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Introduction: Is This Book for You
This book is about finding comfort, hope, and healing no matter what you face in the course of cancer. And whether you are a cancer patient yourself or a partner, relative, or friend of someone living with cancer, this book has been written with you in mind.
The goal of the book is to help you calm your thoughts, warm your heart, and find comfort on both good days and bad days: at times when things are going well and at times when the outlook feels bleak. There are two important ways the book attempts to achieve this. First, it will teach you techniques and strategies to manage your worries and fears and warm and open your heart. Second and equally important, the book tells stories of people like yourself: cancer patients and their loved ones documenting what it was like for them to go through their ups and downs and how they dealt with the challenges and opportunities along the way.
To write this book, I’m drawing on my experience as a psychologist with a special interest in cancer care in both clinical and research settings. As a clinician, I’ve had the privilege of working closely with cancer patients teaching coping skills, leading support groups and practising as an individual therapist. I have heard many stories and observed a wide range of responses to the challenges cancer brings to patients and their families. As a researcher, I’ve been part of a team led by Dr. Alastair Cunningham at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto studying the impact of psychological self-help work on patients attending our Healing Journey program. The program, designed to help people cope more effectively with illness, has an extensive research archive consisting of patients’ first-hand accounts of their experiences. The majority of quotes in this book are drawn from this rich archive.
Often our research team would sit around the conference table and try to distill our experience into one sentence. What is healing? If we could put everything we had observed and learned into one sentence, what would that sentence be? We tossed about ideas, but the complexity of the subject and the diversity of experience didn’t seem to lend itself to one definitive statement.
Then, a few years ago, I attended a series of teachings given by the Dalai Lama in Toronto. On the last day of the conference, the Dalai Lama responded to questions posed by participants. One of the questions was, “How can I cure myself of my disease?” I listened very carefully to the answer.
The Dalai Lama replied, “The single most important thing you can do for healing .... “ He paused momentarily. He wanted to clarify that by healing, he meant not only physical healing of the body, but also emotional and spiritual healing as well. He repeated, “The single most important thing you can do for healing is to cultivate a warm heart.”
“That’s it!” I thought. One sentence that holds everything I have learned. Had I not worked closely for many years with cancer patients as a researcher and a clinician, I probably would have dismissed this as a warm, fuzzy notion. But experience has taught me to recognize the wisdom of these words. It is this wisdom that I hope to pass on to you through the stories of the people I have worked with and the techniques and strategies they have employed to calm their minds and warm their hearts.
If I succeed in my goals for this book, you will find sustenance here both from the real words and stories of people like yourself and from learning new and effective techniques to help you live more peacefully. Chapters one to three focus on the troubled mind and how to calm it; chapters four to six on the troubled heart and how to warm it; chapter seven is for caregivers—the partners, family members, and friends who support cancer patients; and chapter eight addresses the special challenges of living with advanced cancer.
Wherever you are on your cancer journey, there is always hope. If you are newly diagnosed, or have lived with cancer for many years; if you are the partner or friend of someone living with cancer; if your cancer is contained or if your cancer has spread; if your spirits are buoyant or if you’re feeling tired, bleak, and alone, there is hope. There is a place of opening from whatever point you are.
My wish is that this book becomes like a trusted companion—a good friend you can turn to for whatever it is you need in the moment: whether it be inspiration, guidance, comfort, or a caring witness on those days when nothing seems to help or work. Even if I fail in this mission, I take comfort in my belief that the failure is mine and not a failure of the central truth this book attempts to convey: There is always hope; you are not alone; there are ways you can help yourself. And the surest way to find hope, comfort, and healing is to cultivate a calm mind and a warm heart.