Let me introduce myself. My name is Zoe and I am a woman of many cancer hats. Teenage ovarian cancer survivor, single-mother breast cancer patient, co-founder and chair of Breast Friends York breast cancer support group, Trustee of Yorkshire Cancer Community and a Cancer Champion Project Officer and Patient Rep for the Humber, Coast and Vale Cancer Alliance. When I think or talk about cancer I do so not in the role of an expert but as an individual with multi-dimensional involvement in cancer. I must state at this point that my opinions are my own and do not in any way represent the opinions of any other organisation or individual.
As I am sure you are aware, last week was Mental Health Awareness Week, and I wrote this article with that in mind. Many of the national mental health charities have a particular focus, for example, Mind are asking us to #speakyourmind (not something I usually have a problem with to be honest), Rethink Mental Illness are pushing for ‘wider community support for people severely affected by mental illness’ and the Mental Health Foundation’s theme is kindness. Each of these points of focus are extremely important in my opinion but as I am only more human than superhero, I have used my own personal processes (which I will share with you later on) to narrow down to the one area that I feel I can achieve in.
KINDNESS.
The Mental Health Foundation’s website (www.mentalhealth.org.uk) have some really great research and ideas about kindness which I would recommend a nosey at but I would like to look at a particular type of kindness. Self-Kindness.
So what is kindness? I asked a few of my Breast Friends about what kindness meant to them and as expected I got a myriad of answers covering specific acts, mentioning others and selves, thinking about and acting on others’ needs, showing you care, variety in the size of the act and the one that stood out for me, remembering what is important to people.
Running Breast Friends York for the last 6 years the most important thing I have learnt is that people are different! That isn’t my opinion, that is a fact. We all have different ways of washing the dishes, hanging out the washing, raising our kids, training our dogs, relaxing, dressing, dealing with hair-loss, approaching our treatment……and so on……so of course it stands to reason that we all have different views on what constitutes kindness. For example; I think its kinder to tell people the truth (partly because I’ve discovered over the last 8 weeks of video conferencing and watching my own face, that I wear my emotions quite prominently on my face, so I can’t hide anything), however painful and be upfront but others disagree and would rather hide a painful truth, due to my intense hay fever I would not consider it kind for people to send me house flowers to cheer me up or send me chocolates as a treat, as I am diabetic. Having said this, I am always grateful for the gesture, just not necessarily the streaming, swollen eyes and sniffly nose. It also does not mean that I can’t send flowers to people who I know love them or to give chocolates as a treat to non-diabetics and I work ever so hard to avoid telling people truths (honest). So, when being kind to others, it might be wise for you to consider what the person you are being kind to would appreciate.
Self-Kindness
What is self-kindness? It’s the act of prioritising oneself, fulfilling your own needs and wants and most importantly not just during Mental Health Awareness Week, but every week, giving yourself a break. It is not selfish.
To help me explain, let me talk briefly about positivity. Adopting a positive outlook on life in general or on specific situations has been proven time and time again to help us as humans cope with diversity. In fact, I am often complimented, particularly by my family and strangers about my positivity. I have indeed developed an uncanny ability to find the silver lining in every raincloud, I have developed skills in leaving the past behind me quite quickly and storming forwards and have learnt how to accept what I cannot change, pull up my big girl pants and get on with it. These strategies are partly to help myself but partly to help those who love me and can’t bear to think of me struggling or suffering. My brilliant, committed and loving friends, however, know different. They know that I have another skill hidden amongst my positivity. A skill honed over the years to ensure that I can protect my family from worry and myself from pity, sympathy, condescension and loss of independence, all of which I struggle with.
This skill (or super power) is self-compassion. Being kind to myself. Or as I call it, Selfulness. I hit on this selfulness when diagnosed with cancer a second time at age 35. Two years previously I had uprooted my life to follow my then husband’s career. 18 months later we separated and 10 months later came my diagnosis. So as a single mum with cancer who had just regained her independence, I really had no time, desire or option to crumble. How did I do it?
Selfulness Strategy 1
As a newly independent woman I was not prepared to let go of that independence. But I knew I couldn’t do everything myself so I chose to ask for help before I needed it and lowered my expectations. I asked myself questions about what really mattered.
Did it matter if my house wasn’t cleaned throughout every week? No. but I did still want my sinks and toilets cleaned daily.
Did it matter how much time I spent with my children? Yes. So, I lowered my expectation of cooking from scratch and used more pre prepared foods to limit food prep time and free me up to hang out with my babies.
Selfulness Strategy 2
As this was not my first rodeo on the cancer circuit, I had an idea of what delights were coming my way and knowing that, this time I was not the most important person in this situation, I knew I had to deal with this trauma in the most positive way possible to ensure that my 4 children were exposed to the minimum of trauma. I had no option to get this right for them. I considered what advice I would give to them or my mum, sister or best friend if they were facing the same dark days/moments and it shocked as to how different the narrative was compared to how I talked myself through these moments.
| Narrative with myself | Narrative with others |
|---|---|
| Oh pull yourself together Zoe | It’s ok to feel bad right now, if you can’t feel sad scared and have a dark moment when you have cancer, when can you? |
| Stop being so useless Zoe | You are not useless, you are responding to a horrible situation. It’s ok to feel bad sometimes. |
| Zoe you are pathetic | You are not pathetic. You are scared. It’s ok to feel scared. Cancer is scary. |
| What kind of as mother are you? the kids need feeding. | The kids would love to make their own tea of biscuits crisps and milkshake. If ever there was a good reason for the kids to eat rubbish, surely cancer is it. |
| It’s only cancer for God’s sake – you’ve survived it before | This is a different cancer so it’s natural to be scared about it especially now you have children. Let yourself be scared for now. Once a plan is in place you may feel less scared. |
As you can see, we are so much kinder to others than we are to ourselves. Clearly I needed to allow myself to feel and allow the dark days and moments to happen. Then, when I was done, (after a day, an afternoon, a brief scream/cry into a pillow) I would move on past it and keep on keeping on. This practice is something I have kept up and still use today. Not only does selfulness allow me to keep a healthy balance between my positive and negative emotions but it has demonstrated to my children a good model of emotional management. In essence, I give myself permission to not be ok.
Social media surround us with positive stories, positive images, positive statements and the illusion that everyone out there is living a positive life. I would be prepared to put money on the fact that nobody, yes I mean, nobody feels positive all the time. I believe everyone has dark days or moments. Allowing yourself to feel those feelings for a short time is healthy, it gives you some practice and prepares you for the future and let’s face it, knowing that 1 in 2 people will get cancer at some point in their life means that everyone will experience some dark days/moments. For me, giving myself permission to retreat under the duvet for a day meant that my darkness only surrounded me for one day, as I know I’d have spent another day giving myself a hard time about losing a day in the darkness. I spent as little time as possible under my duvet and managed to ‘keep on keeping on’ the rest of the time.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating hiding your feelings and putting on a brave face to hide your feelings from others. These are simply the strategies of selfulness that I successfully used to get through my cancer treatments and my mild low mood. They may work for some people and not for others and that’s ok. I am not advocating them as THE go to strategies, but if one person reads this (and can make sense of my ramblings) and is helped by them, then I have achieved my aim.
So, whatever your situation, however light or dark your days, be kind to others, and especially yourself.
Go forth and be selful.
Zoe