On Cancer and Inner Work
By Connie Zweig, Ph.D.
We are told to think positively about health, and the idealist in us wants to comply. Yet, in late life, we are surrounded by reminders of illness in both ourselves and others. How do we hold a positive vision and hold the possibility of death? A positive attitude simultaneous with mortality awareness?
Nature has not planned unending well-being for us, as expressed in contemporary notions of health. Rather, health and illness, birth and death are inextricably linked in the natural, organic cycle of life.
One of our constant reminders is the epidemic of cancer. No one remains untouched. Each year, 12.7 million people are diagnosed, and 7.6 million die.
Like aging, cancer is not experienced collectively, that is, all cancer patients don’t share the same suffering, don’t have access to the same resources, and don’t have the same outcome. Cancer is experienced individually and idiosyncratically. Cancer patients always feel alone.
But the metaphor used for cancer is collective: Like the war on drugs, we are fighting a war on cancer against an enemy invader. Its imagery of power and aggression may fit for some physicians and their patients. But it’s paternalistic and violent, and it may disempower others. It implies a win/lose outcome, with the patient as “winner” who keeps fighting at all cost, or “loser” because she didn’t fight hard enough.
In my language, this metaphor pushes other qualities of the cancer experience into the patient’s shadow: It ignores the emotional, social, existential, and spiritual dimensions of a person’s life, while turning the body into a battlefield. So, for some patients, the language of cancer can add to the suffering because they come to believe they must be “courageous,” which means denying their feelings of fear, vulnerability, anxiety, grief, and helplessness. It means denying their need for support and dependency. It means denying their loss of meaning from sources that disappear with illness. This creates a “cancer persona,” a false self whose intent is to preserve the ego’s ideal presentation as a “fighter,” perhaps to prevent loved ones from worrying, rather than a deepening of authenticity, which is a potential gift of the ordeal.
The other common metaphor for cancer is a journey, which implies a movement from one place to another and joins people to others on the same path. Of course, it’s a reluctant journey. Even the hero doesn’t want to face an adversary and undergo an ordeal. But it may be easier for people who see themselves on a journey to include a spiritual practice, a gentle regime of self-care, and loving support to create a healing environment.
In her essay “Cancer is the Answer” (The Sun, January, 1985), Deena Metzger pointed out that cancer is growth out of control. Its devouring nature seeks to spread and dominate everything it touches, giving nothing in return. She drew parallels between cancer’s imperialistic behavior and humanity’s predominant political modes: As the military war machine invades and occupies territories, slaughtering inhabitants and devouring resources until people are starved and forced to become refugees, cancer cells too invade and occupy territory, creating a toxic, uninhabitable environment.
During her cancer journey, Metzger examined her internal defense department: “What weapons do I create against what enemy? What voices do I silence? Which inner selves have I imprisoned because they objected to the system that makes me ill?” In my language, she was doing shadow-work on behalf of herself and the world.
Cancer might be an answer in the sense that it breaks us down until we question our totalitarian habits of mind and our ego’s efforts to control ourselves, others, and the natural world – all to the point of near death. Only a death sentence — to an individual or to a planet – may force us to change course, to wake up to the greed, self-righteousness, aggression, and disconnection that hides in our behaviors.
Since she had cancer, Metzger turned her wound into a sacred wound by accompanying many people on their healing journeys. Almost without exception, she found that they identified these moments of wrestling with illness and dying as the most profound and precious moments of their lives, when they let go of the ego’s tyranny and turned toward what they valued above all else.
I have heard identical stories. Karen told me that cancer cured her specialness. If she could get cancer, then she was just like everyone else, despite her meditation practice and organic diet. It leveled her ego so that she felt more deeply connected to every human being than she ever had.
Stephanie lost her driver’s license due to accidents with chemo brain. Her loss of independence triggered yet another identity crisis. As she experimented with the experience of dependency on friends, her sense of identity widened and gradually led to a sense of being loved that she had never experienced, even in childhood.
Another told me that it freed her of vanity. When she lost her gorgeous blond hair, she was forced to find a deeper source of self-esteem and attractiveness.
Andy reported that only cancer could have brought him to his knees. His lifelong effort to fix everything, to make himself and his loved ones perfect, could be released at last. “I can’t fix it,” he threw his arms in the air. “I’m powerless in the face of something larger. And I have to stop now, turn in a different direction, live in a different way.”
Finally, a neighbor diagnosed with cancer rejected conventional treatment, telling me that she wanted to “let her body heal itself.” She threw herself into research and learned about GMO’s and carcinogens in her products. She detoxed her environment and found healers as mentors. In a temporary remission, she became a “wounded healer,” teaching others what she had learned. As she transmitted her wisdom, turning her wound into a sacred wound, she found herself becoming an Elder.
I do not mean to romanticize cancer or glibly imply that every loss with illness has a gain. But none of these people went “back to normal.” They moved through the stages of the ordeal, continuing to do their emotional and spiritual work and allowing themselves to be transformed by cancer, and eventually crossed a threshold into another life.
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book The Reinvention of Age, which will explore how to use shadow-work during illness. http://conniezweig.com
