing around me every day. I feel it.
And hurry up histologypeeps. I need a fucking diagnosis so I can have more days like this.
Breathe 
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