What a tender moment. Dads. Just, dads. My heart, my heart. I am living with stage 4 lung cancer. A cancer lifer. This touched me. How they would give their life to take our pain away?
My childhood is segmented into the "good" part," and the "bad" part. The good part took place during the years before my tenth birthday. The bad part, once alcohol fully infiltrated our family, took place after that. Therefore, I have good memories of family life as well as bad. I hang onto the good ones in my cooking. I cook my great-grandmother's fried chicken dinners. I cook my mother's Thanksgiving dinner...everything the same (almost). I bake the same chocolate chip cookies and as I stir the batter I am back in the kitchen of my youth, watching my mother at the counter and counting the minutes until the first batch comes out of the oven. Suleika, I it fills me with gladness that you have the parents you have and a father who would take away your pain if he could. Love to you all!
Hello. Thank you for a beautiful story of your father and culture and traditions. And again being vulnerable to share your journey of chemo and health. I grew up with Greek and Italian grandparents and still visit family in both countries. So many traditions I have that remind me of your share. What I also relate to is my husband from Germany who comes to all my doctors visit and procedures and more. And wants to take the pain away. I had tears with these words" It’s such a hard thing to watch someone you love suffer, knowing you can’t actually fix it for them. (Not even with an endless supply of olive oil.) " And loved these words "Still, my dad’s words were a balm. Not only was I not alone in my suffering, I knew beyond a doubt that if it were possible, he would take my pain. His empathy lightened my burden" With much love for your dad and you.
In a box, marked, "Mom's Things for You Murro" (a name my little sister calls me), laid a plastic bag, with an embroidery project Mom had started long ago. Damnit-it's the Satin Stitch! The stitch I had the most trouble with when she taught me to embroider long ago. I was impatient, my stitches too far apart, my youthful ego totally running the show and my resistance to slowing down ever present. I have taken that plastic bag in and out of that box over the past two weeks, frightened to ruin her work and yet wondering if she left it for me to finish. have I cultivated the tools of precision and patience that the Satin Stitch requires? Oh, and the message on it, is about God. Sheesh...why does it have to be about God. I am (and have been for quite some time) in a silent war with myself over the notion of a benevolent super power. I am lost in my grief over her death. I am not yet ready to stitch. I am not ready to heal.
I feel my cancer journey has connected me to my past in a different way. Cancer has been in my life, through members of my family, since I was 7. It’s always been this big dark thing I was so fearful to get. When it came for me suddenly I remembered conversations had with my Nana, who died when I was 9, about living with cancer that at the time I didn’t fully understand but now I did. Learnings from beyond that didn’t make sense until it happened to me.
And my beloved Dad, his very short cancer journey also provided me with similar insight but so did a lifetime of him and his wonderful “Dad’isms” I affectionately called them. Little nuggets of wisdom that, at the time I’d roll my eyes at but in adulthood, especially through this journey, has been a guiding light and given me so much comfort as I’m reminded of him. In my darkest times I wish he was here but he always finds a way to remind me that he is. Always ♥️
It seems so unfair to have so many instances of cancer in one family. But life can be harsh, can't it? My mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer almost a year ago and I was her primary car giver for in-home hospice. She died within 4 weeks. I was diagnosed with cancer only 8 months later. I hope you are doing alright.
Thank you. My blood cancer is different from pancreatic cancer in so many ways - that helps me feel like my journey and her journey are not the same. And that is a comfort.
Ah yesssss like the Swedish proverb- sorrow shared is a sorrow halved and a joy shared is double joy. Thank you for your writing Suleika and thank you for your embroidery Diana Weymar! The Isolation Journals is my absolute favorite subscription. Every week you bring it! Thank you. Since last week's prompt, I am fiddling through chord changes in easy classical music ... and this week will surely tempt me to embroider something. These activities are the treasures of living. Thank you for the way you shine a light on the absolute healing power of creativity. Your words bring it all to life.
