Chapter 19: This Witch is Healing Her Cancer

The Search for Sanity and Eckhart Tolle

It’s hard to believe that I haven’t written since September. Emotionally it’s been so difficult, I couldn’t find the words. Have you ever seen what an island looks like after a tsunami hit? A ski resort after an avalanche? That is exactly what my emotional landscape looks like. Crying daily, driving around sobbing, yelling at the top of my lungs in my car, and wondering if I needed to commit myself. Maybe Payne Whitney, maybe Mass General, lots of writers end up there.

The psychic pain has been excruciating and the loneliness has been ripping me apart. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone, I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been so alone, and the thought that keeps coming up is: is this what the last chapter of my life is going to look and feel like? The rage and the anger and the roller coaster of feelings scare the crap out of me. It’s almost like I’ve been possessed.

At my son and daughter-in-law’s for my birthday week-end. Sunday after a full Saturday of playing with Henry, I was pretty tired. While I was sitting at the table eating my Ezekial muffin with almond butter and frozen wild blueberries, my son took a seat alongside me. I knew something was up because when I’d walked into the kitchen earlier, my son and daughter-in-law split apart like people do when they’ve been talking about you and you’ve caught them.

My son proceeded to tell me that I don’t have to be ‘on,’ all the time. Being ‘on’ the way I was being ‘on,’ wasn’t ‘real.’ When you haven’t slept in almost 6 months, and you’re seeing life through the lens of - I’m a loser and boy did I fuck up my life - and your body is flooded with rivers of dull and sharply aching emotional pain - and you have literally been battling death for over a year - and your brain is yelling at you all the time – Do this! Do that! Get your act together! - and you can’t shut it off – the ability to hear clearly and objectively is not option.

So, I’m sitting there, a hard-clenched fist of tears, defensiveness, and resentment, spitting out the occasional inanity, and he’s talking. We love you; Henry thinks about you, you don’t have to be ‘on,’ and I know he’s coming from love, but all I can hear is criticism of my way of being in the world, because I am back in the den at 3636 Trinity Drive where I grew up and in deep shit with my parents for God knows what. I was such a good girl but somehow always failing to make the grade. “She’s not living up to her potential,” was written on every report card.

My son was still talking. I could feel the sinking sensation of powerlessness. and the rage that follows, which I slipped fast into a cage. I felt cornered; dripping tears. Said a few snarky things and then I shut up. How was I supposed to say: I hear what you’re saying son, but I cannot respond in a rational/respectful manner because I am not rational and no, I am not running away from your words or your thoughts. I know you think what you’re saying is rooted in your love for me, but I’m in the waters of abject terror, drowning in tears, recriminations, and harsh self- judgment, and have been living in these waters for over a year, so clarity of thought eludes me right now.

I could no more have formed the words than fly to the moon. I have always wanted to be able to listen to what people had to say without flying off the handle, without feeling attacked. I had to get out of there before I said and did something I’d regret for the rest of my life.

I sobbed and yelled in the car the whole way home because it really sucks when you can’t make yourself understood because you’re just too fucking tired, which means everything you hear is criticism, because your perspective is rooted in past experiences, and controlling you, and has no validity to the present moment (my son’s talk) whatsoever. And my brain keeps losing the plot because of radiation. If I couldn’t write, I’d really be fucked. Whatever’s in my head gets on paper, is made normal size, and I can always find the plot again. I have never been so happy to get home.

As for all the nightmare/daymare feelings I’m having on the other side of treatment? Turns out 2-3 cancer patients feel exactly like I do when they finish treatment. One thing they all agree on is this – they’re no longer the same person and they’re really pissed off.

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Recognizing and accepting that terror has been my current reality for entirely too long, and not being willing to live there, I’ve been re-reading all the books I read the last time (I was 40) the little men in the white coats were way too close for comfort. Books that really helped me.

StarHawk’s The Spiral Dance, Women’s Myths and Secrets by Barbara Walker, StarHawk’s Sex Politics and Magick, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood by Merlin Stone. I am re-reading Edain McCoy, Francesca DeGrandis, Laurie Cabot, Maria Gimbutas, Robert Graves, Doreen Valiente, Silver Raven Wolfe, Dorothy Morrison, Christopher Penczak, The Farrars, Marion Woodman, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Riane Eisler, Judith Christ.

I did a tapping workshop with the divine Melanie Moore, watched a few of Teal Swan’s videos. I’m enjoying Teal, so far everything I’ve heard her say resonates. The tapping workshop I did with the phenomenal Melanie Moore was a blast, and reminded me of a class I was a member of in 1981. Hermetic thinking – All is Mind, All is Perfect, anything else is illusion, and it dovetailed perfectly with the Eastern religions I was studying at the time. As per many Eastern religions: the world is Maya – illusion - masking the perfection of divine reality. Ergo, what happens in the world doesn’t matter because it’s all an illusion, a shadow. This concept has never resonated with me, though it is a guiding belief for some of my nearest and dearest friends and healers.

In the witchcraft what happens in the world is vitally important. As StarHawk wrote: “The Goddess is imminent but needs human help to realize her fullest beauty. The harmonious balance of plant/animal/human is not automatic: it must constantly be renewed….”

When I read that for the first time and her thoughts on affirmations, I knew I’d found home.

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Reading my old books and journals, retracing my journey on the sacred path that I consciously stepped on in 1981, in search of answers for right now. One of my earliest burning desires was to know how to think. I was always looking for a way to think. If I knew how to think than life would somehow be ok. I was always lucky with books. I’d have a sense of what I needed, which I couldn’t verbalize, but I’d always find the right book at the right time with the answers I was looking for. I was lucky with teachers too, and healers. I still am.

