Anne Marie Bennett

Q: How do you feel now that you are so far away from your surgeries and treatments?

A: I feel wonderful!

Q: Do you think that women with breast cancer today will relate to your experiences, even though the medical treatments may have changed since your own journey?

A: Absolutely. Bright Side of the Road isn’t about the specific surgeries I had or the exact drugs I received during chemotherapy.  It’s about something much bigger than all of that.  It’s about the emotional and spiritual survival we face, not just the physical things that breast cancer patients endure.

Q: What do you mean by “emotional and spiritual survival?”

A: Well, women going through breast cancer face an extraordinary onslaught of feelings: anger, fear, grief…   So for me, emotional survival was about feeling those feelings as they washed over me, which was often, and not letting them knock me over, not letting them force me into hiding. More importantly, not denying them. And spiritual survival was about getting through the whole experience with my personal spirit intact, my own sense of self still strong and sure.  Also, it was about opening myself up to a whole new level of relationship with Spirit.

Q: So how did you accomplish that emotional and spiritual survival?

A:  By writing about it in my journal, getting it all out on paper, every thought and feeling.  For me, that was key, because I express myself best with words.  For another person, it might be dialoguing with a partner, or art, or dance.  My journaling really helped me face the feelings every time they came up (which was often!), name them, and then move on.  Also, I did a little meditation when my body was well enough, and some work with affirmations and guided meditation.  I listened to my inner wisdom and tried to follow it as best as I could.

Q: Were you aware of what you were doing at that time?  Did you know you were using tools for emotional and spiritual survival?

A: Heck no!  I was just trying to get through each day with a little serenity intact!

Q: Were you always someone who walked on the bright side of the road?

A: When I was growing up, my mother always talked about “being positive” but her way of doing that was to completely ignore the hard stuff: the fear, the grief, the anxiety.  I guess that’s one of the biggest lessons I learned on my journey- how to weave the two together: the bright and the dark. That they are not exclusive, but integrally connected.  That it’s possible and ultimately healing to feel all of the darker feelings and still have room for gratitude and joy.

Q:  What was the most difficult thing about your breast cancer journey?

A:  Wow, that’s a hard one!  Where do I begin?  For me, it was the 3rd and 4th chemotherapy treatments.  Not because I lost my hair or felt nauseous a lot of the time, but because I just didn’t feel like myself.  I was exhausted and weepy and felt like a shadow of my former self.  I read somewhere about trying to think of the chemo drugs and the tamoxifen in light of what they were doing for me instead of what they were doing to me, and that  helped a lot too.

Q: I love that you named your wig “Gracie.”  Do you still have her?

A: No, I donated her to an organization that recycles the wigs to women who can’t afford them.  A survivor I knew at the time told me that she was keeping her wig in case the cancer came back, and I considered that but only for a few seconds.  I really didn’t want the wig in my closet reminding me of what might be in my future.

Q: After your treatments were over, you write a lot about how the journey really wasn’t over for you because there’s a deep fear that the cancer might come back.  Do you still face that fear?

A: Oh, yes.  Absolutely.  It’s not as far-reaching as it was in the first few years after my treatments ended, but it is still definitely there in the background.  It escalates a great deal when it’s time for my yearly mammogram and appointment with my breast surgeon.

Q: And how do you deal with that fear?

A:  Basically, I allow it.  I acknowledge the fear when it comes.  Sometimes I picture it as a ferocious tiger.  I journal about it, pray about it, talk about it with my husband.  There is a real power to accepting a feeling like that, rather than pushing it away or fighting it.

Q: In a nutshell, what does it really mean to walk on the “bright side of the road?”

A: For me, it means to feel, accept and embrace my feelings, no matter what they are.  It means to pay attention to my thoughts and consciously choose to change those thoughts to brighter ones when I need to.  It means to live a life focused on gratitude and what brings me joy.