My first welcome into my husband’s family was from his Grandmother Flora, who shed her wig to share my baldness. We had shaved our whole bodies to leave behind our pasts and become one in the newness, like newborns. Her last goodbye was to ask me to finish crocheting the edges of an afghan she had been unable to complete in her last days as blindness overtook her. Those two acts of love gathered me into my husband’s family and I am forever one with them.
Of late I have often been asked to cover the maternity floor in addition to my assignment in the emergency room. In the emergency room I work with people in crisis, acutely ill, and manure at the end of their lives. In the maternity ward I am working with people who are just starting out their lives.
The majority of those I am asked to see are the “worried well” women with a history of anxiety or depression having their first baby. Many of them are afraid of what is to come and do not know how to care for a newborn. My work with these women has brought back my own memories of pregnancy, childbirth and having a newborn over twenty six years ago. It has forced me to process my own experiences. I remember how alone and scared I felt. In meeting with these new parents I have been able to provide reassurance, resources, coping skills and the need for self compassion.
The work the on maternity ward has helped me to reshape my own narrative and to see myself as a part of a much larger community of new mothers who feel unsure, who persevere and do our best.
Nosf-nosf. How vividly I hear him, how precisely I see you both. I am left in my dark room at this hour feeling all the quiet of this sadness, this beauty, this truth. And Diana, your words and your art—most absolutely: The capital letter at the start. The period at the end. The thread in between.
Thank you so much. I've stitched a piece inspired by the newsletter for years so the connection between writing and stitching is strong for me! Happy to have a chance to share it.
Diana I love your work! The first one I bought from you was the stitching that says “if you have to walk thru hell, walk like you own the joint!” I chose that one because of all my ancestors & what they went thru & all the hardships I’ve gone thru and I’m going through now and your stitching art reinforces my courage not to give up during really rough times. I’ve learned it’s okay to fall apart , let all that rage and toxic energy out & let it go and proceed , in a healthier & mindful way to not give up! I’ve also learned I can use my rage and anger to fuel me with such a ferociousness combined with humility and compassion to proceed forward & not give up. Above all—-love rules!
Years ago I “studied” weaving in college. As well as tailoring. Two memories arise. Two stories I now create, retell, and enliven from my past into this present moment.
I loved the process of dressing a loom. The present activity of creating a canvas for all sorts of possible weaving. Once I decided to dress a loom with very fine threads of linen. After hours of untying snarls and knots, I tore the warp off the loom and started all over with cotton, a less snarling material. A moment of discovery: the materials I work with either resonate with me, or not. And recognizing this, I can honor myself by choosing what aligns with my inner sensibilities. Leave it, the thin linen, for someone else to discover and align with.
I loved sewing and making clothing in tailoring class. Over one Xmas break I had access to the college studio and sewing machine, and decided to make for myself a pair of pants and a matching shirt. I sewed, I tore out stitches, I sewed some more. Pockets, a zipper, lovely speckled material. I was so excited with this process of making that I forgot to check if the pants I was sewing together actually fit. Finally, finished, and very pleased, I realized that the pants were way too small. I eventually found a cheerful eight year old who could wear and enjoy these pants. I returned to the studio, with a broader understanding of the task at hand, and sewed a fine pair of pants, using different material, and requiring no zipper. Drawstrings this time. The shirt was made of the original chosen speckled material. Forty-some years later I still have these pants and shirt hanging in my closet. And they still fit.
