Slowly slowly I’ve been walking away from home. It all started by the beginning of this masters (literally inside my room), my room as an allegory of a comfortable safe space. Though the process of research and the more calculated risks I had taken, I’d move away from my room into the living room, still safe but more open. As time flew by, closer to the third and final part of this master I have found myself swinging back and forth between the door to go outside and the inside of my home, a thin yet bold separation of spaces. The unknown and the known. The familiar vs. the uncomfortable. The mystery vs. the spoilers.
It was only recently, and I mean very recently when I just shut the door behind me, ran through the front yard, jumped through the fences and ran through the freshly cut grass while getting wet by water sprinklers. Or should I just say, I got out of my bias comfortable box.
I guess this is why this masters follows this structure – and it is all making sense.
A question that evolves is a question that keeps getting explored, and as you start learning more answers new questions arise…new ways of seeing naturally emerge and this is good. A static question means no interventions have been taken, no movement has actually happened, when you move you’re in motion, when you’re still you just see the same wall over and over, even if it means from different angles. I’ve taken this time to approach movement, but also reflect on stillness, ask the uncomfortable why’s and most importantly grow more confidence in the how’s.
My latest big jump has been through drafting my evaluative report, as any evaluation I took time to observe and put together all the work I have done throughout these months, learning about the importance of consistency and perspective. During one of the parts that I had to fill out, positionally was a particularly difficult one – why? because as I was writing I had realised that perhaps, seeing what worked and what didn’t should be enough proof to turn the information and translate it into something impactful and accessible. I had been so focused in writing as a way for self-expression that I’d forgotten or felt blurred about other mediums of expression that happen to be even more accessible and rare within the caregiving field.
Such as what? Well, theatre, dance, music for example.
Not long ago I had been with a friend who is a contemporary dancer, he was telling me he had finished a project in which a filmmaker was writing a story and the dancer was performing that story through his body movement, no words. How accessible, how raw and how honest. I then remembered how much I love going to the ballet or the opera and how in those scenarios stories are too represented with little words and much more bodily expression – and what a beautiful way to perform story and self-narrative than through the most accessible and human mediums such as sound and movement.
What a way to do these stories justice than by embodying them in artistic expressive forms that can then be shared with cancer caregivers of all walks of lives and in whatever stages they’re at but at the same time, be able to raise awareness of the inner journey of these heroes.
Stories go beyond words and yet words can still be used at the foundation.
So I wrote this (spoken word – and share it with a cancer caregiving community – it got 30 interactions)
My life changed in December,
I was hit by Turbulent news
and I wondered How and why
How can life change so suddenly
Why does my mum have to be the one?
My heart aching with so much fire inside
Sadness withheld in order to keep things
“Normal” But nothing was normal,
My radiant mum,
the flower that blooms with most liveliness
struggling,
slowly fading away like the sunset
I want to hold on to her forever
And her warmth be the shield to this unfair life
I want to make new memories with her
but none that include
Cancer
Cancer
A word once so scary and now…
Now it just feels like a day to day word
Easy to use,
difficult to be asked about
My heart aches along with my thoughts
and the Possibility of loosing her,
Of another twist and turn
Makes me want to be with her at all times,
To enjoy every single minute as we can
But she encourages me to live my life
To not worry
So I listen,
I listen
because I care and I know she has it worst
Way worst
But that doesn’t invalidate our thoughts
No mindless guilt of whose story it is to tell
You’re your own voice, with your own pain
With your own fears
And when you see the person you love the most
Face the possibility of death
In such proximity
It’s shattering
Its a dagger through your soul
and you can’t get it out
I befriend it
And it starts hurting a little less
And I start accepting the new reality
Slowly, By being present, grounded
At times it’s all better,
At times it’s all worst,
Like living in a limbo or being caught up in a delicate web
While we’re in there,
We remember we’re alive
They’re alive
We can breathe
They can breathe
We both feel,
We feel together
And whatever comes,
Whatever is,
It is worth remembering
We’re with them through this
From the 30 interactions, most of them expressed sincere gratitude for being able to voice their feelings and opinions in a way they could not. This in itself has once again shown me the power of expression, not to be mistaken with the power of words, but expression in general and how there are different mediums in which those stories, feelings and journeys can be turned into art so that these carers can then re-access them in a new form and feel connected to a work they’ve been part to, speaks to them and to others.