CANCER IS A BITCH
*or, I'd Rather Be Having a Midlife Crisis

Da Capo Lifelong Books
Hardcover, 261 pages
$22.00
ISBN: 978-0-7382-1162-6 Buy the Book
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I am the Accidental Memoirist. I never planned to write a breast cancer memoir, never planned to get the cancer that would inspire it.

But in January 2006, soon after completing my second novel about a woman who finds a lump in her breast and thinks she might have breast cancer and wonders if she’s lived a meaningful life, and sent it off to my then-agent, I went in for my annual mammogram and was told it was “suspicious.” A week later I was having surgery and while I was waiting for my own results, I received an e-mail from my agent (who didn’t know about my health scare) that said something like, I don’t really like the breast cancer novel. I’m not sure I care whether that woman has breast cancer or not. Ouch!

But the writing disappointment was a minor blip compared to how the diagnosis rocked my world and shattered my sense of self. I was about the healthiest person I knew. I never got sick. No aches or pains. I ran. I practiced yoga. I ate mostly vegetarian, whole grain and organic. I was the person others consulted for health and anti-aging tips.

I felt like a fake, a fraud. Even after I was told I had the “good” cancer, it was non-invasive and they got it all out, I knew, because I was relatively young that I was at high risk for recurrence. I felt panicked and paralyzed. I couldn’t write, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything other than Google health sites and obsess about recurrence rates and make homemade batches of organic facial creams. I thought about starting an organic facial cream company for vain hypochondriacs like me. I asked my husband to bring home an electro magnetic field measurer (I’m still waiting for that… do those even exist?). I suggested we move to Utah and live off the land (even though I don’t know the first thing about gardening or farming).

Finally after weeks and weeks of this, my husband pressed a journal into my hands and said, “You have to write this down.” I shook my head. I was not a journal keeper, never had been and I did not want to write any of this down. But one day I picked up the journal and a pen and without even thinking, I started scribbling and my deepest rawest craziest most intimate thoughts on the page.

The first lines were: “I’m sitting topless in the oncologist’s office on Valentine’s Day. Cancer is a Bitch.” Once I started writing, the words just flooded out. I shook and wept and fell asleep and woke up and wrote some more. The ironic thing is, as I poured these crazy thoughts out, I thought I would never EVER show those words to anyone. I thought this was a way I didn’t have to burden my friends and family with my crazy thoughts. (And now you can go buy them on Amazon right now!) Eventually, I wrote those thoughts into an essay I called CANCER IS A BITCH and sent it to some trusted writer friends who said it was powerful and I should do something with it. But what was it? What would I do with it?

Soon after that, I read that Literary Mama was looking for columnists and on a whim I pitched the idea of a breast cancer mama column and they said yes and I started writing “Bare-breasted Mama.” To be honest, it was painful to write and I felt naked, like I was exposing myself both physically and emotionally. But the responses from readers were so soulful and many hadn’t even had cancer but they either knew someone who had or were just responded to the midlife issues about motherhood and marriage and career that I wrote about. They thanked me for making them laugh (because believe it or not the book is funny!) and cry and think. Their words gave me the courage to keep writing and opening up and eventually leave my then agent and pitch the idea of a breast cancer memoir to a new agent.

Next thing I knew I had a new agent, a new book, a new lease on life.

So not only did I not realize I was a writing a memoir but I also didn’t realize I was writing my way out of my crazy funk.

I know that the word cancer scares people and they wonder why they should read about it. But I have learned from my readers that the funk I describe in my book and ultimately emerged from… could be a divorce, losing a job, a bad injury, anything that knocks you down and makes you wonder how and when you will get back up.

And I did…. eventually. Got back up stronger and more determined than ever. As a result, since my diagnosis two years and ten months ago, I have written a book, finally launched my career and my two daughters to college, run two half marathons, gone to yoga boot camp and Italy and trained two yellow lab puppies. But more significantly, I discovered that the more I opened up, the more the world opened up to me.

So why not? I say most days now. Why not live more urgently, more openly, more curiously, more honestly, more lovingly? Why not be the person I always meant to be?

My hope is that by vicariously experiencing my downs and ups and downs and ups again that you will be inspired to be your own most amazing self. Right now.