Moral of the story? Life is full of our own makings, unmakings, adventures, difficult challenges, sorrows and pleasures. We are each on an amazing journey. Somethings we make, decisions we make, fit and others don’t. In each moment we can choose how to hold, or reject, our current life-project. So many possibilities. No guarantees. Together we can offer each other “half and half”. We can cheer each other on. Smile together. Weep together. Try this, try that. Here’s to our adventures. Best wishes, David🏮
Ah, love. I just read this aloud to my daughter and husband. Thank you for this short hand. Nosf-Nosf. This is what I wanted to say to my daughter as I rubbed her back while she was so motion sick during the airplane’s descent yesterday. Nosf-Nosf. Feel my love, your grandmother’s and sister’s and father’s love as we do what we can to take at least half your pain. All of it if we could. And 100% team olive oil for the win! (Altho I do love a mix of sunflower and coconut oils as my body moisturizer. 🌻)
"“I can’t take all your pain, but let me at least take half.” Then she rested her cheek on his cheek. Hédi immediately fell sound asleep and didn’t wake until morning, the pain gone but the memory of her tender care indelibly inked in his mind." (Suleika Jaouad)---my own memories are strong as a survival and homage---as a kid I remember dinners with a Syrian family- i don't know but they took me in--- life long hummus gal here-- then their was George an Armenian barber who cut my hair and whose family gave me my high school graduation party.-- I grew up loving these people and the cultures reinforced in Paris with amazing guys from Algeria and Tunsia... Morocco --I am not sure that I liked Bologna on Wonder Bread with lots of Mayo but I sure did lik Mrs Westervelt... Find the angels they are out and about.
Suleika, I was looking for comfort in the wee hours and found your post. I shared with my husband. I have so many things wrong in my body now. Thank you. It felt like pouring in the oil and the wine.
My father and paternal grandmother relished rocks and leaves — with special stones stashed in bowls and leaves stenciled. Always calling us to notice the natural world. I do the same, and my siblings too.
A tear drips olive-oilily down my cheek.
What a tender moment. Dads. Just, dads. My heart, my heart. I am living with stage 4 lung cancer. A cancer lifer. This touched me. How they would give their life to take our pain away?
Half, half. Yes, yes.
Thank you from my delicate heart for sharing.
A smile from London to you.
💛🩷💜💚❤️🧡💙🩵🤍🩶
Sending love and prayers for strength and healing, Mel ❤️
Volleyed back to you hoo. 💫
Me, third stage ovarian cancer, so far survivor glad to have found all of you
Good to meet you Lauren. Keep shining brightly. 💫
Sending you Love Mel❤️🩹
Thank you so much. 💫
My childhood is segmented into the "good" part," and the "bad" part. The good part took place during the years before my tenth birthday. The bad part, once alcohol fully infiltrated our family, took place after that. Therefore, I have good memories of family life as well as bad. I hang onto the good ones in my cooking. I cook my great-grandmother's fried chicken dinners. I cook my mother's Thanksgiving dinner...everything the same (almost). I bake the same chocolate chip cookies and as I stir the batter I am back in the kitchen of my youth, watching my mother at the counter and counting the minutes until the first batch comes out of the oven. Suleika, I it fills me with gladness that you have the parents you have and a father who would take away your pain if he could. Love to you all!
Fried chicken and chocolate chip cookies sound like the solution for anything ❤️
Hello. Thank you for a beautiful story of your father and culture and traditions. And again being vulnerable to share your journey of chemo and health. I grew up with Greek and Italian grandparents and still visit family in both countries. So many traditions I have that remind me of your share. What I also relate to is my husband from Germany who comes to all my doctors visit and procedures and more. And wants to take the pain away. I had tears with these words" It’s such a hard thing to watch someone you love suffer, knowing you can’t actually fix it for them. (Not even with an endless supply of olive oil.) " And loved these words "Still, my dad’s words were a balm. Not only was I not alone in my suffering, I knew beyond a doubt that if it were possible, he would take my pain. His empathy lightened my burden" With much love for your dad and you.
❤️❤️❤️
In a box, marked, "Mom's Things for You Murro" (a name my little sister calls me), laid a plastic bag, with an embroidery project Mom had started long ago. Damnit-it's the Satin Stitch! The stitch I had the most trouble with when she taught me to embroider long ago. I was impatient, my stitches too far apart, my youthful ego totally running the show and my resistance to slowing down ever present. I have taken that plastic bag in and out of that box over the past two weeks, frightened to ruin her work and yet wondering if she left it for me to finish. have I cultivated the tools of precision and patience that the Satin Stitch requires? Oh, and the message on it, is about God. Sheesh...why does it have to be about God. I am (and have been for quite some time) in a silent war with myself over the notion of a benevolent super power. I am lost in my grief over her death. I am not yet ready to stitch. I am not ready to heal.
