The thing about memoir...
Sharing a diagnosis, holding the rest
I’m writing this in my living room before I leave for a Minneapolis half-day of writing with my friend Katherine Quie. She and I have been doing these forever, it feels like, meeting up to parallel write for a morning, when really it’s only been nine years and some change. When I decided in early November 2015 to quit my career in January 2016, Katherine proposed these weekly coffeehouse meetings to finish our books.
We met in 2012 in a creative nonfiction apprenticeship at the Loft Literary Center working with Cheri Register of blessed memory as our mentor. Katherine was writing about ADHD, which led me to self diagnose as neurodivergent. Whereas my German teaching career was imploding and my elders dying as I chronicled the destruction.
At the time I didn’t know that my work would yield book twins, published four and a half years apart. I only knew that I had to capture this barrage of things I was living.
I call myself a real-life writer because I process life through writing before I know what the writing wants to become. I come by this tendency honestly. As a young bride and then mom, when I sent out my fabled holiday letters that narrated select adventures, an inordinate number of folks on our list cheered me on. THAT’s how I started writing.
I announced my resignation in that holiday letter once I had already gone.
Katherine knew I was resigning long before I told students or anyone else at school, beyond a few trusted people. The details were none of their business. Yet. Not until I was clear on my business. When I finally did tell them I was leaving, I could say I was going to finish my book. It was true. It was the part I could share at that moment. Katherine had been reading my writing, though. And she knew the backstory.
Our evolving ritual of parallel writing, which she proposed to meet my greatest need—connection—became one of the great blessings from my midlife revival. These days, we meet less frequently and incorporate walks. Our interests have shifted. Katherine is focused on yoga and I’m focused on narrative craft, as parallel paths to healing.
I have never felt more motivated to write. OK. So that’s the preamble.
Last week I wrote to you about my outpatient surgery, and how they removed a precancerous growth. And I was certain, even as it was happening, that it was the penultimate chapter of a book I’ve wanted to draft, that serendipitous surgical day.
Now I’m not so sure where it goes. That precancerous growth?
Contained in the center, unbeknownst to me and my doctor, were 2 millimeters of actual cancer. Yet actually, I was pretty sure, intellectually, they would find some.
Family history, see? So when it did show up in the pathology report, I was like, Look! They got it. All done. And now I will be fine. I have lived my life in this way for a very long time. Find the problem, find the silver lining, jump to the happy ending.
But / and / also…
I have this capacity to be courageous, resolute, resilient, and wise for others in a moment of challenge. Also. I am so sensitive, the princess with that proverbial pea, who resisted feeling uncomfortable truths. That she nonetheless did feel. Nowadays, for example today, because I am a student of creative nonfiction, I let myself have that willing suspension of misbelief, and then I let myself feel the reality of energetic truth. I get to have both kinds of moments. And the nuance of awareness yet to break.
I recognize that embodied moment when I receive new information. And I process.
I accept that the thing exists. In fact, it was already there. Energetically, I must have already known it. My mental awareness is simply, nowadays, catching up.
Writing helps me make sense of this fact: I’m not the same person as I was before. Not even a moment ago. I’m the person who knows what I know at this juncture.
I have the very best doctor, who explains things so clearly that I can’t look away and pretend that my situation is anything other than what is so. And that makes it easier for me to accept that, yes, this is happening. It’s evolving. And yes, I will survive.
Until I don’t, of course. Because I am human.
When I got the call in which my doctor detailed what happens next to safeguard me, he reminded me that even if he removed it all, which we assume he did, I am a person who has had a Stage One Colon Cancer Diagnosis. That’s a new situation for me.
Hearing that, I decided to let myself not be OK.
(DEAR READER: GO GET YOUR COLONOSCOPY. SERIOUSLY.)
That day I went on detours that wanted to happen. I meandered into synchronicities. Even as I was in my not-OK-ness. I went to meet my grown kiddo at a Minneapolis coffeehouse to parallel write. I’m telling you, this city is where I do all my most profound writing, and I wrote a very powerful, very raw chapter on the news.
But you don’t get to read it. Yet. That’s for my book. Later.
Here’s a principle I stand by, that makes me a better mentor to fellow writers:
When we write creative nonfiction, it’s only fair to let ourselves have those tender moments. For ourselves first and foremost. We don’t shill ourselves out. This is not trauma bonding we’re doing. So I won’t share that writing yet, beyond trusted readers of my choosing in my inner circle. And in fact I have directed those closest to me that I will share some details—not all—with them, but I’m not deputizing them to talk for me.
This is what I’m saying: They don’t have permission to preview my details with their interpretations, or they won’t get additional details. It’s private without my consent.
I get to share my stories—this particular story in particular—in my own way.
And I will. When I am good and ready. Sooner than later, I suspect.
That’s part of the responsibility I take on as a real-life writer.
It’s also what I’m modeling for my clients.
But: I assure you. I am OK.
Meanwhile, I have work to do. Context to learn.
For the reader, as with the writer, patience rules the day.