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The first time I was told, All is Mind, I thought no, it’s not, but I was just starting out and figured everybody knew more than me, so I took it to be my mantra. I’d been raised to believe I was stupid, so obviously everyone knew more, and I should get with their program. The class was all affirmations and channeling and utterly thrilling - until it wasn’t. There was no room for feelings.

Positive thinking, without making the wound feeding the negativity conscious, almost killed me. A positive statement of your being will make you feel great at first, but eventually all the reasons why it’s not true, are going to come up. Then, I was supposed to take all the reasons why this positive statement wasn’t true, and make up new positive statements, to counter the effects of the negative beliefs coming up. This kind of slice and dice living is enough to give a Virgo a migraine.

Along the way I developed some real issues with the concept that spirituality is better than human. I don’t think those souls on the other side are lining up to reincarnate to be more spiritual. To be truly spiritual you have to be dead, and they already are. Spirituality is little more than feel-good pablum unless it’s about growing, creating, and working for humanity, the humane, and the planet.  Embodied spirituality is what the humane looks like.

When I say I have issues with something – it means there is a lack of resonance with what I am being told or taught. I knew the insanity of compulsive thinking and disassociation was running me in present time, but I couldn’t stop the noise. It felt a lot like when I bottomed out on booze 35 years ago. I was a slave to booze and in the present moment even more of a slave to compulsive thinking and disassociation. Clearly, this was an addiction and going to kill me and/or continue to encourage me to take myself out.

Cancer has shown me in no uncertain terms that I am divinely and perfectly guided, which is how I ended up reading Eckhart Tolle’s, The Power of Now. Though I’ve known about the book for many years, I assiduously avoided reading it, pretty sure it was just another new age treatise telling me to think positive and all is illusion and the altar within cannot be attacked. In my life experience (all of them!) that which contains the interior altar, (the body) is easily attacked and destroyed. You can’t kill divinity but you sure can kill what contains it, as slowly and painfully as possible.

Eckhart Tolle is the first person I’ve ever read who thinks mind is ragingly dysfunctional for the same reasons I do, and suggests I watch the ‘thinker,’ in my head. The ‘thinker’ is the source of compulsive thinking and disassociation. Tolle also states quite clearly that the mind as it currently exists is a monster and dysfunctional as hell. He speaks of mind as the tormentor in your head. He states observing ‘the thinker,’ activates a higher level of consciousness.

I’ve tried the exercise a few times, observing ‘the thinker,’ and was really surprised that it did in fact free me from compulsive thinking for a few minutes. It felt amazing. I take a breath, go low in body where I got when I meditate, and observe the ‘thinker.’ Every sentence I read in the Power of Now gives me relief and relief is one of my favorite feelings. I would have loved to observe the ‘thinker,’ at my son’s but I’m so new to Tolle there was no way.

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Had a healing with Lady B, yesterday and oh baby did I feel better. I’ve been trying so damn hard to get back out into the world, but I keep hitting concrete walls and there is the question of what my feelings are going to do at given moment. I’m taking care of a 93-year-old woman, 3 days a week, for 2 hours a day right now. Elaine. She does not have dementia but covid took out her sense of taste and her legs. She gets around gingerly using a walker. Energetically I am wiped out after 2 hours.

I’ve been doing readings which are always good because I love them and I’m great at it. I’m very clear that I can’t do more than 1-2 readings a day. Though I was planning on building my psychic reading business back up, I’m not going to push it. I’ll keep the people I have and if they refer someone to me, I will joyously work with them with love and pleasure. I’m flashing on the time an older woman came to see me in the postage stamp in Bloomfield. Her lover of close to 50 years had died and she wanted to talk to him, to make amends. I said no problem. The first image I got was of a little boy in lederhosen. I said, do lederhosen mean anything to you?  He grew up in Germany she said, and we were off and running. The man in question showed up and amends were made. Of course I love doing readings, look at what I get to see, witness, and be a part of.

Feeding the decision not to build the business back up is the fact that I want to write full time. Everything income producing is now relegated to part-time. I have spent my entire life taking care of others and putting everybody’s needs ahead of mine. Before cancer I could make it all right.  I can’t anymore. No sooner had I made the decision to commit to writing full-time when my brother called and said he’d like to send me to a spa.

“You need a break, Kathy.”

So, I started researching spas and not only were they astronomically expensive, but several of the applications wanted to know what my intention was. What were my goals, what was my vision for my life? I really didn’t see how my goals and vision for life had anything to do with wanting my blackheads extracted and maybe a massage and a steam.

So, I texted Mikey and asked him if I could do a writer’s retreat instead. He said that sounded perfect. The first place I wanted to go isn’t open right now. Other places demand an application for 2025 and 2026, because 2024 and the beginning of 2025 are full. I gave up.

And then, miracle of miracles, Dani Shapiro’s writing retreat at Kripula showed in my newsfeed. Meditation and Writing: The Stories We Carry. Mikey not only booked me for the retreat but booked me into an Airbnb nearby because I have to have a private bathroom. The retreat isn’t till mid-December, and I am so excited I am beside myself. My brother has been a God throughout this whole thing. I don’t think two siblings ever fought harder than we did, we are so different, but neither of us were willing to cut ties.

Love is a connecting force no matter what happens. Love is eternal and no matter what the recently elected and appointed do; they can’t destroy, contain, or control the power of love. Breathe in the beauty my darlings.

I love y’all. Thanks for reading. Kat

Art: Jeannie Tomanek