In times of pain and death, is gratitude really possible?
Dealing with potential terminal cancer sometimes means letting the rage come through
By Douglas Todd, Vancouver SunOctober 10, 2009 3:05 AM
Jeanne Russell (right), who has been struggling with extreme forms of cancer for a number of years, with Janie Brown, executive director of Callanish Society, which offers counselling for cancer patients.
Photograph by: Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Sun
'Just be grateful for what you have." That is the advice people often offer to those who are struggling, to give them encouragement.
You hear the admonition from all kinds -- from those who emphasize psychological self-help, from those who are into New Age spirituality and those who are loyal to institutional religion.
It is a very annoying phrase.
Being advised to be grateful is almost as bad a bromide as being told, "It's all good," or "You'll be rewarded in heaven."
When people are suffering, the last thing many want is to be advised to look on the bright side.
So when Thanksgiving rolls around each year, as it does on Monday, and you are suffering -- possibly for a good reason -- it can be tough.
Maybe you've just lost your job in the recession. Or your parents are constantly fighting. Maybe civil war is ravaging your country of origin.
Or you've been diagnosed with cancer.
What do you do when you hate your distressed situation?
Is it possible to be thankful when it feels as if life has ripped you off?
In her 14 years as director of Vancouver's Callanish Society, Janie Brown has met a lot of people who are upset, frightened and angry about cancer invading their bodies.
Two out of three of the people who show up at the Callanish Society centre in Vancouver are in the midst of recurring cancer, which is generally considered terminal.
The Callanish Society takes them as they come.
"I don't have a belief everyone who comes here should be grateful. It's certainly not a requirement," Brown says.
"There are some people who go to their death beds angry. Who am I to say they're wrong? We don't try to fix people."
Brown is talking in her second-floor therapist's office in the donated Kitsilano house that has been converted into the Callanish Society's elegant meeting place.
When Brown is not leading one of the retreats she and others have held near Whistler or on Bowen Island, the non-profit Callanish Society offers private counselling, as well as workshops in which clients can explore their feelings about their illness through art, poetry, meditation or music.
Rather than being told to be grateful, people have "to be allowed to rage" against their misfortune, says Brown, 50.
"I'm bothered by the New Age view that people should 'just be thankful' that they're alive, or that they haven't got another type of cancer.
"Sometimes people are told to 'be in the moment,' but when you're pissed off about being diagnosed with cancer, you have to be that."
Is it possible, really, to feel thankful when you are in a truly horrendous situation?
'Mother of all surgeries'
"I have about a dozen cancerous lumps on my lungs right now."
Jeanne Russell, 50, states her chilling reality with a matter-of-factness. She's been struggling with metastatic cancer since she was 38.
Russell's experience is not only relevant for those facing cancer and early death, but people struggling with many kinds of tragedies.
In 1997, Russell, a computer systems analyst, was devastated when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer. It soon led to what her doctors called "the mother of all surgeries" in 1998.
That was just the beginning of the nightmare, though. Russell's cancer came back in 2000, when she lost 55 pounds and became skeletal. "That scared the hell out of me."
Russell, who was brought up in a "fairly strict" Canadian military family, tried everything to beat the recurring cancer: extreme fitness, naturopathy, Chinese medicine.
"I thought I could control it, but I couldn't."
Without going into all the medical details, cancer returned in her abdomen and bowels in 2005, searing her body with relentless pain.
"I was eight years into cancer. I was tired. I was done." Doctors have told Russell several times she had less than a year to live. And she has decided her body can handle no more surgeries. She just waits.
"I hate it when people talk about a courageous battle with cancer," she says, sitting in the Callanish Society centre at 2277 West 10th Ave.
I'm a bit surprised, but she says the phrase just doesn't ring true for her.
However, she does believe, in another way, perhaps she has been brave.
"I think the courage is in facing yourself."
Doing so, she is convinced, has been the main reason she feels grateful today.
In 1998, the year after Russell was first told she had cancer, Russell began a long, long journey -- to discover who she was.
It started during a one-week retreat with the Callanish Society at a centre near Whistler.
"I was in a lot of grief, anger and fear," Russell says.
"I had spent most of my life being busy, trying to avoid those feelings. I was asking, 'Why me?'"
The retreat gave her a chance to relax, meditate, enjoy a massage, experience nature.
And, perhaps most importantly, talk to people who cared.
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