1 in 8: The Torso Project

Posted on by July 24, 2009

Today is the opening for the art show, “Expressions of Cancer and One in Eight: The Torso Project,” at the Barnes Gallery at Leverett Arts and Crafts Center in Leverett MA. I facilitated this show ( The Torso Project is my part) along with Lily Rose Cardasis, a UMass student whose mother died of breast cancer. The opening is from 4:30-7:30 pm today with food and drink and music.

As Cheryl Rezendes wrote in The Recorder yesterday (thank you, Cheryl, for this nice piece) “Please come out to see this exhibit. Enter the intimate lives of many brave women and men who have expressed, through the healing modality of art, their fears, anger and hope toward a disease that in some way has affected us all.” (look for the article, The Art of Cancer, online at www.recorder.com)

I hope that you can come to the opening! If not, the exhibit will be at the gallery through January 27, 2008; hours are Thursday-Sunday, 2- 5 pm. Or come on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 3 pm as members of the Spirit of the Written Word writing workshop at Cancer Connection read from our new book of our writings, Words to Live By.

In the meantime, here is the description of 1 in 8: The Torso Project.

One in Eight: The Torso Project is a collaborative art project that seeks to foster healing and public awareness. The title comes from the fact that one in eight women, over the course of their lifetimes, will get breast cancer.

Originated by breast cancer survivor Pam Roberts, the women made plaster body casts of their own torsos, to comment on the female form and to express outrage at the epidemic of breast cancer that kills one woman every 13 minutes in the United States. This year 211,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States, and 40,000 will die.

The project grew out of the desire to dispel the silence and fear about breast cancer through the shared experience of collaborative art.

“We bared our breasts together to address the fear and to celebrate the supportive friendships and community that are necessary for surviving. We are all in this together,” says Roberts.

Roberts was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 1993 and had a mastectomy one month later. The statistics of incidence of breast cancer have changed since her diagnosis. At that time, it was one in nine. Today–fourteen years later–the figure is approaching one in seven.

Certainly some of the reason for this statistical increase can be attributed to better and earlier diagnosis. But the frightening increase in documented breast cancer is also caused by the ever-increasing amount of toxins in our homes, schools, workplaces and environment. We are poisoning ourselves and our earth, with sickening results.

One in Eight was inspired by Roberts’ entry in the Show Us Your Bra contest four years ago. Roberts asked her friends Hope Schneider and Katie Winship to help her make a plaster of Paris body cast of her torso. Her resulting piece, “I Don’t Wear A Bra,” received honorable mention and was featured on a calendar produced from the event.

Show Us Your Bra is an annual event sponsored by Northampton’s Gazebo to raise money for its Breast Form Fund, which provides prostheses for uninsured and undersinsured women who have had breast cancer.

Breast cancer strikes us where we are vulnerable and in a highly visible way. Our breasts are our femininity, our desirability, our power, our nurturance, our mothering, our sexuality and our shame. Breast cancer threatens to kill us–and does kill us–while making us confront the essence of our womanliness.

There is no cure for breast cancer; once someone has had breast cancer there is risk for an occurrence at any time. But, there is healing. Using art as a healing modality helps us excise the fear of breast cancer and transform it into an expression of courage and love.

We hope that you will join us in this exhibit by honoring or memorializing someone here, or by sharing your thoughts and feelings on the board. We hope that you will feel inspired to go home and do your part to help make breast cancer ancient history.
© Pam Roberts

Close, but . . .

Posted on by July 24, 2009

Not long after my breast cancer diagnosis, I called my health care plan. Even though I didn’t think that I wanted reconstruction, researching it was a good distraction from my fear that I would not live long enough to raise my two children.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m calling to see if you cover plastic surgery after a mastectomy.”

“What do you mean, plastic surgery after a vasectomy?” a female voice replied.

I gulped and tried again. “Does my insurance cover reconstruction after a mastectomy?”

“You mean, you want to reverse a vasectomy? she asked.

“No, no,” I said, struggling to go on. “I have breast cancer. I am going to have a breast removed. Will the insurance cover reconstruction of a new breast?”

“Oh,” she said, “Of course, of course.”

I hung up the phone and sat there, stunned. Then, I laughed. This cancer journey is going to have some absurd moments, I thought.

Now, almost 14 years later, I go around one-breasted, my children are in college, and I am grateful to still be laughing.

(This appeared in the magazine Heal: Living Well after Cancer, Vol.1, No. 2, Fall 2007)
© Pam Roberts

More than Just Our Stories

Posted on by July 24, 2009

It was a cold December night when I sat in Genie Zeiger’s writing workshop and tried to listen to my fellow participants. With sweaty palms and a quickening heart, I tracked the progression of readers, as, one by one, the members read what they had just written.