Beautiful post 🥰
I feel my cancer journey has connected me to my past in a different way. Cancer has been in my life, through members of my family, since I was 7. It’s always been this big dark thing I was so fearful to get. When it came for me suddenly I remembered conversations had with my Nana, who died when I was 9, about living with cancer that at the time I didn’t fully understand but now I did. Learnings from beyond that didn’t make sense until it happened to me.
And my beloved Dad, his very short cancer journey also provided me with similar insight but so did a lifetime of him and his wonderful “Dad’isms” I affectionately called them. Little nuggets of wisdom that, at the time I’d roll my eyes at but in adulthood, especially through this journey, has been a guiding light and given me so much comfort as I’m reminded of him. In my darkest times I wish he was here but he always finds a way to remind me that he is. Always ♥️
It seems so unfair to have so many instances of cancer in one family. But life can be harsh, can't it? My mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer almost a year ago and I was her primary car giver for in-home hospice. She died within 4 weeks. I was diagnosed with cancer only 8 months later. I hope you are doing alright.
Hugs. Your mum went fast. I hope you will have a successful healing.
Thank you. My blood cancer is different from pancreatic cancer in so many ways - that helps me feel like my journey and her journey are not the same. And that is a comfort.
Ah yesssss like the Swedish proverb- sorrow shared is a sorrow halved and a joy shared is double joy. Thank you for your writing Suleika and thank you for your embroidery Diana Weymar! The Isolation Journals is my absolute favorite subscription. Every week you bring it! Thank you. Since last week's prompt, I am fiddling through chord changes in easy classical music ... and this week will surely tempt me to embroider something. These activities are the treasures of living. Thank you for the way you shine a light on the absolute healing power of creativity. Your words bring it all to life.
“sorrow shared is a sorrow halved and a joy shared is double joy“—thank you for sharing this, Robin ❤️
Blessings upon your house, Suleika. May you have nosf-nosf whenever you need, or want it.
And thank you Ms. Weyman. Your essay exquisite, your prompt, timely.
Much love to you all from Marblehead.
🐠💙💜
My first welcome into my husband’s family was from his Grandmother Flora, who shed her wig to share my baldness. We had shaved our whole bodies to leave behind our pasts and become one in the newness, like newborns. Her last goodbye was to ask me to finish crocheting the edges of an afghan she had been unable to complete in her last days as blindness overtook her. Those two acts of love gathered me into my husband’s family and I am forever one with them.
Of late I have often been asked to cover the maternity floor in addition to my assignment in the emergency room. In the emergency room I work with people in crisis, acutely ill, and manure at the end of their lives. In the maternity ward I am working with people who are just starting out their lives.
The majority of those I am asked to see are the “worried well” women with a history of anxiety or depression having their first baby. Many of them are afraid of what is to come and do not know how to care for a newborn. My work with these women has brought back my own memories of pregnancy, childbirth and having a newborn over twenty six years ago. It has forced me to process my own experiences. I remember how alone and scared I felt. In meeting with these new parents I have been able to provide reassurance, resources, coping skills and the need for self compassion.
The work the on maternity ward has helped me to reshape my own narrative and to see myself as a part of a much larger community of new mothers who feel unsure, who persevere and do our best.
Thank you for sharing this and for the work you are doing to bring comfort to others.
Nosf-nosf. How vividly I hear him, how precisely I see you both. I am left in my dark room at this hour feeling all the quiet of this sadness, this beauty, this truth. And Diana, your words and your art—most absolutely: The capital letter at the start. The period at the end. The thread in between.
Thank you so much. I've stitched a piece inspired by the newsletter for years so the connection between writing and stitching is strong for me! Happy to have a chance to share it.
It’s lovely to meet the artist behind all those stitches!
I understand so well as a paper person who sews her art and words together.
