Writing With, Through and About Cancer

If you are in the Albany, New York or Greater Capital Region area--please join me for a Writing Workshop at The ACS Hope Club.

The Hope Club in Latham, New York is a service center for cancer patients, survivors, caregivers, family members and friends. It's a place to get info and coaching, find support groups, take classes or just hang out with folks who deeply understand your cancer journey.

I'll be presenting a Writing Workshop called:

Writing With, Through and About Cancer
Monday April 3rd
6 to 7:30 pm
Dinner is included.
class and dinner are free…but you must register.

The class is open to everyone--writers, non-writers, new writers and (I secretly want to writer)ers. :)



We'll make it easy to write, and we'll laugh, play and put words on paper for your cancer story--as patient, survivor, caregiver, family member or friend.

To Register please call 518-220-6060

I hope you can join us at The American Cancer Society Hope Club.





Diane Cameron--

Reading & Writing Cancer

You would expect Susan Gubar to be a good writer. She is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of English at Indiana University. So yes, an English teacher should know how to compose a compelling lead, and how to structure sentences, and support and illustrate an argument.

But Gubar’s gift to us in CancerLand is that she brings her writer’s gift to some of the most unspeakable parts of cancer. 

Gubar was the author of seventeen academic books, but her first book about cancer was: Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer.

In that book she made us care enough about her—and other women--to stay page after page through descriptions of surgery, depression, medical negotiation and treatment mishaps. We cared about her and we learned exactly what treatment for ovarian cancer looks like.

We also got to read her New York Times “Living With Cancer” column—where she brought practical info, education and the unanswerable questions too. Those columns helped patients, caregivers and medical specialists. Always of service, and always good writing.

And now, a lasting and last gift, in her last book: Reading & Writing Cancer-she teaches us to fish (and write) by showing how literature about illness and cancer can give us perspective and language, and also, crucially, she invites both the experienced writer and the “Oh, never me” writer to begin writing about our own cancer experiences as a way to heal.

The healing may be of the physical cancer, or of the acceptance of a terrible diagnosis, or of the grief, or over the existential reality of a body’s limitations. 

This story book and writing manual and teachers tool is a final gift, and our challenge to take up the pen that Gubar has laid down, as she encourages us to keep reading and writing about cancer.

Why Write About Cancer?

I have been asked many times why I write about cancer, and I have told the story of this blog—about how frustrated I was when no one would talk to me or my husband about sex while facing cancer.

And I write a lot: I write the blog, “Women in Recovery”, and the books: “Looking for Signs” (A collection of essays) and “Out of the Woods” (about women in Twelve-step recovery), and

recently, “Never Leave Your Dead” (about military trauma and family trauma and redemption).
And I write newspaper columns for the Albany Times Union and many other papers...

But why write at all? Maybe this quote from James Baldwin says just enough about why:

“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world…The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter it, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”   (James Baldwin)

Writing Workshop for The New Year at Saint Agnes Cemetary--Menands, New York

Have you promised yourself that this is the year you will begin your blog, memoir, novel or family history? But you are nervous about beginning? You are not alone and there is an easy way to get started.

I will be offering an afternoon writing workshop for new writers and new writing projects on:
 Sunday February 15th  1 to 3pm at:  The Living Room Art Gallery located at The Welcome Center in St Agnes Cemetery in Menands, New York.

Yes, an art gallery in a cemetery. Isn't that perfect? And perfectly fitting for Love in the Time of Cancer. It is ideal--celebrating life and creativity in a place of death, memory and mourning. I'm thrilled to teach at The Living Room gallery because it is a beautiful site and could there be a better memento mori--a touchstone--to stimulate us to put pen to paper?

It's a Sunday afternoon--Sunday February 15th--1pm to 3pm. Materials are provided and registration is required.

You can register by calling Kelly Ann Grimaldi, Historian, at 518-463-0134 extension 110.


I promise you that you will write easily and quickly. We'll talk and laugh and you will leave with techniques and strategies to keep writing at home.

I hope you will join us--your story deserves to be told.

Here is a link to the class brochure: http://capitaldistrictcemeteries.org/library/Program_Booklet_Final_2015.pdf

Writing Aids Cancer Recovery

In my cancer and caregiver classes we do a lot of writing. It's not news that writing is a comfort and an anchor but now we have additional evidence that writing about one's cancer experience can effectively reduce pain, fear and trauma.

An article in the journal Health Psychology reports that ASian American woman dealing with breast cancer experienced better recoveries when they were introduced to the practice of "emotional writing."
Qian Lu, director of the Culture and Health Research Center says that the research was focused on specifically writing about the traumatic aspects of the cancer experience.

“Cancer patients, like war veterans in Iraq, can experience post-traumatic stress symptoms. Many times when cancer patients get diagnosed, they face lots of emotional trauma. There’s a sense of loss, depression, anxiety about going into treatment and how they are going to face the future,” said Lu.

While this particular study focused on breast cancer I can easily imagine related benefits for using emotional writing with all cancer patients--and of course with cancer caregivers as well. The hard part, of course, is allowing yourself time--and permission--to write daily but knowing that it is having a health benefit may allow patient and caregiver that permission for toward the healing benfits of writing.

Here is a link to the full article. Take a look and share with others in your CancerLand.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2014/08/04/breast-cancer-survivors-benefit-from-expressive-writing/73195.html

PS. I am always available to lead a class on Writing for Caregivers or Caregiving 101 for your group or organization.

Vulnerability Backlash

Oh the morning after! I’m having a vulnerability attack after reading in public last night. The Arts Center of the Capital Region invited me to read from the new book and from my collection of essays and I talked about this blog and John’s cancer and our relationship, and about “The Amy Winehouse House”.

The best validation was watching the faces of people in the audience that I know are part of Cancer Land—they got it. They know the condescension that accrues around cancer and the pastel politics of treatment speech. But I also worry that I shocked some by calling Lance Armstrong “One Ball”. But really. And now reading today’s New York Times, if “One Ball” turns out to be “I doped my own balls”….what will we do with all those yellow bracelets?

But my overall feeling today is run and hide. I went out in public and read out loud. And now, well, just breathe into it, and wear pink, I guess.

Memoir of a Debulked Woman

A new book by feminist scholar Susan Gubar describes the experience of treatment for ovarian cancer. The New York Times review of her book says that ovarian cancer has been called "Breast cancer's poor neglected cousin." More shockingly is also says that, "Ovarian cancer lacks breast cancer's public recognition for a terrible reason: so few women live to write about it".

The title of Gubar's book is provocative. We learn that the standard treatment for advanced ovarian cancer is called "debulking"--surgery in which as much tissue and as many organs as possible are removed in hopes of removing as much cancer as possible.

As awful as that description may be, and the reality of the surgery must be, this is a moving and powerful book written by an amazing scholar and writer. She leaves little out, as the surgeons left little in, and she gives us a moving picture of the inner life and decision making process of a woman living with, and dying of, cancer.

Here's the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/books/review/memoir-of-a-debulked-woman-by-susan-gubar.html?smid=pl-share