by Vivian Paul
After the February, 2023 Callanish Retreat, Kristi, one of my co-retreatants, sent the eight of us an excerpt from Kate Bowler’s book “The Lives We Actually Have.”
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This piece resonated with me and I have kept coming back to it because it seems so relevant to me and to others I know. I feel it speaks especially to those who were very busy in the world of accomplishment and recognizable achievement, until a cataclysmic event turned their lives upside down.
Here are some of Kate Bowler’s words:
Blessed are we in the tender place between curiosity and dread,
We who wonder how to be whole,
When dreams have disappeared and part of us with them,
Where mastery, control, determination, bootstrapping and grit
Are consigned to the realm of before (where most of the world lives)
In the fever dream that promises infinite choices, unlimited progress, best life now
Blessed are we in the after, forced into stories we never would have written
Far outside of answers to questions we even know to ask
On May 30th 2022, I sustained a pathologic fracture of my right clavicle, and within 48 hours learned the truth, that the bony destruction of that shoulder represented bone metastases from my 2020 biliary tract cancer: I was stage IV. My retirement from medical practice and delivering babies was immediate.
Since then, my life has been taken up by many treatment modalities: radiation therapy sessions, intravenous infusions of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, scans and bloodwork, transfusions, and consultations with the doctors and counsellor at B.C. Cancer. I am absolutely grateful for this dedicated care.
But there is also lots of time that is not taken up by these things, and not taken up by work either, or travelling to work.
In my new story that I never would have written if I had a choice, there is the gift of time that I can use for whatever I deem to be a priority.
This has been so satisfying!
Two days ago I hosted my four year-old granddaughter all day so her parents could put on a baby shower for two gay male friends whose surrogate will give birth any day now to Maisie, their daughter.
And yesterday I could say “yes” to chauffeuring my youngest daughter to a physio appointment across the city. We brought her newborn, whom I wheeled around the block in the afternoon sun while she had her session, then she came out to breastfeed him. It was exactly where I felt I should be, supporting her in exactly the way she needed.
Blessed are we in the after, living the stories we never would have written and finding them beautiful.
Dr. Vivian Paul is a full-service family physician, now retired. She practiced in Langley for twenty years, then another twenty years in Vancouver where she enjoyed doing low risk obstetrics and delivering babies.
In May 2022, she was diagnosed with advanced biliary tract carcinoma, Stage IV, with bony metastases to her right shoulder and several vertebrae. She has been under the gracious care of the professionals at BC Cancer ever since.
Vivian attended the February 2023 Whistler retreat and has also attended a day retreat in the city, and the Spring Writers’ Series. She feels that the effect of being "Callanished" has been life-altering, bringing peace to her cancer journey going forward. She is surprised, as are her adult children, at her absence of fear or distress.