I felt the circle closing in. It was now time for the man on my left to read. I would be next. As he picked up his yellow lined pad and began a story about his cousin’s wedding, I could barely listen. I blanked in and out as he described a joyous and loving occasion, blessed with family from both sides and a sunny day. The bride, of course was beautiful, wearing a flowing white dress and a radiant smile beneath her bald head.

Bald head? He had my full attention now. Apparently the bride, his cousin, was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. In the midst of the bride and groom’s hopeful decision to go ahead with the wedding despite uncertainty about her health, she had made the brave decision to wed bald-headed, without wig or veil.

As was the custom of this workshop, when he finished reading others responded with comments about the writing, its strengths, particulars of the language, the rhythm of the piece. I was mute. I could not bring myself to speak, I did not even know if I still had a voice.

Then ”Thank you,” the man said, and he turned to me. My head spun. I wanted to pass. I wanted to run, I wanted to do anything but sit here in this living room and read my words. I can’t do this! I thought.

I tried to take a deep breath, tried to quell the wavering in my voice, tried to stem the tears that blocked my vision, tried to keep my hands from trembling as I picked up my notebook. How ironic to be the next reader, because what I had written about was how, just days before I had heard a surgeon say, “You have breast cancer.”

My reading had a rocky start. I stumbled, I paused to collect myself, but I made it all the way to the end. And when I finished the room was completely still. Except for my heart thundering in my ears, there was silence.

Then someone spoke. “ That was a powerful piece. The narrator’s description of being on the phone with the surgeon was very vivid and real.”

And another said, “The short sentences and repetitive language built tension and made us feel the fear.”

And another added, “What brave and honest writing. This is so needed, it helps us address our own fears.”

I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. I had done it! I had written about something so scary, my very new breast cancer diagnosis, and had shared it with my fellow writers. They in turn had given me feedback on my writing and helped me to feel safe and supported. In this process I had found a moment of respite from my fear. In fact, more than that, my fears had been transformed.

That was 13 years ago, the first time that I experienced the healing power of writing. I have since come to believe strongly in it, to believe that everyone has a story and that the telling and the hearing of our stories is healing. And in this healing lies the realization that we are more than just our stories.

After that night I continued to write in Genie’s workshop about my experiences with breast cancer. It was as if once the dam was broken the force was too powerful to stop. Every week, on a Tuesday night, I gulped down my dinner, kissed my kids goodbye, and drove up the winding hill to Genie’s house. Every week I wrote about my journey in the land of breast cancer, and then I read it to the group. Sometimes what I wrote was funny and sometimes it made all of us cry. While I lost my breast, underwent chemotherapy, joined a support group, and tried numerous forms of complementary healing, from acupuncture to nutrition to psychic surgery, I wrote.

This went on for about five years. Sometimes I wrote playful little ditties, but for the most part, no matter what Genie suggested, I wrote about my experiences with breast cancer.

“Write about a dream,” she might say, and I would start, “In the time before I was diagnosed, I had a dream about a possum who clung to me no matter how often I flung him away. When I awoke I just knew.”

“Write about a photograph,” she might suggest, and I would write, “In this photo, I have two breasts and now I have one and everything is both different and the same.”

What I found during this time was that my writing was healing me even more than the therapies I was trying. It was healing to express my fears and grief and then write myself into a place of stillness. Very gradually, over time I wrote my heart open and found peace and acceptance.

I believe that healing is not the same as cure. There is no cure for breast cancer – you can have a recurrence at any time, but there is healing, which to me means finding clarity and harmony in body, mind, spirit and feeling. Healing is feeling whole.

A couple of years ago I concluded four years at the IM School of Healing Arts in NYC where we learned wholeness healing. We learned that we are born whole but get fragmented by life, so healing is connecting with that memory of wholeness. We do it within ourselves and in relationships with others, by bringing our loving attention.

For me, a way of connecting to that memory of wholeness is through writing. Because of my healing experience as a member of the writing workshop I became a leader of writing workshops for people touched by cancer, and I have seen time and time again how we are moved to tears as we read the words that express our deep truths. Writing like this, within the intimate community of a workshop, is an act of courage, connection and ultimately transformation. As we share our stories, we find that we are more than just our stories. And in that realization we can make a transformation from the personal one to the universal One and experience healing.

(This piece is included in a book, The Power of Words: A Transformative Language Arts Reader. You can learn more about this book and about Transformative Language Arts at their website (http://www.tlanetwork.org/).

© Pam Roberts