Diana I love your work! The first one I bought from you was the stitching that says “if you have to walk thru hell, walk like you own the joint!” I chose that one because of all my ancestors & what they went thru & all the hardships I’ve gone thru and I’m going through now and your stitching art reinforces my courage not to give up during really rough times. I’ve learned it’s okay to fall apart , let all that rage and toxic energy out & let it go and proceed , in a healthier & mindful way to not give up! I’ve also learned I can use my rage and anger to fuel me with such a ferociousness combined with humility and compassion to proceed forward & not give up. Above all—-love rules!
Years ago I “studied” weaving in college. As well as tailoring. Two memories arise. Two stories I now create, retell, and enliven from my past into this present moment.
I loved the process of dressing a loom. The present activity of creating a canvas for all sorts of possible weaving. Once I decided to dress a loom with very fine threads of linen. After hours of untying snarls and knots, I tore the warp off the loom and started all over with cotton, a less snarling material. A moment of discovery: the materials I work with either resonate with me, or not. And recognizing this, I can honor myself by choosing what aligns with my inner sensibilities. Leave it, the thin linen, for someone else to discover and align with.
I loved sewing and making clothing in tailoring class. Over one Xmas break I had access to the college studio and sewing machine, and decided to make for myself a pair of pants and a matching shirt. I sewed, I tore out stitches, I sewed some more. Pockets, a zipper, lovely speckled material. I was so excited with this process of making that I forgot to check if the pants I was sewing together actually fit. Finally, finished, and very pleased, I realized that the pants were way too small. I eventually found a cheerful eight year old who could wear and enjoy these pants. I returned to the studio, with a broader understanding of the task at hand, and sewed a fine pair of pants, using different material, and requiring no zipper. Drawstrings this time. The shirt was made of the original chosen speckled material. Forty-some years later I still have these pants and shirt hanging in my closet. And they still fit.
Moral of the story? Life is full of our own makings, unmakings, adventures, difficult challenges, sorrows and pleasures. We are each on an amazing journey. Somethings we make, decisions we make, fit and others don’t. In each moment we can choose how to hold, or reject, our current life-project. So many possibilities. No guarantees. Together we can offer each other “half and half”. We can cheer each other on. Smile together. Weep together. Try this, try that. Here’s to our adventures. Best wishes, David🏮
"Drawstrings this time." I could stitch that! I agree about our stories!
Ah, love. I just read this aloud to my daughter and husband. Thank you for this short hand. Nosf-Nosf. This is what I wanted to say to my daughter as I rubbed her back while she was so motion sick during the airplane’s descent yesterday. Nosf-Nosf. Feel my love, your grandmother’s and sister’s and father’s love as we do what we can to take at least half your pain. All of it if we could. And 100% team olive oil for the win! (Altho I do love a mix of sunflower and coconut oils as my body moisturizer. 🌻)
"“I can’t take all your pain, but let me at least take half.” Then she rested her cheek on his cheek. Hédi immediately fell sound asleep and didn’t wake until morning, the pain gone but the memory of her tender care indelibly inked in his mind." (Suleika Jaouad)---my own memories are strong as a survival and homage---as a kid I remember dinners with a Syrian family- i don't know but they took me in--- life long hummus gal here-- then their was George an Armenian barber who cut my hair and whose family gave me my high school graduation party.-- I grew up loving these people and the cultures reinforced in Paris with amazing guys from Algeria and Tunsia... Morocco --I am not sure that I liked Bologna on Wonder Bread with lots of Mayo but I sure did lik Mrs Westervelt... Find the angels they are out and about.
Find the angels ❤️❤️❤️
Hugs
Suleika, I was looking for comfort in the wee hours and found your post. I shared with my husband. I have so many things wrong in my body now. Thank you. It felt like pouring in the oil and the wine.
❤️❤️❤️
My father and paternal grandmother relished rocks and leaves — with special stones stashed in bowls and leaves stenciled. Always calling us to notice the natural world. I do the same, and my siblings too.